CrowVi VF156T review: A 15.6" Full HD portable touchscreen for under $140

CrowVI reached out to me about reviewing their portable Full HD 15.6-inch touchscreen, and since I am still in the midst of reviewing some Mini PCs that I can connect it to, I jumped at the chance when they offered to send me a sample.

Before we dig in, here are the specifications of it.

CrowVi (which is a sub brand of Elecrow) offers three different sized screens on the official website, currently all under $139.99. There's this 15.6" FHD (1080P) touchscreen I am reviewing, a 13.3" FHD touchscreen at $139 and a 13.3" non-touch FHD screen for $114.99.

Oddly enough, while doing some research for this screen I discovered that there is a Elecrow branded version that costs $29 more on Amazon. They are literally the same so I am reaching out to my contact about that.

What's in the box

• 1 x 15.6'' Portable Touchscreen Monitor
• 1 x Smart Cover Case
• 1 x 1m USB Type-C to USB Type-C Cable (for power & video)
• 1 x 1.5m Mini-HDMI to HDMI Cable
• 1 x HDMI to Mini HDMI adapter
• 1 x 5V 2A Power Adapter
• 1 x 1m USB A to Type-C Power Cable
• 1 x User Manual

In case you were looking for more specifications, like I did, the instruction manual doesn't offer much at all in the way of disclosing what we have, and there's no branding at all on the bezel, which could be pleasing to some people. However on the back there is both a 'CrowVi' and a 'Elecrow' sticker, which suggests that it is exactly the same as this slightly more expensive 'Elecrow' variant.

The instructions are quite thorough and show the placement of the ports and buttons on the left and right of the screen and explain in more detail how to use the Stand Cover (which I dislike, more later) and cables.

Design

The back (or shell) of the monitor is made from aluminum alloy and feels cold to the touch. As you can see from the photo above, it is both a fingerprint magnet and everything sticks to it. I took the photo before cleaning it, and what looks like scratches along the back right of the monitor is actually just light colored particles from the protection covering.

Unfortunately, there's no VESA compatibility here. Helpfully, on the left and right each button or port has a description. On the right there's the sticker with certifications and the branding details.

The front is decent enough with minimal bezel around the top and sides, however the bottom bezel is quite large on this small display. In addition, you may be able to see on the bottom of the screen, there are some glued on plastic textured feet, but these are pretty useless because they do not make contact with the surface when using it with the Smart Cover. This results in the display sliding down to a roughly 20 degree angle.

The sides measure at just 5mm at its thinnest point and 10mm at thickest. Upon holding it and pressing in different areas, I'm pleased to report I didn't hear any creaking, or see any joints that were giving way. It is definitely a sturdy build. However, gripping any part of the front leaves fingerprints.

On the left of the screen we have the Power button and OSD controls which double as volume control or brightness when toggled or pressed, below that there is the USB 3.0 Type-C port for video only. On the right side a mini HDMI port, a USB 3.0 Type-C port that offers power and video, and a 3.5mm Audio jack port.

On the bottom, there are holes for the speakers, more about that later.

If you want to get power and a picture over one cable, then it's only possible if you connect the screen to the right Type-C port. The left one only supports video (and touchscreen commands).

Usage

There are no drivers for this portable screen, so it is detected as a Generic PNP Monitor. I did run Windows Update just to check but nothing was detected.

Although HDR is shown as supported in Windows 11, there's no HDR certification. I have one film that is 1080P and HDR, and that is the 1982 Blade Runner movie. I can confirm that it appears to work when the OSD HDR option is set to AUTO, although I had to manually toggle HDR in Windows 11 to see any difference.

Left: HDR on / Right: HDR off

As you can see, for an IPS screen there's minimal backlight bleed here, but I should also point out that CrowVi does not even list HDR as a feature for this screen, and it's just as well because I noticed that while HDR was enabled in Windows, the screen flickered every few seconds. However, for a (touch) screen you can currently pick up for just $139.99 we should possibly remember to keep our expectations in check.

And here is a shot with all the lights off in a dark room, which isn't the ideal viewing scenario. HDR was disabled here, but as you can see there is minimal backlight bleeding, I am pretty impressed.

This monitor also comes with stereo speakers, but bizarrely, they are placed on the very bottom pointing down. In my opinion, they may as well have left them out, even with the volume at 100% it is impossible to follow any media. You'll only ever get any joy out of them through the default Windows notification sounds. You will definitely want to use headphones in combination with this portable display because sound is really poor.

The viewing angles from the side are good, I mean I usually don't spend an awful lot of time sitting off to the side of a screen I am watching, but say you had two or three people watching a presentation or some cat videos or something, you can all easily follow the action without having to sit directly head-on. However, the glass on this display is highly reflective so that can hamper the viewing angle.

As is the norm for Chinese companies selling their gear online, the specs are all over the place. For example, nowhere in the specs is the response time of this screen listed, so I attempted to manually check it using the UFO Test, and came to the conclusion that it is 15ms, not great, but also not bad.

Touchscreen

According to the page description, this has a "10-point touch" screen, and while I did not verify all 10 points, any time I used the touchscreen it reacted quickly and worked flawlessly, no complaints here.

Conclusion

It might not be perfect, it misses VESA compatibility and the Smart Cover sucks, but these things can be fixed with 3rd party accessories. It is quite heavy for its size (1605 grams with Smart Cover Case) but you can operate it with just one cable. It has okay specs, a touchscreen, and the colors pop. It's not as bright or vibrant as a full-sized monitor, but what can we expect with cheap portability like this?

For under $140 you're getting a portable touchscreen though; you can plug this into anything and you won't even need a mouse or keyboard if you need to do something quickly on a computer that does not have a dedicated display. In fact CrowVi markets this screen for use along with devices like the Raspberry Pi, which they also sell. So you can't really go wrong, even if you used it as a backup.

As of writing, the CrowVi 15.6 inch IPS Portable Touchscreen can be picked up on the official website for $139.99.