Air Display for Android + Toshiba Excite 13 = Mobile Productivity

Switching to a single monitor is one of the biggest productivity killers for me, but with Air Display I don’t have to settle for a single monitor while working on the go.

I’ve used Air Display with the iPad, but with the arrival of the Toshiba Excite 13 , a 13-inch Android 4.0 tablet with a 1600 x 900 resolution I couldn’t resist leaving the house to test it out.

I spent this afternoon working in a local coffee shop with the Excite 13 as a second monitor for chat and web pages. It proved invaluable while I was on a Google Hangout with Xavier and wanted to look up additional information and stay in touch with the rest of our team.

Air Display is a $5 Android app that turns tablets into a second monitor. The service works on Mac or PC and is perfect for chat windows, email and browsers. I wouldn’t recommend it for movies, but for mostly static content it works great.

The experience is even better on the Toshiba Excite 13 because it offers a huge second display. The 1600 x 900 resolution is really amazing on the tablet, and super useful when you use it as a second display.

I am using Air Display and the Toshiba Excite 13 to monitor site stats and as a monitor for messages on the Mac.

This solution is nicer than a USB powered second display in my opinion because it can act as a tablet when it is not in use as a monitor and it is much more portable than the second monitor Kevin Purcell reviewed at Notebooks.com recently.

Have you turned your tablet into a 2nd display? How do you like it?