ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR portable monitor: an additional screen for your laptop

Working on a laptop without an additional screen is not very convenient, but what if you have to work in different places where you don’t always have access to a regular desktop monitor? For this case, there are special portable monitors that are lightweight and compact, which you can easily take with you on the road. For example, the 16-inch ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR, which weighs less than 800 g.

ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR specifications

Package contents

In addition to the monitor itself, the box also contains a carrying case (and a separate pouch for the detachable leg), a USB Type-C cable, and technical documentation.

The case is fabric and is thick and soft enough to protect your monitor on the go.

Design

In terms of shape and size, the ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR is very similar to a mid-sized ultrabook: it is almost the same thin “plate” (a little more than 1 cm thick) made of black matte plastic.

The bezel around the screen is embossed, 7.5 mm wide on the sides and top and 23 mm wide on the bottom. Below the screen, on a panel with a surface imitating brushed metal, there are control buttons on the left and a power button with an operation indicator on the right.

The only connector that ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR is equipped with is USB Type-C with support for DP Alt mode: the monitor receives both video signal and power through it. The monitor does not have speakers.

The rear panel has a 1/4″ tripod socket in the center, which can be used to attach either the supplied leg or any other mount. The leg can not only change the angle of the screen, but also rotate 360°, so you can use the monitor in both landscape and portrait modes, and even hang it on the wall.

Menu

The monitor is controlled by two hardware buttons in the lower left corner. Pressing either of them opens a “quick” menu with a hot key (the user can assign a function to it to his liking) and launches the main menu.

In it, one key works as a confirmation of the selection, and the second key moves down the list. To be honest, this is frankly not enough for comfortable menu navigation, and additional “up” and “back” buttons are often sorely missed.

The menu structure is typical for ASUS desktop monitors. The first item in it is a set of Splendid video modes, followed by settings for reducing the proportion of blue in the backlight. The Color section contains traditional image settings such as brightness, contrast, color temperature, etc.

In the next item, Image, you can find other image settings, such as dynamic contrast, clarity, overdrive, and screen proportions. System Setup contains all the system settings, Shortcut allows you to assign your own function to a shortcut key, and MyFavorite allows you to create a template with the changes you’ve made.

In addition to the on-screen menu, you can also customize the display settings using the DisplayWidget Center utility.

Image quality

The ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR uses a 16-inch IPS panel (15.6″ visible area) with an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. The pixel density is just over 141 PPI, and the dot size is 0.18 mm.

This is a fairly high density (for comparison, a 27-inch 1440p monitor has a PPI below 109 PPI), but Full HD may not be enough for laptop users accustomed to higher resolutions on this diagonal.

The screen refresh rate is standard, 60 Hz. The brightness is regulated by changing the current without the use of PWM, which prevents screen flickering and provides comfortable viewing even during prolonged use.

The monitor has a standard matte screen finish: it is almost completely free of spurious reflections on a dark background, regardless of the angle of view. The crystalline effect is moderate, and you can see the typical pattern of the reflection-diffusing layer only in a macro photo.

Black uniformity is expectedly mediocre, with light spots along the edges of the screen on a black background in a dark room.

The glow effect is relatively strong even by the standards of IPS monitors: when viewed from the side and from above, dark areas of the image acquire a noticeable brownish tint.

The viewing angles are traditional for IPS: when viewed from the side, the brightness and contrast are noticeably reduced. Compared to desktop monitors, this decrease is somewhat stronger, but not essential. With a horizontal deviation, the image becomes warmer, but there is no change in color temperature vertically.

The Professional section of the OSD menu offers various video modes for typical desktop monitor tasks: Standard, sRGB, Game, etc. When you turn it on for the first time or after a factory reset, the monitor offers to use Eco mode, and if you refuse, it switches to Scenery. Let’s start with it.

The color gamut is frankly small: 70% sRGB (52% Adobe RGB, 52% DCI-P3), which makes the colors rather pale.

The brightness is adjustable in the range of 16-260 cd/m², the maximum static contrast ratio is 980:1 – overall, these are good results and slightly higher than officially stated. We should also note the very low minimum brightness – this value will allow you to work comfortably with this monitor even in complete darkness.

In the ASUS ZenScreen MB166CR, you can choose a color temperature from three templates or make your own adjustments in the User Mode item. It should be noted that all the options offer an inflated temperature value compared to the standard (6500K). The Warm (7100K) option is the closest to it – the image also has a cool tint, but it’s only slightly.

There is no gamma adjustment in the settings, the value set by the manufacturer is slightly overestimated, up to 2.3, which makes the image a little richer, with deeper shadows. However, the difference from the standard 2.2 is small, and given the not-so-high contrast, this should not be considered a serious flaw.

The color temperature uniformity is mediocre: the most accurate correspondence is observed in the center of the screen, the largest difference is in the lower left corner; the difference between them is ΔE = 6.0.

But the uniformity of the white field is much better, especially considering the class of the monitor: the brightest area is the upper part of the screen, and the darkest is the lower part. The difference in brightness at its maximum value is 12%, which is very good even for mass desktop monitors.

Unfortunately, the color reproduction accuracy is frankly mediocre: the average ΔE value is almost 4, and for some colors it even exceeds 8. As a reminder, it is believed that an average user can notice the difference between the reference color and the one displayed by the monitor if this parameter exceeds 3.

Therefore, we would advise you to switch from the initial Scenery mode to Standard, in which the color accuracy is much better: the average ΔE value is only slightly higher than one, and the maximum value is below 5 (if you do not take into account the color with the worst result, which is an error in the test colorimeter). Also, in this mode, the gamma value is exactly 2.2, and the rest of the parameters are very close to Scenery.

The sRGB mode differs minimally from the Standard mode, but unlike the Standard mode, it has absolutely no manual adjustments, so since sRGB does not offer better results in terms of color gamut or color accuracy, we would recommend using Standard as the main video mode.

The other modes in the Splendid menu differ mainly in the initial settings for gamma, brightness, color temperature, sharpness, blue ratio, etc. You can visually compare them in the following gallery.

Splendid = Standard, sRGB, Scenery, Theater, Game, Night View, Reading, Dark Room: