With our workplaces ever more mobile, and our homes increasingly cramped thanks to their double duty as offices as well as living spaces, finding the perfect gear to get work done on the go or at home has become more important than ever. Choosing the best portable monitor for Mac is a key purchase for the nomadic Apple fan.

Looking to tempt you from your cash and take pride of place on your desk or at the coffee shop is the Hongo 2K 16-inch Portable Monitor. Slim, sharp, and fast, it’s a great choice for those who need flexible, extra screen real estate — and it won’t break the bank, either.

(Image credit: Gerald Lynch / Future)

Hongo 2K 16-inch Portable Monitor: Price and Availability

The Hongo 2K 16-inch Portable Monitor is available now and usually sells for $199 — though it has been seen on sale cheaper than that, sometimes by as much as $50. Even at full price, this is a great value buy, thanks to its reasonably high-resolution panel, fast refresh rate, and portable design.

Today's best HONGO 2K 16" Portable Monitor deals

Hongo 2K 16-inch Portable Monitor: What I Loved

Using an IPS screen, the Hongo 2K 16-inch Portable Monitor hooks up to your device of choice over either one of two USB-C ports or (full-size) HDMI. It outputs at a max resolution of 2560 x 1600, with a refresh rate of 120Hz, complete with FreeSync support. That’s not quite up to the sharpness of modern Macs, but good for the price — and the 120Hz refresh rate option with FreeSync frame pacing will be excellent for gamers looking to hook up, say, an Xbox Series X to the display.

(Image credit: Gerald Lynch / Future)

It’s a nice display to look at, too. Opinions on its matte finish will vary based on taste (I’m all for it), and the viewing angle (a quoted 178 degrees) is wide enough to place on a desk flexibly without fear of it appearing washed out in different positions. As such, it’ll happily work in vertical orientation with a Mac. Its 1200:1 contrast ratio isn’t OLED-deep, but that’s not the point here — it’s certainly rich enough for working with and catching up on your YouTube subscriptions.

(Image credit: Gerald Lynch / Future)

The right-hand side of the display houses the HDMI and two USB-C ports, plus a headphone jack, while the left side has a micro USB port for providing power, along with a (somewhat confusing) row of five buttons for navigating the onscreen display. For the most part, it’s a plug-and-play experience — so long as your device can send 20W of power to the display (which a single power-and-video-providing USB-C connection can do from even a lowly MacBook Air), just one cable is all you need to get up and running. You won’t even need to set the input source — the monitor can intelligently activate it for you, based on what’s sending a video feed. If you’ve got two active sources, you’ll need to flick between them though, of course.