Seeing double? Yes, you are. The Lenovo ThinkVision L2321x's dual video inputs mean you can get twice as productive on a single display.
By all accounts, the ThinkVision is not a pretty monitor. It’s square, matte black, has ugly, old-school buttons and a stand straight from the '90s. But, fortunately for Lenovo, it’s what’s inside that counts.
Despite being launched late last year it’s taken the monitor a few months to hit our shores. If you haven’t read about it online that’s probably because it’s aimed at a very niche market. Unlike other versatile monitors, the L2321x is a one-trick pony, two at the most. Like standard LCDs, the Lenovo has dual inputs — in this case, VGA and DisplayPort.
That might seem like an odd choice, but those connectors are used in a special way. Plug them both into different sources and the Lenovo will display them both on the screen at once.
The overall screen runs at 1,920 x 1,080 but you can arrange the inputs in a variety of ways. The simplest is a 50/50 split, with each side running at 960 x 1,080. There is also a left- or right-biased mode, with the sides running at 1,280 x 1,080 and 640 x 1,080. Finally, you can run a picture in picture mode where the main screen runs at 1,920 x 1,080 and a smaller 640 x 480 screen is overlaid in any of the four corners.
The obvious use for such a setup is running two computers on the one monitor. But the other use is actually running dual outputs from a single computer to the monitor. This lets you use the single screen as two monitors, which can be especially useful for programs that need to run at lower resolutions or that have issues with software split-screen modes.
The Lenovo screen itself is quite nice, with decent colour reproduction and a matte screen to avoid reflections. It’s also fairly efficient, using just 22W. The stand is magnificent, with full rotate, tilt and height adjustments, as well as a portrait mode.
The L2321x caters to a very specific crowd and, while it’s expensive, to the right buyer the unique features make it worth every dollar.
Available from Lenovo, retailing for $499.
APC rating: 8/10 (Highly Recommended)