The Espresso Pro portable monitor is a revolution for remote work

Most gadgets are repetitive in the value they bring to our lives. The 15.6-inch Espresso Pro Portable Monitor is different, having completely changed the way we work remotely over the last month of testing.

See, I spend a lot of time working from my van, which makes me miss my dual-monitor setup at home—it’s hard to adapt to a single 14-inch laptop display after regularly working on a pair of 27-inch monitors. The Espresso allows me to set up in tight spaces with a display that’s thinner and lighter than the Mac or Windows laptop it’s built into. And it connects with a single USB-C cable.

I’m writing this from my van’s “office,” where Espresso’s 4K (3840 x 2160) LCD touchscreen with 1.07 billion colors (100 percent Adobe RGB) hovers over my MacBook Pro with photo processing on one display while I type these words on the other. At night, I can swap the MacBook for my iPhone 15 Pro (or Android phone) to create a relatively large, sharing screen for watching movies in bed.

At £699 / €799 it’s not cheap, but after my laptop and StarLink Mini internet connection, the Espresso Pro is the gadget I rely on most to get myself working remotely.

But then again, I don’t own a member.

The Espresso Pro 15 is surprisingly light for its size. It measures 360 x 225 x 9 mm and weighs 800 grams. . After all, it has survived weeks of abuse including tipping over the screen, being dropped on carpeted floors, and driving on gravel roads for hours on end in its case.

As a companion device, it draws 13 watts at its maximum brightness of 550 nits, or around 9 watts when dimmed to 300 nits. It’s nothing compared to a traditional monitor, but it’s enough to cut my laptop’s battery life almost in half. Fortunately, the Espresso Pro has two USB-C ports that support pass-through charging, so running a second USB-C cable from Apple’s wall charger to the monitor also charged my MacBook’s battery.

The Espresso Pro comes with a solid little Stand+ mount that’s tall enough to lift the monitor above an open laptop, yet is very small. The versatile little stand almost justifies the price premium paid for the Espresso Monitor. It attaches magnetically and quite securely to the Espresso Pro. This is fine for most desks, but with two people and a dog moving around inside my van, I needed a solution that wouldn’t accidentally knock over a desk. So, I had to get creative.

I bought this magnetic table mount from Coxio for iPads. But since its magnets were mistaken for the Espresso Pro, I ended up gluing the Espresso’s $49 VESA adapter to the iPad mounting plate. It’s a bit unsightly, but it allows me to securely mount and view the display from a variety of angles inside and outside of my van. It’s also stable enough to attach to a table while driving.

I also installed the ExpressFlow app on my Mac to make setup a bit easier. It helps with window snapping and management on Mac and Windows, but is not required.

I don’t find the Espresso Pro’s touchscreen capabilities particularly useful with macOS. In fact, the touchscreen proved more annoying than helpful when handling the display. Then again, I haven’t tested this with Espresso’s pen accessories.

Using the Espresso Pro with my iPhone was great for watching Netflix, Plex, and YouTube videos on a larger display, but it has some limitations.

First, my iPhone 15 Pro is not powerful enough to connect the Espresso Pro display without another USB-C cable for power. Espresso also doesn’t support vertical rotation with my phone, so it’s not great for watching social videos on TikTok or Instagram. I also wish the Espresso Pro’s two downward-firing speakers were louder to maximize joint viewing enjoyment, and I found apps like Dozen—which are usually small, anyway—refuse to stream NFL games when connected. On-screen controls for brightness, contrast, and volume are tanky, requiring multiple frustrating swipes to activate.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the 15.6-inch Espresso Pro’s ability to enhance my laptop’s tiny display. Having a second screen that I can literally set up anywhere is a game changer for my type of remote work.

Here’s the rub: Why buy a 15.6-inch Espresso Pro when, for $100, you can own a new $799 13-inch iPad Air—a price that drops to about $639 if you’re willing to stick with Apple’s refurbished model? You give up a smaller screen but get a much more capable device that can be used as a second monitor for Windows PCs and older Macs with an Apple CDiCar, or Duet Display or Luna Display.

On the other hand, it’s nice to have a purpose-built device that does one job well without any distractions. For example, I can read e-books on my iPhone, but it’s a much better experience on the Kindle. Espresso also sells the 15.6-inch display for just $299 if you can live with a dimmer 1080p monitor, but at $699 it’s asking that a similarly specced 4K display can be had for $250 or less.

Using the Espresso Monitor inside my small rolling office for the past three weeks has been transformative, improving not only my own workflow but my wife’s as well. Every morning, we make our case about which one needs to be used the most, leaving one of us sad and a clear winner: the Espresso Pro 15.

Photography by Thomas Ricker/The Verge