I caved and bought an $80 portable monitor. Now I love working remotely

I’ve been working exclusively from home for well over a decade, so as you can imagine I’ve grown quite comfortable in my cozy home office with a pair of monitors, my trusty MX keyboard, and lots of fresh coffee. I also like working from other places, including restaurants, cafés, and hotels—except that comes with a huge downside.

I hate working on my laptop while on the go because one screen just isn’t enough for me anymore. It cripples my productivity and gets in the way of my developed-over-the-decades writing process. I need multiple displays and split screen for all my apps, which is fine when I’m at home but not so fine when I’m restricted to a single laptop screen.

Fortunately, I no longer have to deal with that ever since I picked up the Arzopa S1 Table portable monitor! Oh, I couldn’t be happier.

Gabriela Vatu

This portable monitor is a 15.6-inch IPS display with a 1080p resolution and 60Hz refresh rate. It’s nothing to write home about spec-wise—certainly not as fancy as a 4K screen or OLED panel—but it’s exactly what I need without going overboard. It’s not like I need a second monitor that’s larger than my HP ProBook 450 G9 laptop, especially when I’m out and about. No, the Arzopa S1 Table was the perfect choice.

Get this portable monitor now

Arzopa S1 Table

I love that it has two standard USB-C ports and a Mini HDMI option, but my laptop complicates things because it only has one USB-C port (that’s usually taken by something else) and a full-sized HDMI port. Thankfully, Arzopa thought ahead and packed three cables with this monitor: a USB-C-to-USB-C, a USB-C-to-USB-A, and an HDMI-to-Mini-HDMI. That covers pretty much all combos, letting me keep my laptop plugged in to charge via USB-C while connected to video via HDMI-to-Mini-HDMI. And ta daaaa! I now have two screen wherever I go.

Gabriela Vatu

I also love that this portable monitor comes with its own smart cover, so I can comfortably slip it into my bag right next to my laptop without worrying about it getting scratched. With it only weighing 1.7 pounds, it doesn’t add a lot of extra heft. The cover doubles as a stand with different viewing angle options, so I can prop it slightly when I’m reading PDFs or tent it straight up when streaming YouTube.

Oh, and it also works with my smartphone! I have a Samsung Galaxy S24+ that connects to the monitor and triggers Samsung DeX, which is basically a tablet PC with my smartphone as a touchpad for controlling the on-screen mouse cursor. It’s brilliant for times when I wish my phone had a bigger screen yet I don’t need a keyboard (so no laptop needed). For amusement’s sake, I also tried to connect the screen to an iPhone, but it just mirrored whatever was playing on there. Still, not bad.

The Arzopa S1 Table launched at $109.99 but has been hovering around $80 lately. If you wait for a big sales event, you might even be able to catch it as low as $65. But it’s so darn useful that if I had to do it over, I’d rather get it now than wait a few months to save a measly $15 or $20. Remote working is better with a portable monitor, period.