Ananta USB-C portable display review: work from home battle station

Working from home (which many of us have been forced to do in the past few months, whether we like it or not) can be more productive than being in an office, provided you have a comfortable and functional place to work within your home. Unfortunately, for many of those who have been suddenly thrown into this situation, the best space to work is on a small laptop on the dining room table.

If you’re used to working at a desk with a large monitor, having to do the same job on a laptop at a table can be frustrating. And since you also need to use this space for other activities when you’re not working, it might not be feasible to set up a traditional monitor or desktop computer there.

A USB-C powered portable monitor might be the right thing to upgrade your laptop-only dining workstation. You can set it up in seconds, connect to your computer with a single cable, and when the day is over, you can shut it down as fast as you shut down your laptop, allowing you to reclaim space for other uses.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been testing the Ananta, a 17.3-inch 1080p touchscreen portable monitor. It’s plug-and-play with most modern laptops – just connect the included USB-C cable to your laptop and display; Your computer should immediately recognize the monitor and turn it on. It then provides you with a second expansive screen that is probably larger than the screen inside your laptop.

The Ananta can also be used as a display for many other devices, including a Nintendo Switch, a Raspberry Pi, a Blu-ray player, or even a desktop computer, although you’ll need to connect some of them with HDMI. If you have a recent Huawei or Samsung phone, you can use it to access their respective desktop modes. The Ananta comes with a magnetic case that acts as a stand, weighs around 2.4 pounds and is less than six millimeters thick at its thinnest point. It is almost as portable as a 17.3-inch screen.

When connected to a Surface Laptop 3, Ananta’s big screen completely changed my workflow, allowing me to extend my windows through much more screen space than before. Instead of going from one virtual desktop to another, I was able to have my chat windows and browser visible all the time. During Apple’s recent WWDC opening speech, I was able to watch the live stream on Ananta while collaborating with my teammates on the main screen of Laptop 3.

Photograph by Dan Seifert / The Verge

There are some consequences of using a large, bright USB-C display with your laptop. The obvious one is battery life: Ananta caused my laptop’s battery to drain about twice as much as normal. Fortunately, there are actually two USB-C ports (plus HDMI, a USB-A port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack) on the Ananta, allowing you to use transfer charging. Plug a powerful enough charger into one port and it will power both the secondary display and your laptop. I was able to use a 45 watt charger to power both the screen and my laptop, but it would not work with a 60 or 100 watt power bank, so its mileage could vary.

The other problem is the audio: the Ananta has two speakers on the back, but they sound pretty terrible. It is better to use the native speakers of your laptop for sound.

Ananta’s touch functionality is what sets it apart from the many other available USB-C displays, and it even comes with a pressure-sensitive stylus for scribbling or writing on the screen. (It is also compatible with Microsoft’s Surface Pen.) The touch functionality meant you could touch something on the screen instead of trying to move your mouse cursor over the miles of viewing space you now had. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the touch function to work with a Mac or the Switch.

As for the quality of the screen itself, the panel becomes surprisingly bright. 1080p resolution may seem low on paper, but it wasn’t a problem in practice. Although I don’t have a calibration device on hand to test it, the color rendering isn’t as good as the Surface screen for my eyes. Still, it’s contrasting and vibrant for watching videos and playing games. I just wouldn’t use it for critical color creative work. Its 60Hz refresh rate won’t be ideal for intense PC gaming, but it’s fine for console gaming and any productivity job. There are some limited screen controls available through an on-screen menu, and the Ananta comes with an IR remote that allows you to change the brightness or access that setting panel.

Finally, there is a price. Ananta is currently available through a Kickstarter campaign, with promised deliveries for September this year. At the time of writing this article, the lowest price you can get the display for is $ 359, and it is expected to sell for $ 599 when it reaches general availability. If you go for the Kickstarter deal, the price is reasonable for how big, versatile and well Ananta works. But at a full price, it can cost almost as much as the laptop you’re plugging it into, at which point you should be wondering if it’s worth it.

Either way, Ananta resolves a pain point because of the unique circumstances many of us are in.

Photograph by Dan Seifert / The Verge