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Who doesn’t occasionally wish they had a few more inches of monitor space? Maybe you want to still see your email client while playing WoW on full screen or when you have too many Word documents open. Maybe you like to keep your IM client or Skype or your music software on an easily visible side screen, away from other applications. Well then, you need another monitor. Sadly, limitations imposed by hardware, graphics cards, desk space and budgets often keep us from adding another full size monitor to our computer set up. Now however there are USB-powered alternatives, small, relatively inexpensive monitors that don’t need to be connected to your graphics card.

One of the first of these products to be readily available is the Mimo UM-710, A 7 inch flat panel monitor that runs at a resolution of 800×480 (NOTE – and retails for $129.99 in the US and online, thanks for the reminder Breley) I have had a few days to play with a model, and thus far have found it far more useful and robust then I had been expecting it to be, with a few small reservations.

The Mimo UM710’s packing box. The UM710 is their midline product. There are also models that include touchscreens and TV connectors.

Installation

The monitor is dead easy to install, as should be expected from a USB device. The Mimo can’t use a power adaptor, taking all it’s power from two USB connections like a portable hard drive. Therefore you need to be sure you have two powered USB ports free. At least having the option to be able to use an AC adaptor for power would have been nice, even if you had to use your own adaptor. The USB cable plugs into the Mimo via a MiniUSB port in a recessed area on the back of the device. This forces the cable to hang down directly below the screen, quite conspicuously. It would have been nice if there were a way to run the cable through the back of the stand to hide it.

The rear of the Mimo, showing the quite durable big honkin’ silver screw that connects the screen to the stand. Loosen this to move the screen up or down or to swivel it into “portrait” mode. The physical controls are shown on the side of the unit, two buttons for brightness and a power button.

The Mimo itself feels a little flimsy, but not as bad as I was expecting. This is a screen that won’t take a lot of punishment, but then few will. That said, the monitor has an AWFUL lot of bend and flex to it as I twist, and pinching it with my thumb on my screen made some ominous plasticy noises…therefore, don’t do it. Bad idea. The stand the monitor is mounted on is another story however, and is not only quite robust but is also very versitile and can be moved into many different useful positions. The base is wide and stable and the screw used to mount the monitor is large and easy to get a hold of. A nice bit of engineering.

Once the monitor is physically connected to your PC you just run the installation software to get started, provided on an autorun CD. This installs a background application called the Nanovision DisplayLink Manager which sits in your taskbar tray and includes the drivers for the Mimo as well as some VERY basic configuration options. The Mimo only runs on one resolution (800×480) with an option for 16 or 32 bit color. You also have the option to extend your main monitor onto the Mimo, or to have it mirror the main monitor.

Once the drivers are installed, XP automatically recognizes the Mimo and will allow you to move it around as if it were any other monitor.You can’t change the resolution or color however. Resolution is fixed and you have to change color settings from the Nanovision software.

Configuring the Mimo from the Windows XP Control Panel. Awwww, It looks like my monitors had a kid, doesn’t it?

One of my frustrations with the monitor is that I would like the option of decreasing the resolution or changing the frequency in order to improve performance….but more of that in the next section.

Another frustration is that the Nanovision software doesn’t always remember the last state of the Mimo when I restart the computer. Sometimes it automatically sets it in the right position, but other times I need to go back into the software and remind it that it needs to extend the main monitor, not mirror it. Having three monitors running including the Mimo may be contributing to that, but the marketing says you can have up to 6 Mimos running on most PCs. Not a big deal, but a pain none the less.

Performance

The Mimo in action at full brightness and native 800×480 resolution, showing IE8 and some stupid gadget site.

The Mimo handled every task I threw at it. It displayed IE8 and Microsoft Outlook well and legibly, with no serious performance issues. The 800×480 resolution is clear enough to display most applications or documents. Multiple windows on the Mimo are not a good idea however (I tried…yuck, scroll bar hell), but most all apps look good on the small monitor in full screen mode.

The Mimo running the Zune software Now Playing view….and Amanda F*ckin’ Palmer.

After several experiments, I have settled on using the Mimo to display my Zune software. It is useful to have the software always up and visible as well as attractive…and has actually improved my PC’s performance. Previously, running the Now Playing mode on the Zune software would cause a small performance hit…now that the Zune software is not being handled by the graphics card after being moved to the Mimo, system performance is unaffected.

The Mimo does show a little bit of flicker when “half-tones” pixelshading appear, especially in album covers and backgrounds with a lot of white, but that doesn’t bother me overly much. I suspect the problem could be solved by lowering the resolution or frequency, but there is no way to do that. I REALLY wish that the Nanovision software at least allowed me to lower the resolution. Products that don’t give you any flexibility in terms of configuration are a pet peeve of mine. In this case, it isn’t a deal breaker, but it would be nice to have more options. A nice touch is that the Mimo is seen by my DisplayFusion software, letting me easily put up custom wallpapers on the little screen as well as an independant taskbar if I wish.

The Mimo and IE8 in Portrait Mode…cute, but usable? Not so much.

It is also possible to physically swivel the Mimo into Portrait mode and then select the screen orientation from the Nanovision software. I found this to not be terribly useful since most software I tried just didn’t work well or look good in Portrait mode. IE8 for example was a disaster. However, applications like IM clients or anything that is just a list of friends or files would probably work very nicely in portrait mode.

Conclusion

I was prepared to view the Mimo as an expensive bit of whimsy, a novelty that I would use now and again but usually keep in a drawer…I was happily wrong. Thus far I have really enjoyed it, and am keeping it connected to my computer set up. I feel that over time I will find more and more uses for it and already I think I would miss it if it were gone. The performance issues I feared due to hooking up yet another monitor simply haven’t materialized. I can even run very heavy applications on my main monitor such as Photoshop or Second Life or compile PDFs while the Mimo is running without any noticeable performance loss.

Certainly this is not an essential peripheral for most people, but I think most readers would find something useful or fun to do with it. As I left the store with my new Mimo in hand, I was prepared to regret this purchase after a few days, but I don’t. Instead I can heartily recommend the Mimo for anyone who could find a use for an extra 7 inches of monitor.

Zealot (444 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).