Lenovo ThinkVision M14 14-Inch Full HD Mobile IPS USB-C Monitor

Product Information

The M14 comes with a meter-long USB Type-C cable. You can connect to a laptop using either the right or left USB-C port on the panel, depending on which side of the laptop you want the display to be placed. The USB-C ports support DisplayPort over USB-C, as well as USB PD (power delivery). Scale new heights of productivity, flexibility, and style with a touch-enabled mobile monitor. The slim and light ThinkVision M14t is a 14-inch Full-HD display that provides you with an extra screen whenever you need it. All that said, it’s better to aim higher and miss than to merely offer the bare minimum, and it’s not like you can’t get charging or removable storage capability from your nearby laptop instead. Ultimately, then, there’s no real harm done to the M14’s otherwise excellent design. We haven’t even mentioned the build quality, which is much sturdier than its slimness would suggest. Applying pressure to the corners of the screen, for instance, barely flexes it at all, and both the main stand hinge and the little height-adjusting hinge are satisfyingly firm. Lenovo ThinkVision M14 review: Image quality With 10-point touch functionality, enjoy the freedom to design, animate, present, and annotate on an intuitive monitor interface. More than just a display, the M14t comes with a pressure-sensitive active pen for precise sketching and easy navigation, as well as a customised sleeve for protection and an L-shaped dongle for vertical deployment and better cable management. If you own one of the many laptops now on the market with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and you want to pair it with a portable monitor, you can't do better than the Lenovo ThinkVision M14d. It will match your notebook's screen, letting you take full advantage of the extra vertical space that the taller ratio brings. Of course, you can use the display with a 16:9 laptop as well, though you'll either get a little blank space above and below the image or a slightly mismatched (or possibly stretched) view.

Battery: These systems do not support batteries that are not genuine Lenovo-made or authorised. Systems will continue to boot, but may not charge unauthorised batteries. Lenovo has no responsibility for the performance or safety of unauthorised batteries, and provides no warranties for failures or damage arising out of their use. **Battery life is based on the MobileMark® 2014 methodology and is an estimated maximum. Actual battery life may vary based on many factors, including screen brightness, active applications, features, power management settings, battery age and conditioning, and other customer preferences. You can connect the M14d to a laptop using either the right- or left-side USB-C port, depending on which side of the laptop you want to put the display. You can even connect to an Android smartphone if it has a USB-C port. The ports support both DisplayPort over USB Alternate Mode and USB power delivery, letting you power or charge a laptop connected to the monitor with the latter plugged into a wall outlet. We wouldn’t go as far as to call it an ideal photo/video editing monitor, as sRGB gamut coverage comes in at 89.9%, which is reasonable but not outstanding. Still, this also makes for a much more vivid-looking screen than that of the I1601FWUX, which only managed 52.3%. Similarly, the M14’s peak brightness is a fairly average 311cd/m2, yet looks much better next to the I1601FWUX’s duller 223cd/m2.

Testing the Lenovo M14d: Bright, Strong Contrast, Good Color

In addition to our formal testing, I viewed a selection of film clips and photos using both a 16:9-aspect-ratio Lenovo ThinkPad T490 (using the monitor's Original AR setting) and a 16:10 HP Pavilion Aero 13. In both cases, videos were bright, with well-saturated colors, and showing very good contrast in both light and dark areas. Photos also looked bright, with natural-looking colors and excellent contrast.

