Touch screen was damaged upon arrival. I ended up getting a replacement thinking it was a fluke accident. The exact same damaged area was on the other screen too! The only reason the monitor has this rating is because aside from the damage in the same spots on two unopened products, the monitor does work and it has helped my workflow.
The dead pixels are completely black and do not show up on my image. But if you look closely or at an angle on the monitor, you can see the dead spot.
N
ND
★★★★★
Bright, Clear Field Monitor Perfect for On-the-Go Shooter
The Portkeys PT6’s 5.2" screen is bright and sharp, making it easy to check focus and exposure outdoors. It’s lightweight and responsive, great for content creators who need a reliable monitor on set. The 600 nits brightness really helps in bright conditions.
D
Dennis Tulugaq
★★★★★
Dead pixel and dying screen
While the quality itself is nice, I was unfortunate to have a dead pixel and a dying screen on the right side.
So naturally I'm not happy.
T
tangozebra
★★★★★
sharp & lightweight PT6 5.2inch
Pros:
-User interface has greatly improved over previous generation and is much more intuitive.
-No fans! Nice and quiet.
- The false color referencing is nice. Zebras & peaking are easy to dial in.
- The screen is significantly sharper than the PT5.
- Nice focus grid feature.
- Super lightweight and nimble especially running power via usb A.
- Finish on material is great!
Cons:
- not bright enough. - ( EDIT i shot middle of the day in the desert, with the sun hood it’s not that bad. The extra 100 nits over the previous smaller models seems to be just enough but just for the cam op )
- My first unit had a defective usb A port causing no charge no start. Had to return immediately.
- The cold shoe swivel head it comes with fits loosely in every single application across multiple PortKey monitors mounts & shoes. I’ve little play wouldn’t be that big of a deal but it’s very obvious when you have a Matt box. A little gaff tape is the remedy or buy a better mount with adjustable tension and precise machining.
- You have to disconnect the cables for the sun hood retainers to fit. This restart/reset camera.
Note: turn OFF your CAMERA FIRST then power down monitor. Power MONITOR FIRST then power camera.
This is to avoid burning your boards typically only a problem with HDMI look it up, after getting a dead board and reading some reviews I’ll be following this procedure religiously
H
Happy Customer
★★★★★
It’s ok.
The screen is not as bright as I would like it to be when using it outside. The hood is flimsy but the screen is a nice size and it performs well. 3 out of 5.
M
marlon st brice
★★★★★
Defective product
Looks like it has some great potential and I’ve used other portkeys monitors before but this one arrived defective and broken. First day of use, powered on for the first time and there’s these constant strobing lines on the screen. Form factor seems light weight and great but I can’t use it
@AaronOverEverything on YouTube
★★★★★
Portkeys PT6 (NOTHING “budget” about it)
Absolutely nothing budget about this monitor. Screen quality is stellar & more options than needed in this versatile , slim, compact monitor. If you’d like to know the “feel” of this thing, pick up your iPhone Pro Max, and understand that the build quality is very much comparable. Exceptional monitor. Also, the boot-up time is pretty dang fast! A must have for any videographer. Save some money, & reap the benefits.
(full review on channel below)
YouTube.com/ItsBeerDrank
Instagram | @itsbeerdrank
Dan Wang
★★★★★
Solid On-Camera Monitor
Solid little field monitor that works great on a gimbal or on top of the cold shoe of the camera itself. I bought it for $125 and at that price, it's a fantastic deal. Comes with a sunshade, adjustable cold shoe mount, as well as some HDMI cables.
The great thing about this monitor is that the screen is fairly color accurate. Loading LUTs is pretty easy and the interface is intuitive. Also the build quality is light so it doesn't weigh down a gimbal or handheld rig. The touchscreen is a bit sensitive so sometimes it gets activated accidentally. My other favorite thing is that it has two battery options. Sony NPF and Canon LP-E6. The LP slot is a bit finnicky though, so I wouldn't use my good batteries on it. Regardless, a 2000mah LP battery can power the monitor for about 2-3 hours easily. If you shut off the monitor, it'll conserve power even longer because there is no phantom draw when it's off.
Lastly, the case that comes with the monitor is pretty cool. Everything fits inside including 2 LP batteries if you mount one on the monitor and remove one of the HDMI cables that you won't use. I used to not be a fan of PortKeys monitors due to the UI and color representation but now I would certainly recommend and would love to see them make a 7 inch version of this monitor.
