ViewSonic Omni VX1755 review: Big-screen gaming on the go

Portable monitors are becoming increasingly popular, which means the number and variety of products on the market is changing: no longer are you stuck with bog standard 1080p IPS panels. Today you can get 3D displays or OLED screens or panels optimised for gaming with higher refresh rates. 

That last brings me neatly to the Omni VX1755 from ViewSonic, which not only boasts a 17.2in panel but also a 144Hz refresh rate. That makes it an ideal gaming peripheral for use with consoles, mobile devices or ultra-compact laptops as well as a good productivity tool for anyone working on a small screen device.

ViewSonic Omni VX1755 review: What do you get for the money?

The ViewSonic Omni VX1755 costs £330 at the time of writing. That gets you a 17/2in IPS display with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, a refresh rate of 144Hz and a quoted response time of 4ms G2G. It supports AMD FreeSync only. 

The bottom of the VX1755 is thicker than the top, tapering from 17mm to 8mm. On the bottom left-hand side, you’ll find a 3.5mm audio jack, two Type-C ports, one for power and one for DisplayPort 1.2 video, along with a Mini HDMI 2.0 connector. On the opposite side, there is a row of five push buttons to navigate the OSD, the lower one doubling up as a power button.

There’s nothing in the way of a battery so no power means no display. All the cables you need come bundled including a Type-C video cable, HDMI lead and a Type-C power cable to use with the European-format Type-C USB charger. There’s also a magnetic dust cover to prevent the display from getting scratched in transit.

The on-screen menu system is typical of recent ViewSonic monitors and is straightforward and easy to use. There are the usual colour and display settings but only one specific colour profile, sRGB, and surprisingly few gaming-specific features other than AMD FreeSync and a three-level response time adjustment.

READ NEXT: The best monitors to buy

ViewSonic Omni VX1755 review: What does it do well?

At the risk of stating the obvious, a large and rather well-made mobile display. Despite weighing just 1kg and clearly being made largely of plastic the VX1755 is impressively rigid to the point that even a determined twist results in very little discernible flex. The designers have done a good job keeping the bezels slim at 8mm on the top and sides while the 25mm deep chin at the bottom doesn’t look an eyesore. 

The stand is a metal affair that hinges midway up the back of the VX1755. It’s thin enough to not add anything to the unit’s overall thickness and the hinge is stiff enough to support the unit at any angle between almost vertical and 35 degrees. You can’t really ask for more from a stand.

When it comes to gaming the VX1755 gives a good account of itself. The panel is reasonably bright for a portable putting out 254cd/m² and the contrast ratio is reasonable at 870:1 with a black luminescence of 0.22cd/m². The screen has an anti-glare coating which does a sterling job of keeping reflections at bay. The star of the show of course is the 144Hz refresh rate which is something decidedly uncommon amongst portable monitors. 

ViewSonic claims a 4ms response time which is a little high for a gaming monitor and though there is a menu option to swap that between Standard, Fast and Ultra Fast changing the settings had little effect on image quality. Running the ubiquitous UFO test there was some ghosting noticeable but I wouldn’t describe it as excessive or distracting. No amount of fiddling in the menu did anything to reduce it.

By way of testing the VX1755 in its natural environment, I hooked it up to a Motorola Edge 30 Ultra and played Rush Rally 3 with a GameSir T3s Bluetooth controller. To make the most of the VX1755’s refresh rate I had to knock the detail levels down from Ultra to High which meant the game was running at well over 144fps off screen. Everything looked very impressive on the ViewSonic with no noticeable ghosting or tearing and was certainly a far more immersive experience than playing on a 6.7in phone display.

Of course, you’ll get better returns from more specialised gaming hardware like the Steam Deck or Asus ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. In fact, the former, with its excellent gaming performance and Linux KDE Plasma desktop is the closest thing to a perfect partner for the ViewSonic that I can think of. The high refresh rate is of course also useful when it comes to office work with spreadsheets gliding past in a visibly smoother manner. 

The VX1755 has a couple of built-in 0.8W speakers that fire out of two grills in the bottom edge of the casing towards the centre. My usual test of measuring a pink noise source at 1m turned in a result of 74.4dB(A) which isn’t bad for a portable monitor. Sound quality isn’t too shabby either. Granted there’s little in the way of bass and the close position of the speakers mitigates against any real stereo separation but the output is punchy and coherent with no sign of distortion.

ViewSonic Omni VX1755 review: What could it do better?

What the VX1755 lacks is colour. Measured using DisplayCal and an i1 Display Studio colourimeter the VX1755’s gamut coverage was revealed to be a lowly 54.6% sRGB, 38.7% AdobeRGB and 39.8% DCI-P3. Those low numbers are not such an issue when you’re careering around the likes of Rush Rally 3 when brightness and refresh rate are more important.  But when you watch videos on the ViewSonic the absence of colour can leave the picture looking a little wan and washed out.

It’s a situation not helped by the VX1755 having poor colour accuracy with the Delta E variance against sRGB measuring a wayward 6.5. That means that using it for any sort of colour-critical work is out of the question. My review sample also showed quite an excessive amount of backlight bleeding in the lower right corner though this was only really noticeable when looking at a dark screen in a dark room.

One thing ViewSonic could have done better is to put a physical volume rocker on the VX1755 or even just assign two of the menu navigation buttons to act in that capacity at first touch. Having to dig into the OSD to adjust the volume can rapidly become a bit of a chore.

The VX1755 did exhibit one odd foible. When connected to my Android phone via Type-C DP Alt Mode, opening apps that used the speakers caused the display to reboot. Plugging the Type-C power cable in remedied this as did moving audio playback from the display speakers to the phone.

I can only assume this is an issue with power demand. The spec sheet says the VX1755 has a power consumption of 10-13W which is higher than the 10W output of my phone. Looking at a selection of ViewSonic and Asus mobile displays most have a typical demand of around 6-8W or less which could explain why I’ve not encountered this problem before.

READ NEXT: The best gaming monitors to buy

ViewSonic Omni VX1755 review: Should you buy it?

The answer to that question depends on what you plan on doing with it. The size and refresh rate lend themselves to portable gaming in a big way; this also happens to be the area where low colour gamut coverage and accuracy are not such major issues. Similarly, if you want something to use with a small laptop or a smartphone with a desktop mode like Samsung’s DeX, it is very much worthy of consideration thanks to the extensive screen real estate. However, the drabness takes the edge off enjoying movies.