Nanovision Mimo 7" USB Powered LCD Monitors

Name: Nanovision Mimo 7" USB Powered LCD Monitors - Page 2
Brand: Nanovision

by Daniel A. Begun — Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 12:30 PM EDT

Design, Build Quality, & Connectivity

The Mimo UM-710 monitor is only about 0.8-inches thick, and measures 7.7x4.8-inches (HxD). The Mimo-740 is only a few millimeters thicker (but still well under 1-inch thick) and it is also a hair taller and deeper at 7.75x5.0-inches. Both monitors come with removable stands that attach to the back of the displays. The stands can lean the monitors forward and backward, but doing so beyond a fairly limited range will cause the top-heavy design to either topple forward or backward. By loosening the mounting screw on the back of the stand, the monitors can be pivoted into either landscape or portrait mode (note: that you have to manually change the display settings in software in order for the image on the display to be properly oriented). With the monitors oriented vertically, the top of the viewable area of the displays is about 9.3-inches up from the surface the stands are resting on.

Nanovision Mimo UM-710

Both monitors have glossy black bezels, but you would never confuse the two. The UM-710 has soft rounded corners, while the UM-740 has square corners. The UM-740 also has a 1.3-megapixel webcam located on the upper-left side of the bezel, and a labeled microphone ("mic") hole on the lower-right side of the bezel. The UM-740 also features three touch-sensitive control buttons on the lower-right bottom of the bezel. The UM-710's control buttons are mechanical buttons that are located on the right side of the monitor. The controls on both monitors are very rudimentary: a power button, and "+" and "-" buttons that increase or decrease the display's brightness setting. Unlike, larger more-mainstream displays, the Mimo monitors do not include any additional settings or any sort of on-screen displays (OSD).

Nanovision Mimo UM-740

The UM-710 has only a single input--a mini-USB (type B) connector--which is located in a recess at the bottom of the back of the unit. The UM-740 has a similar recess on its backside, but in addition to the mini-USB connection, the UM-740 also includes stereo-in and mic-out audio mini jacks. (The UM-740 also has a power jack, which the manual identifies as an "emergency power input... for factory or technical service purposes only.") The UM-740 comes with a pair of audio cables so that you can route audio-out from your system to the monitor, and route the monitor's microphone to your system. Note that the UM-740 does not have speakers--it has a headphone jack located on the left side of the monitor--so if you route your system's audio to the UM-740, you will only be able to hear the audio with headphones plugged into the monitor.

Both displays also ship with a USB cable that has a mini-USB jack on one end, and a pair of standard Type-A USB jacks on the other end. The reason why there are two USB connectors on the system end of the cable is that since the Mimo monitors are entirely USB powered, they might not get enough juice from some systems from a single USB connection--this is even more of a potential issue with the UM-740, which requires more power for its touch-screen. That said, we had no problems powering either Mimo monitor from a single USB connection on either of our test systems.