A
Abdon Manchego
★★★★★
satisfied with the product ✨️
very small for me but it meets my expectations and for the price with everything it comes with it is very good
C
Customer K
★★★★★
Good value so far
Good: Price was right.
Unit is light and came with a mount, two hdmi cables, a hood and a nice case.
Color looks decent.
Picture looks just great (see above for comparison of viewfinder to unit image)
Saves my eyesight!
Tool menu is customizable.
Easy to use other the items listed below.
Not so good:
Take a little while to boot up
The plastic seems cheap.
There is no available cage for it that I can find. After applying one of the on-board LUTs, the unit gets stuck in black and white and I have to do a full reset to get the color back, loosing all my other settings.
I can't figure out how to display the battery level. There is an icon that shows an empty battery, but the one in it is fully charged and it shows voltage and is running fine.
Touchscreen sometimes finicky. You can swipe sideways to move between the settings and the tools, and sometimes the screen just flipped back before I could select anything. This seemed to happen after playing with the onboard LUTs and resetting fixed it. So I'm going to go ahead and said the onboard LUTs feature is essentially useless since it causes so many issues with the unit.
Disclaimer:
I haven't tried uploading my own LUTs yet.
I have only had it for a day so I can't speak to durability.
I haven't checked the audio yet either.
If it lasts a year, I'll probably get my money's worth because I will know what I'm looking for in a more expensive unit. If it last any less than that and the manufacturer doesn't repair or replace then I'd say it wasn't a good buy. I'll try to remember to update this if/when it breaksz
L
Larry Downing
★★★★★
Connectability
E
Ethan Ormeo
★★★★★
Cheapest Screen — BEST picture quality 10/10
10/10 HIGHLY RECOMMEND
**Don’t walk— RUN toward this monitor!**
This was the final piece to my full Sony Rig. I was just looking for a lightweight budget monitor and was absolutely blown away by the image and build quality, endless features and effortless user interface.
This probably sounds sponsored, but it’s not 😂
I just cannot believe this monitor is real after years of wasting money on Atmos and SmallHD monitors. This thing impressed me. Incredible.
- Battery locking mechanism is sturdy
- Image quality is immaculate
- Build quality feels expensive, yet light and compact, while offering almost full-screen real estate
- Scopes, Zebras, Focus Peaking, 3D Lut, Crosshair/Guides and dozens more features that are superior to brands that cost 20x more.
Needless to say. This is the only company I’m purchasing travel monitors from going forward. Well done. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
L
Luis Norking Poueriet
★★★★★
Best budget 5 inch monitor by far !
If you are looking for a light monitor with excellent features and at a low price, this is the best option. I Try 3 different ones from recognized brands that are around the same prices and without a doubt this is the most complete, excellent quality; far above the monitors in this price range. light, excellent packaging, very useful case, it has an adjustable mount much lighter than the smallrig, the only bad thing that could stand out is the cable that, although it is of high quality, is a bit heavy, and in my case I'm looking for a setup as light as possible. The rest 5 stars by far
Shawn Barner
★★★★★
Solid Affordable Monitor
Nice affordable 4k monitor. Needed something to upgrade to and saw a few reviews on this one. Some folks and mentioned the brightness as a con but I don’t see an issue with it. With a Sony battery this thing will stay powered for a while. I do wish it had buttons too though since I hate touch on the screen solely but other than that it’s great. I like the standard features (histogram, focus peaking and etc.) and the ability to load in LUTS for reference when shooting in LOG.
R
Rain
★★★★★
If you use canon5dmark you need mini htmi to htmi
I love it. It perfect working on my canon 5d mark4. But if you use canon5d mark4 you need to buy mini htmi to htmi cable. It doesn't include. That's way gave 4 stars.
J
Jose
★★★★★
Best Value for Your Hard Earned Cash
The Portkeys P6 is an awesome value for the performance you get. That has to be its best feature besides its size. This monitor is the perfect size for today's mirrorless cameras. It takes up almost no room in my gear back and comes included with a nice little hard case to protect it. It also features dual battery support which makes it easy and affordable to power the monitor with either Sony L series or Canon E6 batteries which are widely available and cheap. When it comes to the software features it includes almost everything you could ever want. And for the price also supports 3D LUTS. Over all these is a great little monitor and I recommend it.
