Acer PM1 Series PM161QT bmiuuux 15.6" Black 2024

The Acer PM161QT is a portable 15.6 inch touchscreen that nails portability and connectivity but falls flat on display quality. 200 nits brightness and weak color put it near the bottom of our rankings. It's worth considering at the low end of its price range, around USD 96, but skip it if you care about visuals.

This thing is not built for speed. The 60Hz refresh rate and 6ms response time land it in the bottom quarter of our performance database, and the gaming score of 24 out of 100 tells you everything. FreeSync is here, which is nice, but it's more of a checkbox than a feature on a panel this dim. The 200 nits brightness is the real problem. In a bright room or near a window, you'll be squinting. Color coverage is basic 8-bit with 16.7 million colors, which sounds fine until you see it next to almost any modern laptop screen. For office work and touch input, it's responsive enough. For anything else, it struggles.

Stacked against the competition, the PM161QT is a niche pick. The ASUS TUF Gaming VG34VQL1B and LG UltraGear 27GS75Q-B are in a completely different league for gaming and color, but they're also big, heavy, and not touchscreens. The Dell S2725QC and HP OMEN 27qs G2 are better all-around displays if you're staying at a desk. What the Acer offers that none of those do is a 15.6 inch touchscreen you can power from a laptop USB-C port. If portability and touch are your top two priorities, this wins by default. If you want a monitor that looks good, any of those competitors will embarrass it.

Pricing is all over the place. In the US, we're seeing listings from USD 96 to USD 318, which is a massive spread for the same panel. At the low end, around USD 96, this is a reasonable buy if you need a portable touchscreen and don't care about color. At USD 318, you're getting into territory where better portable monitors with brighter panels exist. The CAD spread is tighter, CAD 188 to CAD 220, and the lower end of that range feels about right. Shop around before you commit, the deal you get depends heavily on which store you land on.

The Acer PM161QT is a 15.6 inch 1080p IPS touchscreen built for travel. It weighs 1238g, runs off a single USB-C cable, and folds into a bag without much fuss. The feature set is genuinely impressive for the size, with 10-point touch, FreeSync, and dual USB-C ports.

But the display itself is where corners got cut. 200 nits of brightness and an 800:1 contrast ratio put it near the bottom of our color rankings. It's fine for spreadsheets and Slack, but don't expect it to make anything look pretty.

Skip this if you need a monitor for gaming, photo editing, or anything color-critical. The 24 out of 100 gaming score and bottom-tier color performance make it a poor fit. Also skip it if you work near windows or in bright offices, 200 nits will have you craning your neck all day. And if you don't need touch, there are brighter, better-looking portable monitors for similar money.

Buy this if you need a portable second screen with touch and you'll mostly use it indoors in controlled lighting. It's a solid travel companion for productivity, note-taking, or running a quick demo. Just know that the display quality is the trade-off. If you're a designer, gamer, or anyone who cares about how colors look, this is not your monitor.