WEIRD Dual Displays – Acer PD3 Review (PD163Q)

I want to preface this by saying that this monitor – the one I have here – doesn’t appear to exist, at least as I have it. This is from Acer’s PD3 line, and the sticker on the back says it’s the PD163Q – and a cursory check of the dual displays reveals that yep, it’s two 15.6 inch 1080p 60Hz IPS panels. Now this 15.6 inch version isn’t available in the UK for some reason, but it is available on Acer’s US store, so problem solved, right? NO! That version has two USB C ports and one mini HDMI. Mine has two USB C ports and a FULL SIZE HDMI PORT! So, this version I have here does not exist anywhere in Acer’s catalog, at least that I can find. That also means understanding the price tag might be a little difficult, as at best I can use the price from the US mini HDMI version of this, but that’s clearly not quite right. Anyway, now we understand that this thing doesn’t exist, let’s review it pretending it does! 

Scratch that, turns out the singapore version of Acer’s site has the correct version! That doesn’t help much on pricing for everyone but singaporeans, but still. Anyway, back to the video…

This is Acer’s PD163Q, a unique take on an external portable monitor. Featuring two 15.6 inch 1080p 60Hz IPS displays in a laptop clamshell form factor, it’s certainly unique. Physically you’ve got a thin display panel on top and a thicker base with the lower panel, IO and stand built into the bottom half. The stand is a stylish and pretty stable folding bar style that can adjust to a pretty wide range. Fully collapsed though it does block both the IO and buttons, so even if you use this in a book style format you’ll need that stand cranked open slightly. Strangely, this comes with the option of being VESA mounted, which seemingly defeats the ‘portable’ part of its name, but you’ve got the option at least. The IO is as I said one full size HDMI port and two USB C ports, along with a headphone jack next to the controls, which are basically menu, up/down and back. 

Fun fact about the IO, the HDMI port is kind of useless. Well, to be fair to the inanimate port, it does still work fine, but because HDMI doesn’t support multiple display streams simultaneously, by default the display just duplicates the image to both panels. This seems a little pointless as it defeats the purpose of having two panels here – you might as well just get a single external display, right? Well Acer clearly thought of that, because if you double tap the top button it switches to a ‘fill’ mode, which means the displays report as a single 1920 by 2150 display. Of course being a top/bottom split means Windows snap doesn’t help much, but it’s an option if all you’ve got is HDMI.

If you’ve got USB type C with DisplayPort ALT mode – and ideally PD out on the same port – then this is a true one cable, two display option. PD is needed as unlike some other portable monitors, including ones I’ve tested, this doesn’t have an internal battery. It requires 30W of USB PD power to operate. If you’re using HDMI, or if your source doesn’t offer PD as well as DP over USB, you’ll need to use the included power brick to power it with the other Type C port. Both Type C ports can do power or Display though which is nice. Over Type C you do get full control of both panels independently which is much more useful. We will come back to the utility aspect in a moment, but first I have to say… Have you noticed anything about these displays? Perhaps that they don’t exactly look the same? Yeah, the bottom panel is dimmer, but more saturated to the eye. To quantify that, the Spyder X2 reports a very similar colour gamut coverage so it seems the same here, but looking at the brightness we see the first difference. The bottom display reports just over the quoted 250 nits of peak brightness at 251.8 nits, and a contrast ratio of 710:1, along with a white point of 8700K. The top display only managed 236 nits, but a much better 1120:1 contrast ratio and a warmer 8300K white point, despite the warm mode being set for both displays – and this is in the duplicated mode too. 

I should also note the panel quality, which is to say pretty bad. Both displays have a lot of backlight bleeding from the edges, although the lower right hand side is rather noticeable on a dark background and quite off putting. Uniformity is dreadful too, and pretty different panel to panel. The top panel had a shocking 19% drop in brightness in the top left corner and along the top row at 17%, whereas the bottom panel was worse at 22% less in the bottom right. It’s almost as if the panels are flippe…. Wait. A look at some high speed footage reveals that, yep, these two displays are bookmatched, rather than stacked. Both displays render new frames from the hinge outwards, with the top panel essentially refreshing upwards, whereas the bottom display refreshes downwards. Well that might explain how the uniformity readings look so different… That doesn’t mean the panels are identical though, as the colour accuracy shows nicely. The bottom display is less accurate, in particulate on blues, whereas the top display is more accurate on blues but worse on reds. Both are totally acceptable in terms of accuracy, and yet there’s a noticeable difference between the two. For the sort of productivity work this is marketed at, that likely won’t be a problem. But if you’re planning on doing some photo or video editing from these, I’d stick with your laptop’s display as your source monitor. 

I did of course test the response times, and weirdly the overdrive setting in the menu doesn’t seem to do anything – in fact if anything overdrive off is a hair faster, but depending on the mode it seems like one panel CAN be driven faster. It’s weird. When it wants to, the response times drop from a pretty naff 15 milliseconds or so on average to 12 milliseconds. That’s a significant drop, although not much of a real-world improvement really. The weird thing is that sometimes it’s the top panel, but then immediately testing the top panel with the same settings, even on fill mode and literally just lifting OSRTT up or down and re-running it, it’ll be 12ms on one panel and 15ms on the other. I’ve never had it be 12ms on both at the same time. Weird, right? Anyway, as long as there isn’t anything moving on this it’s fine, otherwise it’s a smear-fest. Latency, even via HDMI, is dreadful. Optimistically I’d say it is around 35 milliseconds on average – bare in mind that a good 60Hz display will report half the frame time with my form of latency test, so 8ms or so – although some results I got were more like 40ms or 45ms, so either way it’s dreadful. It’s actually enough to have audio be noticeably out of sync with the video, at least slightly. 

I think we should get back to that practicality aspect. This is a bit of a confusing proposition, isn’t it? Like, on the face of it, it seems really cool. You basically carry a second laptop in your bag, and when you get to your hotel or hot-desk you can crack both clamshells out, plug one into the wall, the other into the first, and then you’ve got a triple screen productivity masterpiece, right? Well assuming you’ve got a suitable USB C port, probably, yeah, although these don’t feel like premium panels. At 97% sRGB coverage, 1080p 60Hz and honestly even at this 15.6 inch size they just don’t feel sharp, vibrant or even amazing quality especially with all that backlight bleeding. And considering that the 18.3 inch version of this is £470, and depending on which price tag you attribute this to it’s likely around £300, that feels like quite a lot. If these were nicer panels it might make a little more sense, if it had a second HDMI port so you could use both displays without an appropriate Type C port might be handy, and honestly I think the majority of people who are looking for an external display would prefer a thinner, simpler solution – and it looks like those can be had for £80-100 too. This provides a unique way to add TWO extra displays to your portable setup – and a decently well packaged option too – but the cheap laptop panels really let it down for me, and I’m having a hard time putting myself in the prospective buyer’s shoes to understand just how game changing a 2-in-1 package like this may or may not be. One thing I do know is that this is way, way better than the stupid clip-two-displays-to-your-main-display things are. Those will destroy your laptop, cost more than this, AND suck harder too. So yeah, if you need a way to conveniently add two average displays to your portable (or not thanks to the VESA mount I guess, but that just raises more questions than it could possibly answer) setup, this is definitely the best way to do it. If you don’t fancy spending as much as a second cheap laptop, get a single, likely nicer, panel instead.