Nanovision MIMO 710-S and 720-S USB monitors hands-on
By Tim Stevens 
posted Aug 24th 2009 12:11PM
posted Aug 24th 2009 12:11PM
Same function, improved form
When we got our hands on the first MIMO series to be released in the US, the UM-710, we rather liked the thing. Its seven-inch, 800 x 480 screen was just the right size for playlists, digital palettes, chat windows, or anything else that just takes up a little bit of your desktop. And, its USB connectivity made it incredibly easy to add to just about anything with a USB port.
The 710-S and 720-S share the same panel and same functionality, but are graced with a new folding stand that, when closed, makes it look like something a stylist might pull out of a makeup bag before reaching for a blush brush. When open the screen sits nicely either in portrait or landscape modes, but rather unfortunately its viewing angle cannot be adjusted. You can tilt it up or back to just about any position you like, but as soon as you let go the display slides back to where it wants to be, leaving it infinitely though only temporarily adjustable.
MIMO's 720-S on the left, with the brighter 710-S on the right.
Touching the 720-SIn the older style there exists the base UM-710, the webcam and microphone-endowed UM-730, and the UM-740, which goes further still by adding a touchscreen. The slimmer S styles apparently don't have room for too much accountrement, as there are only two models now, with the higher-end 720-S adding a touchscreen. From the outside it looks exactly like the 710-S, but once powered on you can see the difference immediately. The addition of a touch-sensitive layer to the seven-inch screen has the unfortunate effect of degrading the image quality, similar to what a cheap, universal screen protector looks like. We turned down the lights for the above photo and you can clearly see the difference in brightness between the two (720 is on the left).
Then we tried to use the thing. At first it simply didn't work, and after a little searching we realized a separate touchscreen driver is required. That driver is included only on the CD, not downloadable anywhere, so keep that disc somewhere safe. And, if you're using OSX, you'll need to pay a whopping $30 for the privilege of acquiring a compatible version, as only the Windows version is included for free.
Installation is painless, but we'd rather flagellate ourselves with the included dual-USB cable than go through the configuration process again. The driver package is generic, unable to identify the MIMO, so it needs to be manually told which of your displays is the touchy one. Once suitably informed it pops up a calibration screen with four crosshairs to be tapped in order to set everything right. The problem here is that the calibration screen is too big; you can only see the first X, with the other three lost off to the right and bottom, displayed only in the minds of the developers who didn't give this software the simple ability to detect the resolution of the display it would run upon.
After poring over the obscure options in the driver we did finally manage to calibrate the thing, tapping on the screen where we thought the crosshairs should have appeared, which gave us accuracy that was close but not perfect, meaning the mouse cursor always moved a few pixels from where we touched. That cursor is perhaps the biggest issue -- tapping is equivalent to moving the mouse and clicking, meaning that you can touch to bring the cursor over to the auxiliary screen to activate something there, but will always have to reach for the mouse to drag the cursor back to where it was. If we have to move the mouse at all we'd just as soon move it both ways.
Sadly the touchscreen driver wasn't the only one causing problems. On released flavors of Windows we had no issues, but testing on our Windows 7 machines caused a number of problems. On an Eee 1000-series, which we were most eager to test this with, the Win 7 drivers simply wouldn't install. At one point the driver dialog tells you not to worry if your screen starts to flash. We, of course, worried, and sure enough about half-way through the Eee simply went dark and never came back again. Thankfully all was right after a reboot, but we never got the display working with it.
On our Win 7 desktop we had more luck, getting the displays to work, but the driver immediately killed all gaming performance, somehow interfering with our GPU and causing 1fps throughput. On top of that windows started flashing and flickering unpredictably as soon as the drivers were installed -- problems that went away as soon as they were uninstalled again.
It's not fair to criticize this driver too harshly yet, as it's still rated as alpha (though we were given access to the beta version and found it to be no better), but we're guessing many of you have already ditched Vista or XP and gone to Windows 7, despite it not being available at retail just yet. So, if that's what you're rocking, you'll want to wait for the full driver release before rolling with one of these.
720-S to the left of the 710-S.
Look, but don't touchIf either of these two pique your interest we'd highly recommend sticking with the cheaper 710-S. The touchability of the 720-S did nothing for us, nor did the decreased image quality, and at $80 more than the other ($149 vs. $229) it's simply not worth it. Whether the 710-S is worth it is, of course, up to you and your budget. It's a bit too pricey to pair with your average netbook, but could make a great travel companion for higher-end, slim laptops that are lacking in display space. For those not looking to take their external monitor along with them, stick with the older models. Their stands may be bulkier and they're not nearly as stylish looking, but they are at least marginally adjustable.
Update: There are some questions in comments we wanted to address:
Q: Is the $30 Mac OS X driver for both displays, or just the 720-S?
A: It's $30 for the OS X touchscreen driver. Both monitors will work as non-touchscreen displays on OS X without purchasing any additional drivers.
