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Reviewing the ViewSonic TD1655 portable monitor for van life

If you are a digital nomad working remotely whilst on the road, you may have considered purchasing a portable monitor. Having two screens is really useful, providing more visibility and making multi-tasking much easier! ViewSonic recently sent us their TD1655 touch screen portable monitor, and we’ve spent the past couple of months testing it out.

The ViewSonic TD1655 is the perfect second monitor for van life

Overview

The ViewSonic TD1655 is a 16″ touch screen portable monitor. You can connect to a laptop or mobile with a single cable. The screen has a full HD 16:9 1080p display, and a tilt stand built into the back of the screen. As a result, you can use it at up to a 60 degree angle, and it can be used in a horizontal or vertical layout. It comes with a protective magnetic cover that can act as an anti-slip mat when you’re using the screen. The unit is physically 36x22cm in size and weighs less than 1kg. This makes it super compact and perfect for van life!

Connectivity

You can connect your laptop, mobile or tablet to the ViewSonic TD1655 via a USB-C port or mini HDMI cable. The screen can be powered by connecting a power cable to one of the USB-C ports. Alternatively, you can simply power the screen via the device it’s connected to. When we used the screen plugged into Charlie’s MacBook Pro, the laptop battery lasted for around 2 hours (vs. 4-5 hours without the screen connected). If your laptop is plugged in, the charger can power both the screen and the laptop.

Touch screen

The ViewSonic TD1655 features a 10-point capacitive touch screen that can be used with your finger, or the ViewSonic stylus supplied with the screen. As neither of us have a touch screen laptop, we found this feature to be incredibly useful, especially for Dale when working on design projects.

Audio

The screen has an audio out port to plug in a headphone jack, or you can rely on its two built in speakers. These are decent quality for a portable screen. As many portable monitors don’t include their own speakers, we thought this was a nice feature.

We often use our laptops with headphones plugged in. When playing a video on the screen, the audio started to play out of the screen speakers rather than from the headphones plugged into the laptop. However, it was easy to change the settings on the laptop to switch the audio back to to the headphones rather than the screen speaker.

Our thoughts

We are really impressed by the ViewSonic TD1655. In April, we are moving into our van full time and will be working remotely on the road. Because of this, a second monitor was an essential for us. The ViewSonic TD1655 will be perfect as it is very easy to connect to a laptop just using a single cable. We also love the built in stand, making it easy to tilt the screen to a useful angle. The touch screen functionality of the TD1655 was one of our favourite features, making it easy to navigate on the screen.

We were able to comfortably fit a laptop and the ViewSonic TD1655 onto our slide out table, making a great little remote working setup. Now we’ll just have to argue over who gets to use it!

Where to buy the ViewSonic TD1655

You can buy the ViewSonic TD1655 on Amazon. If you use the link below we will get a small affiliate commission if you make a purchase:

4 Comments


  1. Hi. Hope you are doing well and keeping safe. I bought the display. But I cannot seem to connect my MacBook Pro 2019 with the display by USB C without having to plug the display to the power supply at the same time. It says no signal and turns off automatically. I tried both the inbox cables and the MacBook cables. Any tips?

    1. Avatar photo

      That’s strange! I’ve been connecting to my Macbook Air using a USB C cable. It should be able to run off the power from the laptop. Perhaps you need to charge the screen before the first time you use it? I’m not sure what else to suggest, sorry!

  2. Hi. I have sone 4.5ah usb charging port for power in my van. Could I power this or similar monitors using that charging port ?
    Thank you

    1. Avatar photo

      Hi Jacob, you would need to check the charging current of the screen, you might be able to find this on ViewSonic’s website. As long as it’s under 4.5A then you should be able to charge it from your charging point. Thanks

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