New Director’s Monitor – Portkeys HS7T II Review

I’ve recently upgraded my Director’s Monitor to the Portkeys HS7T II and wanted to share my thoughts, and create this review about the monitor.

Choosing a Monitor

I was after replacing my old (now defunct) 7″ Director’s Monitor that used to live in a Petrol Bag. Moving with the times I was keen to get down with the cool kids and have a cage monitor setup, I also had a few key ‘features’ I wanted to monitor to offer…

‘Affordable’
Hi Bright – Viewable Outside
Durable – Metal Construction
LUT Support
Waveform
Ideally ‘NOT’ touch screen
HDMI & SDI Inputs
Mountable in a ‘Cage’
Mains/D-Tap Power Input

Portkeys Director's Monitor with Proaim Cage

After taking a look online I could see there was a very clear price difference between the ‘higher end’ brands such as SmallHD & Atomos and the more ‘affordable brands’ like Lilliput, Feelword & Portkeys. As the monitor is primary for the Director to check framing, the benefits of some of the higher brands would probably not be used, therefore I took a deeper look at the affordable options!

If you’d like to take a look at the Portkeys HS7T II on Amazon check out the link below. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09DPT1MWM?ie=UTF8&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=danmearstv-21&linkId=73bdfa4fdd61581fad28f9ac9ff912a6&language=en_GB&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Usability

The monitor is easy to use, with buttons and a tog dial for scrolling through the menus, not touch screen in sight which is great! It comes packaged with a D-Tap power cable which is great, as I intend to use V-Lok batteries in a cage to power the monitor.

The monitor is well built too, with a metal construction.

Functions

The monitor offers the usual picture settings such as Brightness, Contrast, Chroma, Sharpness & Tint, allowing the monitor to be fairly easily calibrated with colour bars. It also offers a manual setting of White Balance which I found useful to ‘match’ the monitor to my Sony FX9 V/F and SWIT monitor, I always hate it when you look at different monitors and the pictures are all different! I think that’s another blog post! An unusual feature is that these settings are independent for the SDI and HDMI inputs, allowing separate calibration if required, or just to trip you up when you ‘try another cable’.

I first thought the user functions were are a bit restrictive compared to other monitors out there… for instance I couldn’t work out how to change the colour or intensity of the ‘Peaking’ function. Equally the ‘Waveform’ was only displaying on the bottom right of the picture. However I’d not realised you could hold down the function button to adjust some of these settings! Allowing you to move the waveform or colour/intensity of the peaking.

Hi-Bright was a key feature for me, allowing the monitor to be viewed outside. Unusually this feature is implemented as a 3 step option ‘Low, Medium, High’, rather than a gradual scale. The ‘Low’ option is similar to my normal monitors and suspect the monitor will remain on this setting for the majority of my shoots. The ‘High’ setting offers view-ability outside in the UK on an overcast day. I have created a small sun hood just to help on those rare occasions!

The screen ‘protector’ appears to be a hard plastic, held in place with 4 external screws. My hope is this offers some protection from the LCD and also is perhaps user replaceable if required.

Cage

I was keen to mount my new Director’s monitor in a cage. I took a look at different options out there and decided upon the Proaim Director’s Monitor Cage. Apparently this is a direct copy of an early version of Wooden Camera’s Cage. It’s one of the most affordable options and includes the V-Mount Battery Plate – which is handy!

It took a while to get the setup how I wanted it, including integration with my wireless video receiver, however its a really neat setup and ‘ready to go’ as soon as I arrive on location, just add a battery!

If you’d like to take a look at the ProAim Director’s Monitor Cage on Amazon check out the link below. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01ANNYP22?ie=UTF8&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=danmearstv-21&linkId=e90f4d106ddf9a8a8570eb700bdb15b2&language=en_GB&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Overview

Affordable, robust and ideal for the owner operator. I’m really happy with my purchase of the Portkeys HS7T II monitor, I hope this review gives you a little insight into it’s use in the field!