This Portable Monitor Folds in Half But the Price Will Leave You in Tears
Asus' foldable display feels light in your bag, but heavy on your wallet.
Time to welcome another foldable device to the world.
Asus introduced its ZenScreen Fold OLED at CES 2024 as the “world’s first foldable OLED portable monitor.” Asus already offers a bunch of portable displays, but it’s the first time the company has made one that can completely fold in half. Coming after the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED laptop, it feels like Asus just gutted the laptop internals and left us with the display portion.
With the ZenScreen Fold OLED, you get a portable work suite with multiple displays that all fit in your laptop bag. On top of your main laptop display, you can expand it with up to two displays from Asus’ latest foldable.
The ZenScreen Fold OLED adds two extra displays to your work setup.
Ultra-Tall or Ultra-Wide
Asus says it’s using a waterdrop-style hinge for the ZenScreen Fold OLED, which is similar to how Samsung makes its Galaxy Z Fold 5. With this hinge design, Asus’ portable display can completely fold out without the appearance of a crease and then tuck the flexible display into the shape of a waterdrop when folded up.
When it’s open, you get a 17.3-inch display with a 2,560 x 1,920 resolution in a landscape orientation. Asus says you can think of this horizontal layout as two 12.5-inch displays with 1,920 x 1,080 displays stacked next to each other vertically. You can still rotate the ZenScreen Fold OLED into a portrait orientation and stand it up with the built-in stand or screw it into a tripod.
Not Just For Work
Folding design aside, the ZenScreen Fold OLED is a solid display that doesn’t have to be reserved for your work setup. For any creative tasks, the OLED display and 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space mean you’ll get accurate and vivid colors, along with deep blacks. Asus also says the portable display has a low response time so it’ll still suit any fast-paced gaming or action movies. The ZenScreen Fold OLED works with most devices thanks to its two USB-C ports, mini-HDMI port, and headphone jack.
As for portability, the foldable display measures just under a centimeter when fully open and is about the size of a traditional portable display when folded up. It weighs less than a MacBook Air at 2.5 lbs so it won’t feel like a drag to carry around, too.
You can set up the ZenScreen Fold OLED as a secondary display to your laptop.
More Expensive Than the Laptop You Pair it With
Asus didn’t officially reveal pricing or release details yet, but Engadget reported that the ZenScreen Fold OLED will go on sale sometime in the second quarter of the year starting at $2,000. At that price, you really have to ask yourself if this foldability is worth it since you can go with Asus’ more reasonably priced portable displays for a fraction of the cost. We can’t be too surprised though, since all foldable devices carry a steep price tag with them.
INVERSE brings you everything from the fun and futuristic world of consumer technology at CES 2024. For all the latest technology coverage from the show, go to the INVERSE CES 2024 hub.
