New Toy: Nanovision Mimo

So, I just picked up a USB-driven mini-monitor, which can be had direct from Mimo Monitors or from The Gadgeteers. It’s a little 7“ monitor which does 800 x 480, and the cool thing about it is that you don’t need a video card to drive it—it gets both power and video direct over USB, using DisplayLink technology. And, of course, it’s small enough to be portable, so it can be thrown in a suitcase easily and then hooked up to a laptop with no trouble, which is the main thing I bought it for. I really like having a lot of display space and working on a laptop always feels like looking through a keyhole; this should help with that.

So far, it’s very cool. The monitor can be used in either portrait or landscape, and it’s a great compact size for little windows that you need, but don’t really need, and that you don’t want to have covering or underneath a bunch of other things. Chat client windows, browser download windows, tool palettes, etc. The Mac driver installed without a hitch and everything just worked. Even the USB cable is cool; it’s a pass-through cable which will take another USB device so it effectively doesn’t take up a port when plugged in.

So far the only drawback is that 800×480 on a 7” screen means really high pixel density, which means tiny, tiny text. But since I don’t really intend to do any serious reading on it, I’m not too worried.

Not super-cheap, no—the entry-level UM-710 is $130—and of course for that kind of money you can buy a 19“ real monitor. But I can’t put that in my suitcase, and when I’m at home I’d need an additional video card to run it with my already two-monitor desktop (which doesn’t have space for another 22” monitor anyway). So now I’m running three monitors at home, and I’ll be able to run two when I’m on the road.

Definitely a cool new toy.