Mimo UM-710S - USB LCD Mini Monitor

Gear: Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421, Toshiba 14" Monitor, AOC E1649FWU 16", MIMO UM-710S.

The Mimo UM-710S is the first monitor that I will cover. It's a very neat and small external monitor powered by a single USB cable. Sometimes you just need a secondary monitor and the Mimo is a neat one. Obviously it has it's limitations, but it has it's positives.


Box Contents:
Mimo UM-710S
USB cable (about 60 inches long)
CD with Drivers

Installation
Make sure that you install the driver from the CD before plugging in the Mimo. The drivers are from Display Link and previously I have had issues with it when I plug the monitor before installing drivers first. (Warpia SWP100, SWP220 use Display Link drivers)

If for some reason you cannot use a CD to install the drivers you can download them at the Display Link drivers website.

Screen Size + Weight
With a screen of 7 inches the Mimo is very portable. Since it has a small form factor it's also very light and can be packed easily.

Case/Stand
The case when closed will protect the screen and functions very well as a stand. The stand allows you to rotate from landscape to portrait modes, which may be useful to some people. The rotation of the resolution doesn't happen automatically so you will have to change that in Windows.

Resolution
At 800x480 the resolution may not be enough for most tasks. Due to the screen resolution it may limit what you can do with it. I did not find it useful for browsing the internet, but I did find it to be useful playing movies, music, and previewing images.

Colors
The box specifications say that it has 262 thousand colors, and I believe them. Most modern laptops have screens with millions of colors. Since the Mimo has a smaller range of colors you will notice differences (especially in gradients).

Brightness
The screen brightness is stated to be at 350 CD/m with a contrast ratio of 400:1. This is not bad. The screen seems even brighter than my laptop's screen (a bit sad)

Buttons
There are three buttons on this system. The first one is power on/off which works well. There's also an indicator LED light which is completely useless and may be annoying. The second and third ones are brightness up/down, which do not seem to work that well (at least the different levels are not noticeable).

Text
Previously I have tested Display Link technology with Warpia devices and it wasn't quite great. The Mimo UM-710S does a very good job at keeping text crisp and sharp.

Price
At $129 on Amazon this is not a cheap screen. You can buy wall powered monitors for that amount of money and they would give you a bigger screen. The price of the Mimo UM-710S could and should be a lot lower.

Usability
Don't expect to use the Mimo monitor for professional image/video editing, the colors will be a bit misleading. What you can use the Mimo for is for secondary tasks such as playing videos in the background, widgets/gadgets, previewing images, running iTunes or Media Player, and so on. Basically to do things in the background that now will not get in the way of your main computer screen.

Overall
I think it has it's pros and cons. For a small screen that is only powered via a single USB port I think it does a fine job and is a neat addition to a laptop. Obviously it has it's limitations, but I think it's a neat gadget. The price does definitely make this a hard thing to buy, and so I wouldn't recommend it to most people.

Other
There are other models of the Mimo monitors, the UM-710S is one of their first monitors.


Images

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