S
Sindred
★★★★★
An amazing deal, especially for the price
I wanted something small that I could use with my Sony 6500 so based on the reviews I decided to go with the Portkeys P6. You can’t really get a feeling for the size of the monitor until you see it in person but let me say it is about the size of a smartphone. It was exactly what I was looking for! For the price the monitor also has many cool features like 3D LUT support and the ability to power it from the USB port. The allows me to power it either form a Sony L series battery or a large USB power bank.
The monitor is light weight but feels good and durable. The image quality is great and I didn’t notice any uniformity issues with the LCD screen. It includes a sun hood making it easy to view in direct sunlight. An added bonus is that it ships in a small hard case that will protect the monitor and still keep it small profile so it doesn’t take up much room in your gear bag. I highly recommend the P6.
J
JB
★★★★★
Great monitor for its price.
I bought this monitor after a promo in the portkeys facebook group with a discount! I didn’t really need yet another new 5” monitor. I already have their BM5 2200nits and Atomos Ninja for ProRes Raw recording. I couldn’t pass down a discount!
I must say... I am surprised on how well the monitor perform!
Pros & Cons:
Pros:
- Great quality monitor in term of the actual glass, colors are also rich and sharp.
- Built quality is not too bad for the price it’s ABS plastic and the monitor is super light for gimbal work! It’s not metal housing so it won’t be taking a beating like their BM5. but it has a rubber contour on the left & right to protect from corner bumps but also to clamp on the sunhood.
- The function buttons are ridged and has 4 short cut keys which are quiet handy.
- Power is via NPF battery or Canon LP E6 and there is even a DC input.
- Very quiet
Cons:
- Only 500nits, if it was at least 1000nits or above would be ideal. but again for the price... it’s hard to complain. But i doubt I’ll be using it on bright days.
- The swivel arm bracket isn’t a great design and the pin broke after I tried tightening it... but am getting a new one.
- Sunhood is too reflective for my liking... it should’ve had a velour type inlay to absorb more light.
- The 3button menu navigation is not ideal! too many steps to navigate... their other monitor has a 2 bottom(wheel and exit) system which is much faster to make adjustments and more intuitive.
Conclusion:
Where the monitor really surprised me are the features... it has pretty much what you gona need and more! From peaking, zebra, histogram, waveform, false color with various degree of adjustments and you can even load 3D Luts! Straight out of the box the monitor was too warm compared to my calibrated monitor I used as a comparison but I went in the menu and adjusted the colors and got it super close. The one thing that blew me away which is actually simple... by accident I chose a black and white option in the peaking short key. So when i press it... the image becomes black and white and the peaking red and after also tweaking contrast... BAM! You can actually critically pull focus! If a 7” Version with 2200nits and light weight and not noisy ever get released... am buying it as my wireless focusing monitor rig!
E
EM
★★★★★
Little powerhouse
Honestly for the money this is a solid and color accurate monitor. I mounted mine on my gimbal or give to our AC to pull focus with our wireless system. It has all the monitoring and focus checking tools needed and then some.
I really can't recommend it enough for the price. It is a great deal!
W
WhiteTeeBHF
★★★★★
Solid Monitor at a Great Price
So I already owned a BM5II from PortKeys for my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4K and I am a huge fan of that monitor.
The BM5II is what turned me onto this company originally during my search for a monitor on my first camera rig.
Fast forward to present day – I wanted to get another monitor that was affordable and wouldn't break the bank but allow to me semi-permanently mount it to my Ronin-S gimbal. My idea has worked out great so far, the P6 Monitor is super light-weight, it works with my NPF batteries and I'm getting exactly the usage out of it I was hoping to get. and I would consider it great general use monitor.
Having this as a dedicated monitor on my gimbal allows for me to switch set-ups with my camera with ease and efficiency. In the future I plan on switching this monitor over to a handheld client monitor rig for viewing purposes or follow-focus rig depending on the shoot and it feels good knowing I can get that kind of versatility out of this screen without breaking the bank.
I did mention I use this with my Pocket 4K but just in case you don't know it does not have the capability to control that camera and I knew this going into the purchase and had no expectation of it doing that, hence my BM5II purchase. PortKeys makes some great products, equally as important they have an active support and development community on Facebook that I highly recommend you join.
It is cool to see all the user feedback generated on their products in that Facebook group and then typically just weeks later you will often see some of the feedback and suggestions implemented into the new firmware update. All in all I can't say enough good about this company, they are 2 for 2 for me and I highly recommend it.
