Our favorite portable display gets an interesting update
Adding a second display is one of those joys that once experienced, you never go back from. Usually, most people’s second screen is a standard desktop monitor, but there’s an emerging range of portable screens that appeal to road warriors and travelers for whom a laptop on its own isn’t enough. And, now that so many of us are working from home, there’s the increasing appeal of being able to relocate your work space to a different part of the house on the fly. A regular stand-mounted monitor isn’t a good solution. They’re cumbersome to move and need mains power and the associated power brick. A dedicated portable display that’s powered by the computer it’s attached to suddenly becomes very interesting. There are several such displays, like the Asus ZenScreen MB16A, Lenovo ThinkVision M14, AOC’s 16T2 and HP’s E14 G4 – and there’s also the original espresso Display – which has just had its V2 model announced and opened for pre-order. TechRadar recently had a demo session with the espresso Display 2 – an evolution of the espresso Display we’ve looked at previously. There are three new models – 13- and 15-inch touchscreens, and a 13-inch non-touch. This is an iterative improvement on the first model, which launched in mid-2021 via a healthy $307,000 Kickstarter campaign. The Version 2 model is a little thinner (5.3mm vs 5.5mm), but is otherwise similar in appearance to its predecessor. The important improvements are internal, with upgraded hardware that’s designed to deliver better pen and touch compatibility. This improved touch support is intended to benefit Mac users mostly and addresses a key weakness of macOS overall – in a unique and proprietary way. The original V1 espresso Display operates in mouse emulation mode for touch and pen when connected to a Mac, but with the new V2 internals – and crucially – an updated version of espresso’s espressoFlow software – Mac users can potentially use the display in native touch or pen mode. While this sounds great for Mac users, it’s important to note that pen and touch functionality within actual Mac apps needs custom support from each app’s publisher. Espresso told TechRadar that it’s working with developers to achieve that, but it will be a progressive rollout staged over time, with the most popular apps supported first – assuming the various app publishers are on board and choose to implement support. Espresso explained it’s a relatively simple task for devs to add Mac pen and touch functionality, and that work is underway – though we weren’t told which specific apps or companies are onboard yet. If implemented for an app, it will run as a background process. Thankfully, Windows users already enjoy native touch support with this (and any other touch screen), and espressoFlow software isn’t specifically required for basic functionality.
