No room for another monitor? Use your desktop’s side panel instead

Adding a secondary monitor to your setup is an easy office hack for boosting productivity. But not every desk or office has room for another display, even a small portable monitor. That's why we're intrigued by a new ASRock kit, as niche as it may be.

ASRock's 13.3-inch Side Panel Kit, spotted by Tom's Hardware on Tuesday, includes a 13.3-inch IPS display meant to attach to the inside of a desktop PC's side panel. This is a convenient design for people who are low on space but still keep their tower on a desk. The kit provides a 1920×1080 display with a 60 Hz refresh rate, 300 nits of brightness, and an 800:1 contrast ratio, making its specs comparable to dedicated portable monitors in the $200 range, such as Lenovo's ThinkVision M14 (although, when we tested the M14, we recorded a notably higher contrast ratio, 1,064:1, than ASRock's panel claims).

There are some major caveats, though.

First, ASRock's product page says you have to attach the screen to a transparent glass side panel.

The Taiwan-based company, which is known for selling DIY PC parts, also says the 13.3-inch Side Panel Kit will work on "most" ATX, Mini-ITX, and Micro-ATX PC cases. As any PC builder will assure you, compatibility with "most" PC cases does not mean compatibility with them all.

Further, for power and data, ASRock's display must connect to a motherboard via Embedded DisplayPort (eDP), a rarity among desktops, considering it was made for embedded displays, such as those in laptops. According to Tom's Hardware, this limits the display to people with an ASRock motherboard, and there are fewer than 10 ASRock motherboards with eDP. And because the connector includes power as well, there are no readily available adapters, either.

Those are enough caveats to make this product impractical for most users, but it's still a neat idea. The kit provides a secondary monitor without requiring additional space, providing a convenient place to display things like a Slack chat or to stream video while you work. On its product page, ASRock says the display could be used to watch video guides or streaming for gamers.

The kit also provides flexibility. Theoretically, you could use it on multiple monitors, assuming everything's still compatible. That's different from iBuyPower's Snowblind S PC case, which has a 19-inch, 1280x1024 transparent LCD display on the side. However, the transparent panel doesn't appear to have the strongest image quality and is also meant to showcase PC components, which are encouraged to be white or silver, to help images on the display pop.

Today, the options for desktop side-panel monitors are limited, and available products carry caveats galore. ASRock's 13.3-inch Panel Kit isn't suitable for most. But it's nice to see companies exploring creative ways to bring more pixels to cramped spaces.

Laptop users already have more options. Take the NexPad, for instance. Announced in October, it's a 12-inch IPS display that's meant to sit on top of a laptop display for more vertical screen space. While ASRock's kit isn't as simple as the NexPad, perhaps it will help pave the way for more versatile solutions for desktop users.

We've reached out to ASRock about availability and pricing.