Using a desktop monitor outside
Hiya folks,
I work remotely, and I've got a little deck with a table and umbrella that I like to work at for most of the summer. The trouble is, my umbrella can never be fully angled to shade me from the sun.
I find my laptop screen (13") to be woeful for working on outside. Not only is it tiny and promotes bad posture, it also doesn't have amazing brightness. Lots of squinting and hunching, depending on the sun!
Every monitor in my house it turns out is 350 nits, except my laptop screen, which is 500 nits.
Does anyone have practical experience lugging a monitor outside and working on it during the sunny day? If so, what brightness gets you over the usability threshold?
It seems like I could get a 1000 nit monitor relatively easily. Anything above 1000 the market seems to narrow quite quickly.
I have to say, this sounds like a pretty decent use case for this thing.
It doesn't have a backlight and is designed to be viewed in sunlight. It is a bit pricey though, and apparently sucks indoors.
Not a traditional monitor per-se, but xreal air AR glasses work great both outside in the sun (and indoors).. It basically simulates a gigantic 1080p monitor.. Or 3 virtual monitors if you install the xreal nebula software.. It looks like you are just wearing a pair of sunglasses if you are in a public place.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dx5mVKZUvY
Since this is blowing up a bit I probably should mention a few things just to set expectations based off of my experience with these.
Not every phone works out of the box, you need a phone with a USB-C 3.1 port. If you don't have a 3.1 port, you can screen cast to the beam device (every phone works with beam).
These are not crazy immersive like VR. The field of view is literally like you are sitting across the room from a very large television (or maybe a movie theater screen is a better analogy). If you aren't using the beam device or the nebula software, you will see a static screen that is centered in your vision. The nebula software is pretty buggy sometimes and you can't use every App with it. The beam device works with anything, but can't simulate more than one monitor (currently).
The beam device is a worthy purchase because it adds the 3 degrees of freedom / screen pinning / following / picture in picture functionality to pretty much any device (and makes it so that the Nintendo switch doesn't need a dock + a pile of Daisy chained adaptors to get things working). The beam also runs Android and you can side load pretty much any App by copying the apk to it from a computer. That said, it is not a high performance Android device by any stretch of the imagination and a lot of apps will be pretty slow on it. Things like Netflix/Prime Video/Disney+,etc... work fine, Firefox works fine, VLC works fine. I haven't tested much else on mine.
Viture makes a USB-C adaptor that allows you to charge your devices while the glasses are also plugged in. I recommend buying one.
If you have a steam deck, install the XR plugin from decky loader and these glasses just work, however the deck turns the USB port off at about 50% battery.. Get the Viture adaptor to work around this.
There are also a couple of different a HDMI to USB-C adaptors for these.. One makes it compatible with iPhones, the other makes it compatible with pretty much anything.
Sometimes these feel a bit like a technology preview. That said I get a lot of use out of them and think they are really great, so I don't want to complain too much. Most of my complaints are actually pretty minor since I can sit on an airplane and play games, watch movies, and be productive on a massive screen....
Thanks for the added thoughts. I bought a pair without the beam device, as both my devices can drive USB-C natively. I put in a request for prescription lenses. If they can't handle my prescription (and my 20/20 partner doesn't like the device), I'll have to send it back.
Thank you for the idea!
I thought that would be the case for me too, but it turned out none of the USB-C devices in my house were actually version 3.1 compatible except for my laptop and steam deck. so I ended up buying a beam a few days later.
I'm legally blind so I'm curious if these would work for me. Mind answering a few questions?
There are devices intended for the visually impaired that do similar things as these, but they tend to be more like bulky VR headsets, and tend to be thousands of dollars. I doubt that these would actually work for me but figured I'd ask just in case.
I am near sighted and think my perscription is around -2 on each eye. The glasses are statically focused at a distance (20 feet or so away), so they are pretty much unusable to me if I'm not wearing my contacts (I haven't had the perscription lens inserts made). With my contacts in, very small text is crisp and easy to read.
I believe the screen distance effect is achieved by moving the images that are being displayed slightly closer or further from the center point of the glasses and is not a physical change to the optics.
Screen size is adjustable in software but not hugely so. your brain kind of automatically adjusts the size depending on how far you are from a wall. Sitting at my desk with the glasses on, the screen size is approximately the same as my 27" monitor. Sitting on my couch, looking at the wall it is like a 100" screen. The actual size didn't change at either location, but it just feels different. The effect is difficult to explain.
If you don't have the beam or the nebula software, the image is just locked in the center. With the beam / software the image can be stuck to a particular point in space kind of like it is a drone that is following you around. eg: If you are facing North and pin the screen, the screen will only be in your vision if you are facing North (body anchor mode).
it is possible to wear these with normal glasses underneath, but they aren't really designed for that, so it looks/feels kind of awkward.
Bruh! Damn you, I have absolutely no need for these and now I want them. Aaaarrrggg!
This video is killing me. I don't have perfect stereoscopic vision and I wear glasses. More research is needed. 4:00 in and I wanna buy/try. 🫤
... You can order prescription lenses.
Well, doing my budget.
oh, I just saw that they are expected to announce a new beam pro or beam 2 device in the middle of June, so maybe don't buy the beam component just yet of you are thinking about getting these.
Before you try something more expensive, I would advise putting on polarized sunglasses to see if it cuts the glare while still allowing you to see the screen.
It may not work, but it has a shot and will be very inexpensive.
Generally my experience with polarized glasses and screens is that it's made the experience worse even in conditions when it wasn't a problem to see the screen (most notably, looking at navigation while driving and wearing polarized sunglasses). I don't think OP will have much luck with it. Polarized sunglasses tends to fuck with the polarizer in screens.
Agreed, it definitely can. Depends on the polarizing angle of the glasses and of the screen.
If you can find something like e-Ink I imagine that would work better: https://youtu.be/gDe0_YWF8V0
Or if the type of work that you do allows for it, something simple like an AlphaSmart Neo would help you feel more of the environment as you work.
Never heard of DASUNG before, but Onyx Boox also has e-ink monitors too:
https://shop.boox.com/products/mira
And their e-ink tablets also support screen mirroring as well:
https://help.boox.com/hc/en-us/articles/8569526360852-Screen-Mirroring