At 0.72 pounds, Vaio’s first portable monitor is one of the lightest ever

Would you believe today marks an entire decade since Sony spun out its Vaio computer brand? Vaio has stood for lightweight laptops pretty much ever since — and now the company’s announcing one of the lightest-ever portable monitors to go with them.

The Vaio Vision Plus 14 goes on sale today in Japan as a 14-inch, 1920 x 1200 USB-C monitor that weighs just 0.72 pounds (325g). That’s less than half as much as most of the monitors you’ll find in a typical “best portable monitor” list and notably lighter than the 13.3-inch, 1.08-pound (490g) Asus ZenScreen OLED MQ13AH, despite having a larger screen.

The Vaio is also just 12.4mm thick (0.49in) at its widest point and 3.9mm (0.15in) at its thinnest.

Images: Vaio

Vaio managed the light weight partly with a skeletal design (check out that kickstand and side profile!) and partly by molding the back panel out of carbon fiber, which it found was 33 percent lighter than aluminum and notably lighter than magnesium alloy at the same rigidity.

Speaking of rigidity, the company claims the Vision has been tested at its facility in Japan to withstand drops, bends, and years of use. The company claims (via Google Translate) that you can “use it with peace of mind in the unlikely event of stress during rush hour or impact when dropped.” It also has five videos to illustrate that the monitor can withstand some light torture; I’ve embedded one of them above.

It also comes with an origami-style stand cover that can raise it high enough to be a second vertical screen above your laptop:

Image: Vaio

Like some other portable monitors, you can power this one from your laptop with a single included USB-C cable as long as it provides 10 watts — you can additionally plug a 65W or higher USB-C PD power supply into the monitor’s second USB-C port and charge your laptop simultaneously. The monitor itself consumes about 4W in use, according to Vaio’s spec sheet, and it can pass through a maximum of 60W to your laptop.

One unknown is picture quality. Vaio doesn’t specify what kind of panel we’re talking about, and while Vaio says the screen displays 100 percent of the sRGB spectrum, that’s a relatively small color space for graphics professionals. The antiglare screen also only hits 400 nits of brightness, which should be fine indoors but maybe not for an outdoor cafe.

While Vaio does sell its computers in the US and other countries, it hasn’t yet announced if the new portable monitor will be available outside of Japan. There, it’s on sale today for 54,800 yen (roughly $339) and is shipping this week.