Pros:
• Lightweight
• Screen Brightness is great and gets the job done.
Cons
• None to date, will update if any develops but my expectations have been met.
Andy Salinas
★★★★★
Excelente Monitor con bastantes caracteristicas para Profesionales !!!
Todo lo que va desde el Focus Peaking, waveforms, monitorear colores falsos, y demas cosas que hace, es excelente ! ningun problema con eso.
-De estas caracteristicas, lo que mas me gusto es que puedo poner la relacion de aspecto que quiera !
-Aparte de eso, poder subir tus luts al monitor para poder ver exactamente como se veria tu toma es lo mejor, muchos monitores en este rango de precio no ofrecen eso
-El tamaño compacto que tiene el monitor es un plus para mi porque no obstruye es super liviano y se ve muy profesional
En este rango de precio hay muchos monitores definitivamente pero despues de buscar tantos y siento que tome la decision correcta !
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Taylor Wong
★★★★★
One of the best budget monitor for run-and-gun videographers
What I like about the monitor:
- Enough brightness (with the sun hood added)
- Intuitive button layout
- Light weight
- Short cable included (Nice touch)
- HDMI output port! (For client review)
What could be better is the sun hood design could be a bit hard to install, but overall super satisfying!
C
Customer
★★★★★
Perfect.
Perfect.
K
Korean Jesus
★★★★★
Budget Lut field monitor.
A great budget/starter field monitor. I was planning on buying the Xperia Pro when it came out to be my main field monitor, but it hasn't come to the market yet , so I bought this for the mean time. Its an all plastic construction, but its incredibly light weight and doesn't add any real weight to my rig, it accepts sonny NPF batteries but it also works with my canon lpe6 batteries so it works well with my run and gun P4k rig. Screen is plenty bright for a monitor in this price range the biggest plus is that it can load luts in like all of Portkeys other monitors. I love using portkeys gear, and this works flawlessly like their other gear. This will work just fine for me until the Xperia Pro launches.
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Eric K.
★★★★★
Portkeys P6 monitor, It's best for documentray and run and gun production
I own many monitors and I love Portkeys P6 monitor. I have compared it to different monitors Ninja V, BM5, and other couples more 4K monitor. I can not speak for others but for myself, this monitor has lots of good features benefits as a videographer. P6 is easy to operate, high in color reproduction accuracy, lightweight doesn't draw lots of power that means it doesn't generate heats as other monitors do. And the most important thing it only costs $170 dollars.
So on paper this looks like a good monitor. After using it, I can say it’s a great monitor, especially at the price point.
For starters, you get several HDMI cables, and hard shell case with some waterproofing, a removable sunhood, and a cold shoe mounting bracket. That’s cool.
The monitor itself is very sleek looking. Not only is it very thin, but the thin bezels make it look even better.
The panel itself offers very good color, very good off axis viewing angles, and really good brightness. It is more than bright enough for any indoor or studio shooting situation. Outdoors it will work well in the shade and can work in sunlight, but it’s not the best. The included sunshade helps a lot with that making it usable outdoors.
Power options are awesome. It can take NPF, LPE6, and DC power. Battery life is really good. With brightness on the middle setting and using a standard npf 550, I got just over 5 hours of runtime. On the brightest setting, a full NPF 550 got me a bit over 3 hours.
There are plenty of monitoring tools like waveforms (Luma and RGB) audio meters, LUT loading, etc... A lot of these options are customizable too making them even better. Great usability and works great.
One cool bonus I didn’t know was that it has an accelerometer so you can auto flip the display. For example, when I am behind the camera and monitoring, everything looks good. Using the cold shoe mount, when I go in front of the camera, flipping the monitor means everything would typically be upside down. A lot of monitors allow you to flip it but you have to dig through menus. This monitor will just do it automatically. You have to set Display Flip to Auto for it to work.
Having HDMI in and out is awesome cause I can run video from my camera, but still transmit the signal to another monitor for additional viewing.
Overall, this is a pretty killer monitor especially given the price. You get lots of great accessories, the monitor is sleek and thin, colors are good and bright, and the feature for getting a killer image work well. I would definitely recommend picking up this monitor.
