This portable monitor is a 13.3 inch foldable display (with a $1299 price tag)

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We’ve seen smartphones, tablets, and laptops with foldable displays in recent years. Now a company called Aura Displays is bringing foldability to another product category: portable monitors.

The Aura Single Flex Pro (Gen 1) is a 13.3 inch OLED display that you can fold in half so that it takes up less space in your bag. Or you can bend it in the middle to create a sort of pseudo-laptop experience with one part of the screen facing upward while the other faces forward or hold it in your hands like a book with the fold acting like the crease. But at a time when you can find plenty of portable monitors selling for $60 to $300, the Aura Single Flex Pro’s $1299* price tag is probably going to make it a pretty tough sell.

Portable displays make sense on phones, because they allow you to squeeze a screen the size of a small tablet into a device that folds up into a pocket-sized device. And they make sense for laptops with detachable keyboards, because they allow you to have a sort of dual-screen experience without the need to actually carry around a second screen.

But when it comes to portable monitors? The use case is a little less clear. Sure, a 13.3 inch screen that folds in half so that it’s the size of a paperback book could save you a little space in your bag. But if you’re already carrying a laptop in that bag, then you probably have room for a 13.3 inch portable monitor that doesn’t fold, but which does cost around 4-5 times less.

Maybe the Aura Single Flex Pro (Gen 1) would be more compelling if it was an even larger screen when unfolded: I could see folks who might want a 20+ inch monitor that folds in half to fit neatly in a bag. Or maybe if it had better specs… because aside from the fact that it folds, this thing isn’t super impressive.

It’s a 2048 x 1535 pixel display with a 3:4 aspect ratio, a 60 Hz refresh rate, 117% NTSC color gamut, and up to 300 nits brightness. It has a mini HDMI port and two USB Type-C ports. You only need a single USB-C cable to connect it to compatible PCs that can deliver power and video output through the same cable. If you’re using the HDMI port, then you’ll also need to connect a power source to one of the USB ports.

Aura’s product page confusingly refers to it as a matte IPS AMOLED display… which isn’t a thing. IPS stands for In-Plane Switching, and it refers to a type of LCD display with wide viewing angles.

The display does not have a built-in kickstand, but it comes with a magnetic portable stand that supports landscape or portrait orientation.

Aura says its foldable portable monitor measures 0.3 inches thick and weighs 1.57 pounds.

*The list price for the Aura Single Flex Pro is actually $1499, but it’s listed at $129 9 at the moment… although it’s also showing as “out of stock,” so who knows when it’ll be back and/or whether the price may change. But given that foldable display technology ain’t exactly cheap, I don’t ever expect this thing to be priced competitively with other 13 inch portable monitors. 

via NotebookCheck