Q: How are the displays powered?
A: Both receive power over USB. They include a dual-plug USB cable in case, for some reason, whatever device you plug them into does not provide enough juice over a single port. But, in our testing they worked fine without needing the auxiliary plug.
Anyone know if this could be used as a primary display instead of a secondary?
i own the earlier model (UM-740), and wouldn't suggest using it as a primary display. The monitor will not display anything until windows starts up, but aside from that, knock yourself out.
Thanks. Just wanted to know if it works. I've built a small arcade machine using a carpc LCD, but they cost a little too much. (http://vancefry.com/projects/pixelbox/)
This might be a cheaper option for my future mini SNES cab. :)
FPS wouldn't go above 10-15...SNES games run at 50 or 60FPS, so gaming in any shape or form is no happening. ...keep in mind all data is going over a extremely slow USB bus. These monitors are not made for anything with high speed motion.
or how about sideshow?
I got 50fps in counter-strike 1.6 on a similar device (samsung ubisync U70) when i tried for lulz...
probably because the drivers compress the video and it's uncompressed on the other side by hardware in the DisplayLink chip - iTunes Visualiser worked at 50fps on OS X even.
I think the idea to have a small and portable monitor is nice yet unexploited.
Let's say for put a map for a first person shooter or to put a rear view for car games, to put a rotation cube (for 3dstudio and/or another 3d animation), for debug in full screen, or simple to show the clipboard.
Looks like a good place for Mac OS dock, adium contact list, and a little sys stats via istat or someother widgets if you've got the terminal hack enabled for dashboard dev mode, maybe a little bowtie action (it is the most amazing itunes controler available, if you don't know) on the mac side of things. I would love a little one of these to clip on the side of my macbook, especially for the small price.
i kind of want one as a secondary on my desktop to display CPU usage and system temps while in a game. then again for $150 i could just get 19" LCD...
How are they powered? Batteries? Power brick? "Included Dual-USB cable" makes me think they're powered through USB, but it's not clear at all...
Like I mentioned above, I own the UM-740 touchscreen model. The Slim is most likely powered in the same way, with a usb cable only. The second cable is there if you don't have sufficient power from the first usb port.
I think this would be useful as a secondary monitor, just as long as it wasn't showing an identical signal as the primary monitor
I'd say it's really only useful as a tertiary display...
At $149 and $229, this would almost qualify for a crapgadget. Why would anyone pay $229, when for $70 more you could buy a netbook?
Or a Playstation 3 SLIM
+1
it makes sense at 149 as a secondary nebook display if you've fallen in love with your netbook.
I do coding and low poly 3ds max work in the park using my netbook. a secondary screen powered by usb is welcome and cheap
everyone has their own needs.
I'd love to see one of these used in a carputer install.
Not bright enough for a carputer. You need at least 800 nits during the day with dimming capability for night use.
Any idea if these will work in Linux?
At last check, no.
These are effectively USB video cards with a built-in monitor, and the specs are being held very closely.
There's a little ambiguity in the review's OS X reference. Do we pay $30 to get a driver for either screen or is the driver for the 710-S free? Thanks.
$30 for OSX drivers of any kind, i believe.
Wow, charging for drivers. What stupidity will we see next?
The $30 driver is only for the touchscreen. We've updated the post to reflect this.
Doesn't make it any less dumb. "Hey, if you want your device to work as advertised, you gotta cough up $30 more than Windows users! Serves you right for not obeying the monopoly!"
Do these come with an Ubuntu driver?
A USB Device that is not plug and play (not even CLOSE).... that should be very attractive to your average consumer.
Most usb devices require a driver. When they are plug and play they use a driver included with your OS.
I'm really hoping they can get the price down a little bit as this is just what I need to make my media set up a little more livable. Right now, if the big screen is used for another source, I can only get to the computer using VNC or Remote on the iPhone. Although inexpensive, small LCDs are too big for what I need (and the Mac Mini can't drive a second screen anyway). USB and small screen is perfect.
Engadget, I had the same flickering problem on the 64-bit Vista with the OLD mimo monitor (non-touchscreen model). So either the drivers haven't changed or Mimo doesn't like fixing bugs.
Sadly this bug rendered the screen unusable for me as I had wanted to play video on it :(
$119 @ ThinkGeek after coupon code 9ECA - http://goto.gd/2n
You people keep having these elaborate ideas to use these as a full function moniter, these are USB data driven...at 800 x 480 24-bit color you would have to have a totally open bus (480) to even hit the 60FPS mark...on top of that your Processor is going to be doing the video processing (as GPUs and USB doesn't mix) and we all know we never get full bandwidth from the bus, so you will probably be looking at 20-30FPS.
These are designed to show slow "non-real time" images, such as pallets, chats, webpages, yadda yadda.
any idea what the processor pulls these things cause? im guessing around 10-20%?
Doing it wrong.
