Black Friday absolutely ruined me.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great fun getting to share deals on products I really believe in with you fine folks. For my bank balance on the other hand, though? Not so much. I bought waaaaaay too much tech during the sales event of the year.
I splurged on the astonishingly immersive Samsung Odyssey OLED G9, mainly because I got an unbelievable discount on the super ultrawide gaming monitor through a relatively unknown U.K. retailer. I was then forced to buy a new PS5 because the disc drive on my old one broke and I couldn’t find a repair shop remotely close to my hometown of Edinburgh in bonnie Scotland that was willing to fix it. Oh, then the additional NvMe drive I’d installed in my console also decided to go kaput, so I ended up spending about £140 (roughly $175) on a 2TB WD_BLACK SN850X Gaming SSD. So yeah, what a fun few days for my battered wallet.
And then there was the product that this article is actually about. An absolutely brilliant OLED portable monitor I bought on a pure whim late on a Friday night because payday was juuuust about close enough to justify another unnecessary purchase. As it turns out, though, it’s become absolutely necessary to my gaming habits over these past couple of weeks.
Right now, the Asus ZenScreen OLED 13.3-inch 1080p Portable USB Monitor is on sale for $289 at Amazon. That’s a juicy saving of $60, considering this awesome display normally retails at $349.
And what a display it is. This 1080p (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) OLED beauty is a sensational screen that supports generous connectivity options (a Mini-HDMI port combines with a trio of USB Type-C connections), a classy leather smart case that allows you to pivot it at various viewing angles and it covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut to boot.
At this point you’re probably wondering what devices I’ve been pairing the Asus ZenScreen OLED with, right? The subsequent answer is probably gonna sound kinda silly. I’ve been using it with two gadgets that already sport immaculate OLED displays. Namely the Nintendo Switch OLED and recently released Steam Deck OLED.
Connecting two of the best gaming handhelds that are blessed with impeccable black levels to a slightly larger OLED screen probably sounds like the definition of “hat on a hat” territory. Yet for me, the experience of pairing my two favorite gaming devices of the moment with this exceptional portable monitor has been transformative.
Thanks to an awesome third-party Switch dock and an equally great Deck dock from Baseus (damn, I never feel right typing those two words together), hooking my handhelds up to the ZenScreen with a Mini-HDMI cable has been a breeze.
The big advantage when it comes to playing some of the best Switch games on Asus’ display comes down to resolution and screen size. Playing some of my favorite Nintendo titles in Docked mode on a razor sharp 1080p monitor is just a whole lot more flattering to the likes of Metroid Dread, Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom than experiencing these two Big N classics on a large TV.
At 13.3 inches, it’s far easier to pick out small details on the ZenScreen than it is on Nintendo’s little 7-inch panel. At the same time, the ZenScreen’s roughly iPad Pro-sized display does a far better job of hiding smudgy textures and in-game jaggies than playing Switch games on a 55-inch television. For me, it’s the absolutely perfect screen size to play Switch games on.
Screen dream
As for Steam Deck OLED, the ZenScreen proves an equally good dance partner for Valve’s refreshed handheld PC. The biggest selling point of hooking up the new model to Asus' OLED HDR display? You can bump up the standard 720p resolution of the Deck’s screen — splitting hairs, it’s actually slightly north of that pixel count at 1,280 x 800 owing to the device’s 16:10 aspect ratio — up to the ZenScreen's max output of 1080p/60Hz.
And let me tell you, playing classics like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Batman: Arkham Knight, Max Payne 3 and the peerlessly terrifying Alien Isolation on the ZenScreen at this higher resolution is a joy. As wonderful as the Deck OLED’s screen is (and hoo-boy is it ever), the increased clarity of 1080p just makes these titles pop more. Thanks to them being older games, they also have no problem hitting 60 fps with a few small settings tweaks.
As someone who is privileged enough to own both the OG Steam Deck and its updated OLED model, the Asus ZenScreen also delivers another knockout plus point: It almost levels the playing field between the two versions of Valve’s handheld. Hook the original Deck up to the ZenScreen, and the middling contrast performance and subpar LCD black levels are immediately replaced by immaculate OLED imagery. That said, the original Deck sadly can't take advantage of the ZenScreen's HDR10 features.
Hook the OG Deck up to the ZenScreen, and the middling contrast performance and subpar LCD black levels are replaced by immaculate OLED imagery"
Considering the Steam Deck OLED is the must-have gaming device of this holiday season, and as such is likely going to be hard to buy thanks to stock shortages, you can basically create your own DIY Deck OLED by hooking the LCD version up to the ZenScreen.
If buying a screen that costs more than the now reduced 2022 Deck sounds like an unnecessarily luxury upgrade, I get you.
All I can tell you is that I’ve been rocking my Asus ZenScreen setup on my coffee table with my two favorite handhelds over the last fortnight and I’ve been having an utter blast. So much so, I’ve barely played a single PS5 game on my 77-inch LG G3 OLED in that time.
I can’t think of a much higher compliment I could pay the ZenScreen than that.
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