D
Darren Hartman
★★★★★
Great 4K On-board Monitor at its Price Point
I got the Portkeys P6 for my Pocket 4K based on glowing reviews I've seen for their products the past year or two. Right out of the box I'm very pleased with it. How thin and lightweight it is, even with an LP-E6 battery attached, is a huge bonus to me for handheld work. I also like having multiple options to power it through USB with a powerbank as well as a DC-to-DTAP cable.
Brightness at 500 NITs is decent enough and I appreciate it comes with a sun shade for exterior shooting. I'll mainly use my articulating arm with it but the mounting bracket it comes with is solid enough as a back-up. The HDMI cables provided fits in the port snug and doesn't feel like it will come loose while shooting.
Changing the settings I was able to get the image decently close enough to the monitor on the Pocket 4K though I didn't get the monitor for color accuracy. I like that the false color has a scale when its on and the focus peaking is very easy to see. Overall I am more than pleased with the monitor and it has met my needs.
H
Hak
★★★★★
Best Bang for your buck!
I would say for starters, it is a good direction to take, a lot of features packed in this small thing and yes, it is small to the size of your phone.
Would be great if it was a touch screen though, because the earlier portkeys monitors have a touch screen like the LH5T, why not on this one? pretty much that is the only thing missing on this monitor.
Brightness of this monitor given it's price range is expected, so it is a good monitor in general.
lalcaraz
★★★★★
Nice budget monitor with lots of assist tools
Update [July 2020]: Just purchased my second monitor and I can’t be happier. My E2C is a powerful cinema camera. I’m not afraid of use manual lenses due to all the new features added to the monitor.
[May 2020]
I’ve been trying some budget monitors like the feel world and Andycine and for the first time found one that’s cheaper, lighter and with more features than the ones previously mentioned. It has lots of video assist tools, LUT support, HDMI output with LUT and two types of battery options.
Can’t go wrong buying it.
C
Customer
★★★★★
Promising if they polish the firmware.
I chose this over the Atomos and others because it’s lightweight, thin, fanless, with waveform, and full HD.
Strengths:
* The luma and RGB waveform scope is fast and smooth. Transparency can be adjusted, large or small, located in any corner.
* False color is also smooth, and the color guide can be hidden once you memorize it.
* Focus peaking has color, multiple levels of greyscale, and black mode, with options for peaking colors and thickness.
* Audio meters can be split on the sides, or both on top or bottom.
* Buttons are better than touchscreen because muscle memory learns how to navigate faster with sequences of clicks.
* Power switch is either on or off instead of a button you push and hold for seconds.
* No apparent screen flicker from poor LED backlight dimming.
* Silent with no fan noise and no beeps.
* Screen automatically reorients when you flip it upside down.
Weaknesses:
* When powering on and video signal is lost or changed there is a solid blue color. That might help people in a studio, but when the screen is in your face on a camera the sudden shift to bright blue can disrupt your vision, and cause eye pain. Especially in dim lighting, when you’re intently focused on the subtle colors and focused edges, if you need to change resolution or FPS on the camera, you’ll get hit with a flood of bright blue and your eyes have to adjust again to the darker picture.
* When you have a LUT applied, and turn on false color, when you disable false color the LUT is also disabled. You have to reenable it again by either going into the menu or assigning a function button to load the LUT.
* The luma waveform can only be in green. It’d be nice to have the choice of color.
* The histogram isn’t as smooth as the waveform, and you can only have one shown at a time.
* Focus peaking includes the OSD, so even the battery voltage will be outlined as in focus.
* It takes around 7 seconds to boot and show the video signal.
* When you flip the screen toward the front of the camera you might prefer it to be in a “mirror mode” where your left hand on the screen is on your left. To do that you need to disable auto rotation and manually flip it horizontally and vertically in the menu. But then the text on the menu will be reversed because it flips too, so there’s also a setting to flip the “on screen display” text. These settings can be saved to a separate user profile, but you do have to go into the menu each time you want to flip the screen and use your “mirror mode”. A function button can be used to flip the video, but then the text is reversed, and it requires a separate function button to flip the OSD. The solution is if they apply the manual flip settings to the auto mode, so you can customize how you want it to flip the video and OSD when it detects the physical screen is upside down.
* There’s some other quirks in the firmware where it needs to be polished more, and there’s a graphical glitch of the OSD whenever it exits.
Overall the P6 seems promising, and might be the best option in January 2020 if you prioritize light weight, silence, compact size, and smooth waveform. Hopefully they can improve the firmware, and it’s upgradable via USB, so it’s probably good enough for now.