The only notable weakness is here is brightness uniformity, as the bottom-right corner showed a -12.8% variance compared to the center, while the top-right corner varied by -11%. We didn’t find this particularly noticeable in normal use, though, and there are other little successes for the M14 too. Contrast is a very respectable 1,200:1, according to our colour calibrator, and the matte finish does a good job of seeing off reflections. As is common of IPS panels, the M14 also benefits from nicely wide viewing angles – very useful if you need a screen to show around in meetings. Lenovo ThinkVision M14 review: Verdict It’s also hard to worry about a 1.6in difference when the M14 is so far ahead on picture quality. This is best demonstrated by its incredible colour accuracy: we measured an average Delta E of just 1.3, on par with professional-grade desktop monitors and drastically superior to the I1601FWUX’s dreadful 6.5. The ThinkVision M14t can only connect to a computer that outputs via USB-C’s alt mode, specifically using DisplayPort over USB-C. Modern generation Lenovo ThinkPads can all do this as can laptops from many other vendors, but if you don’t have this capability, don’t buy this monitor. In the end, the M14 isn’t quite the all-supreme champion that portable monitors have been missing, but it’s definitely the one that comes closest so far. Display quality exceeds expectations, especially for colour accuracy, and the sleek design is both stylish and smart. The ThinkVision M14t’s 1920 x 1080 screen produced vibrant colors and sharp images. When I watched a trailer for Wonder Woman 1984, shades like the dark red in a carpet and the yellow sandstone in Themyscira really stood out. Fine details like the pores in Kristen Wiig’s face and the ridges in Wonder Woman’s armor were easy to identify.The actual screen component of the M14 is a 16:9, Full HD (1,920x1,080) IPS panel. Measuring 14in diagonally, it’s slightly smaller than the 15.6in I1601FWUX and ZenScreen, but there’s still sufficient space and the resolution is neither so low as to look blurry nor so high as to make any on-screen text too small. The M14d has good color gamut coverage for a portable monitor, covering 96.3% of the sRGB space in my testing (see the chromaticity chart above). That's slightly lower than the Asus Strix's 97.7% or the 97% and 97.9% of the Lenovo M14 and M14t respectively, but considerably better than the ViewSonic TD1655's measly 61.1% sRGB coverage. A note also for those who might want to use a portable monitor at home with their desktops when they aren’t traveling: Most desktops or motherboards with USB-C ports do not support alt mode (unless you happen to have a board with Thunderbolt ports). But, if you have a recent Nvidia graphics card with a USB-C VirtualLink port, that port does support alt mode. So you should be able to plug this monitor into your graphics card’s USB-C port for desktop connectivity. Just note that VirtualLink doesn’t make an appearance on Nvidia’s latest 30-series cards. Image Quality of Lenovo ThinkVision M14t This compact USB-C Hub monitor with two USB-C ports works seamlessly with not only the Lenovo Think family laptops but also with your other compatible USB-C devices, like your smartphone. The monitor offers ease of use, especially while working on the go. Connect, present, pitch, and create with conviction on the M14t—at the office or on the go. This allows for two modes of use. You can display video and other content over the USB connection from a laptop with a compatible USB-C port, and simultaneously power the M14 from the laptop through the same USB-C connection. Alternately, you can plug an optional 65-watt AC power adapter into one of the M14's USB-C ports to power the monitor; this will let you also charge the laptop when it is connected to the M14's other USB-C port.

In contrast, the HP EliteDisplay S14 fell well short of covering sRGB, with many points well within the triangle. The same was the case with the Hori Portable HD Gaming Monitor Pro. The monitor's advertised contrast ratio is 1,500:1; I measured it at 1,231:1, which is obviously less but still among the best we've seen from a mobile display. Most competitors have contrast ratios somewhere between 700:1 and 1,000:1. Those two buttons are the extent of the M14's onscreen display (OSD) controls. The HP EliteDisplay S14 has a wider selection of OSD controls, with four buttons letting you change settings such as brightness, contrast, and color mode. (Selections for the latter include Low Blue Light, Night, Reading, HP Enhance+, Multimedia, and Photo.) That said, I didn't find myself fretting over the limited controls when testing the M14. I didn’t see any ghosting so didn’t see the need to turn up Over Drive, which increases the screen’s response time. Of the different color modes, I found sRGB the most accurate and pleasant to look at. Lenovo states that the M14 covers 72 percent of the NTSC color space. The NTSC space was designed for analog TV and has largely been superseded by digital color spaces, but it is still often used as a comparison, and 72 percent NTSC is approximately 100 percent of the sRGB space. In testing, the M14 filled 97 percent of the gamut. In the chromaticity chart below, the area within the triangle represents the sRGB color space, and my data points (the circles) are for the most part evenly placed around it, with the purple and red points indicating a slight expansion of the gamut in those areas.The big takeaway in this testing? Even though it's meant as a second display, Lenovo did not skimp in the M14's brightness and color fidelity in designing it. The compact, lightweight Lenovo ThinkVision M14 is a winning choice as a mobile monitor for business or personal use. It is well equipped to provide you with a second screen while traveling, and bright and glare-free enough for passable viewing in a variety of challenging lighting environments. This USB-C-only display can be powered from your laptop over the same cable from which it's receiving data or video; additionally, its "power pass-through" design lets you run the M14 and charge your laptop with a single AC adapter.