The new monitor that will become front and centre of your workflow

But it does force me to touch-type properly, and moreover it does tell you something about what Espresso Display, a Sydney start-up backed by Richard White of WiseTech fame, has managed to achieve with this remarkable little screen.

(Actually, it’s not so little. 17.3 inches is pretty huge for a portable display, and carrying it around isn’t nearly as effortless as with Espresso’s previous, 15-inch models. The new model wouldn’t fit into my 15-inch computer bag when I recently travelled with it, and I had to pack it in with my clothes. Part of the cost of owning this display might well be a bag upgrade. But it would be well worth it.)

Coupled with a suite of software tools that come with the display, the digitiser- and touchscreen-enabled 17 Pro brings a whole new level of functionality to the PC they’re attached to, particularly if that PC is an Apple laptop or desktop computer, which sadly doesn’t offer touchscreen functionality the way Windows computers have for decades now.

I can now open and close apps on my MacBook, scroll up and down through websites, swipe from desktop to desktop, all with my fingers, exactly the way nature (but sadly not Apple) intended you to use a computer.

Simply by plugging this screen into the USB-C port on my MacBook (and turning my head off to the left), my whole PC experience has ratcheted up a level.

But even for Windows users, the screen itself can be a great addition, especially if you get the add-on Espresso Pen and use it like a much-more-expensive Wacom digitiser.

(Indeed, the folding, magnetic stand you can – and really must – get for the Espresso 17 Pro even has a little tab that you can pop up to lock the screen at the 18-degree angle favoured by drafting tables.)

One of the apps that comes with the screen is Jot, a simple pen drawing app that among other things will overlay other apps, and allow you to draw into them. I’ve been using the “Magic Jot” feature over Slack and WhatsApp, for example, and using it to send written notes to people.

Jot is still in beta, and it’s got a level of bugginess that makes it feel more like an alpha release, but it’s got enormous potential, especially for anyone who often needs to quickly annotate or mark up documents with handwriting.

The screen itself feels very solid, though. It’s Espresso Display’s third attempt at a portable monitor, and that experience shows through a raft of little improvements, like the way you can now use either of the screen’s two USB-C ports to attach to your computer (previously, only one of them carried a video signal, and the other one was only for power), or the way the magnets in the portable stand are now much stronger and the screen doesn’t slip down nearly as much.

We did have to calibrate the colour temperature of the Espresso 17 Pro on one Mac we tested it with (though, weirdly, not on another Mac, where it was perfect out of the box), but other than that it looks very much like the display that comes with the MacBook itself.

Previous Espresso displays were only HD, and the move to 4K is a welcome improvement, though on a 17.3-inch screen that can be a little too much resolution, producing typeface that’s a little too small to read. We’ve settled on scaling the resolution back a notch or two, giving us an incredibly sharp display that still has plenty of real estate, and yet has buttons and widgets big enough to control with the touch of a finger.

That’s why you’ll find this thing drifting forward on your desk the more you use it. You bring it closer so you can touch it more, and so you can actually read it.

Likes: Transforms the way you use a laptop, especially if it’s a MacBook.
Dislikes: The apps are still quite buggy, but they are in beta so no complaints yet. Required calibration on one Mac we tested it on.
Price: $1499 for the screen; $129 for the magnetic stand (a must); $119 for the pen; $199 for the matching battery pack.