The displaylink chip has hardware video acceleration in it about on par with a GMA X3100, and uses some heavy hardware data compression on the displaylink side of things. It works fine through a hub and in fact only uses about 60mbps to send the videostream at 800x480.
All your CPU has to do is compress the datastream. CPU usage is less than 2% on every system i've used it on ie; no noticable change. Compression algorithm is very efficient and low-power, it amazes me.
you can easily hit 60fps (the full refresh rate of the screen) in low-poly 3D games such as GoldSource stuff (Half-Life 1 and mods) or basic Java 3D apps like Minecraft.
Wow, I'm bummed to hear about the video flickering issue and GPU complications.
Hey, why don't you buy a 7'' Lilliput LCD, they are a bit more expensive, but are VGA, full fps and the touchscreen actually works.....
Well, with a netbook or laptop I'd hesitate, but this look like an excellent companion to the EeeKeyboard...
http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/asus-eee-keyboard-rumored-for-october-ion-based-eee-box-even-so/
tracked down this info for Linux people. I wonder if the drivers work under wine? I'll have to try it on another USB video I have at home.
http://www.mimomonitors.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-faq
"Display drivers for Linux are being developed by DisplayLink and independent developers. To learn more, visit DisplayLink.org. "
Tracking info says mine arrives on Wednesday, children.
So much screen real estate it'll make me want to puke.
I realize that these are only 800x480 but is there any option in the settings to scale down a higher resolution display (the primary display) so that this can be used as a clone monitor? I want to use this as a touchscreen control for Media Center in clone mode. Thanks
Let me add my impressions for a slightly more optimistic view. My 710 came on Friday. Saw no reason to spend $80 more on touch, and don't regret that. I have Win7 RTM loaded on an HP Mini netbook and that is the platform I intend to use with this for light travel. P.S. might stick it on the desktop when home for grins and giggles. I read the included note that said go download the latest drivers as the CD ones are likely older. I did so and had no particular problem getting them installed. There are some peculiarities in Win 7 on where you have to go to make adjustments, like portrait/landscape, but all that worked just fine. Had a bit of a challenge powering the baby as the USB split only has about 6 inches between plugs and the HP's USB ports are one on each side. Had a Monster USB charge thing that terminates in a USB female socket and used that for power. Discovered later that it actually seems to work with just one USP plugged in.
The picture on the unit seemed fine to me, but my intent is to for it to be a desktop extension for work, not play so much. I did slide my Slingbox client over to it and it seemed to work OK, but did slow things down a bit. I turned it to portrait and stuck Twhirl, a twitter client on it and that looked like it could be very useful. A messenger client of some sort would probably do well, as well.
So, I didn't really put it through paces, but the drivers available seem to work OK for WIN 7, and they are still beta, and it seems like this will be fairly useful. Couple of pics here if interested, http://twitpic.com/photos/sejohannsen
FYI, this is not recognized as a SideShow device. I expect that might be something drivers could change, but it isn't that way now. With Win 7 though, with sidebar gadgets not being so constrained, you could do some interesting stuff in making a sort of status panel.
This has great potential for any type of mobile developer. I see if being used as a way to have reference up on one screen and work in your main laptop screen. The compact foldable size makes it work. That market is definitely not mainstream but would near perfect for that.
I have the 710 model, and that explains why my GPU is struggling! what a shame :S so i'm gonna have to uninstall to regain my dropped frames :\
To the person asking if the monitor can be used as a primary, yes it can..
For hell of it I was playing around and disabled my GPU as a video output and directed everything out of USB.. played FlatOut2 perfectly - although the frame rate was perfectly matched the novelty was short lived, gimme my 1920x1200 over 800x480 any day :D
Overall still a great monitor but this FPS drop/driver interference just will not do for my gaming rig.
Is it possible to set the USB display into clone mode of the main display. and for it to scale 1080p data to 800*480? The applicaiton is a clone of 1080p Media Center onto the 800*480 to act as an 800*480 touchscreen remote.
I like the idea and think it could be a decent companion to my HP tx2, which itself has a 10" touchscreen. I'd love to see a MIMO with a 10" screen to match. And better drivers, from what I read here...
I'm considering buying one of these, thanks for the hands-on/review engadget!
Is the touchscreen resistive or capacitive?
Does it have a digitizer?
Could it be used as a tablet with a stylus for writing notes in OneNote?
How well did it perform in OS X? Did Nanovision provide the touchscreen drivers for your review?
Joylove - I'm wondering about the same thing... can the mimo740 be used in clone-mode and downscale a 1920x1080-signal to the monitors native 800x480-resolution???
Please - has anyone tried this????
(The only 7'' touch-screen that I have found that can downscale 1080p to it's naitive resulution is the Hitachi C100 in the Silverstone's CW03-chassi... BUT I DON'T WANT THAT HUGE BOX!!! - I'd be so happy if MIMO740 could do the same!)