Espresso Displays 15 Pro review: 4King brilliant

It struck me this week, as I was pulling together my thoughts for my review of the Espresso Displays 15 Pro portable monitor, that the entire monitor category is on the precipice of change.

The quality of screen on offer from espresso – not just the 15 Pro, but also the 15 Touch and 15-inch base model – means that buying a screen that needs to effectively stand on your desk forever no longer makes sense.

Sure, there will be outliers, particularly if you spend a lot of time gaming and need faster refresh rates and response times. Larger screens are probably never going to be portable either.

But for most use cases, the espresso offering is more than enough for some additional screen real estate to help boost your productivity. Plus, its portability means you can enjoy that productivity anywhere.

The 15 Pro takes that up a notch, delivering a brilliant experience for those that need even more from their display, like 4K resolution, accurate colour reproduction and a brighter screen.

What does the 15 Pro offer?

When it boils down to it, the espresso displays 15 Pro is a simple product. It’s a 15.6-inch 4K monitor, that’s thin enough and lightweight enough you can pack it in your carry on luggage to use on a plane.

The 15 Pro measures in at 360 × 225 × 9 mm, and weighing in at about 800 grams. Made with a durable, lightweight aluminium chassis, the Pro model comes in a stylish black colour that helps it stand apart from the other 15-inch models in the lineup.

The other big difference between this and espresso’s previous 15-inchers is the specs. This model is designed for professionals.

You get the 4K (3840 × 2160) resolution, operating at 60Hz, obviously. But you also get a huge 550 nits of peak brightness, plus a 1,500:1 contrast ratio and a 9ms response time.

The 15 Pro supports 100% Adobe RGB, can produce 1.07 billion colours and supports 10-bit colour. It comes colour-calibrated out of the factory, making it a great option for anyone who edits video or photographs professionally.

Like the 15 Touch, the 15 Pro is a touch panel, allowing users to jot, sketch, draw and create directly on the screen. As far as I know, espresso is still one of the only ways to add a touch interface to a Mac, and while I don’t love using that for navigation, for creation it’s pretty cool.

It has an integrated gyroscope so you can have it automatically rotate depending on how you have the screen set up, and built-in speakers, in case you needed another place to play back your laptop’s audio.

In the box, you get the monitor and espresso’s Stand+, which first appeared with the 15-inch model last year. It’s still a hero product that lets you sit the monitor directly above your laptop’s screen for easy multiscreen productivity, but can also be used to turn the display into a drawing tablet.

But despite all those impressive specs, the one that still blows me away is the fact it’s powered by a single USB-C cable. Seriously, all you need to get the monitor to work is plug it in via USB-C to your laptop.

It does draw a bit more power than the Display 15, which means if you want to use it with a lower-powered device like a Nintendo Switch or a smartphone like the Galaxy Z Fold7, you’ll need to plug in an additional power source.

What does the 15 Pro do well?

Espresso’s entire business is built around the convenience of portability. Being able to pack your monitor in your bag alongside your laptop for multiscreen productivity is honestly brilliant.

The 15 Pro takes it up a notch by taking the performance up a notch. 4K images are just so much clearer than those on a 1080p display, particularly at the distance you’ll look at the screen.

Plus, the boost to 550 nits is a game changer. It means you can literally take this to work anywhere. I packed the 15 Pro in my bag, walked into the local Botanic Gardens and worked from a picnic table in full sun. While the screen was fairly reflective, I could still easily make out what it was showing me.

It was also brighter than the MacBook Air M4 that was powering it, which tops out at 500 nits.

The touchscreen works well, though is much better if you use the espresso Pen, which is an optional extra. If you’re buying the 15 Pro for its touchscreen capabilities, you are going to want to buy that pen, though – it makes quite a big difference.

While the monitor is simply plug and play, there is some software – espressoFlow – which makes managing your monitor a bit easier. It lets you set the screen’s position in relation to your laptop, so your mouse cursor will effortlessly glide from one to the other.

You can create different workspaces through the espressoFlow app, making it easier to separate business and pleasure, and it lets you adjust brightness, contrast and volume as well. It’s fairly polished, and makes using the espresso monitor easy.

Now, I’m going to be honest here and say that most of these specs are probably overkill for my needs. I don’t need 100% accurate colour reproduction to write product reviews.

But the performance is really, really good.

What could the 15 Pro improve?

While I can admit that I don’t really need a touchscreen for my particular working setup, I can appreciate that some people do need that functionality. Same with the colour accuracy and even the resolution.

But I can’t understand how anyone requires speakers in their portable monitor. The speakers aren’t great – I prefer the sound from the MacBook Air by a lot if I can’t use headphones – and I’m sure that the screen would be lighter and even more compact if they were taken out.

The other flag is probably just a software bug, but was originally flagged by Pickr’s Leigh Stark in his review. He couldn’t manage to get the on-screen controls for brightness, volume, and contrast to work.

We had a bit of back and forth, and it seems to me that when the monitor is physically placed in any orientation apart from the standard way, the on-screen control of swiping two fingers up from the bottom of the screen doesn’t work.

It doesn’t matter what way the content on the screen is being displayed, either, it’s how the monitor is physically placed.

I wouldn’t class this as a major dealbreaker, though.

Verdict

While testing this monitor, I spent time dual-screen working from a picnic table in the Botanic Gardens, my home office desk, my lounge (when I felt lazy), and a German pub in the Sydney CBD (among a few other places).

Working from a laptop makes working from anywhere possible. But espresso’s brand of portable monitors makes real productivity possible from anywhere.

I honestly don’t think I would consider buying a static monitor for work when you can get something like this.

That said, the 15 Pro is pricey for its size. You can buy screens double the size for half the price if you forgo the touchscreen capabilities and portability.

For my needs, the 15 Pro is overkill. But if you spend a lot of time editing photos or video and require a bright screen with accurate colour reproduction you can work on anywhere, this is the product for you.