I have AR Glasses which plug into my 5-year-old Samsung A20+ phone's USB port. They provide a huge screen which is high resolution and is very visible. I use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Samsung has a desktop system called “DeX”. The applications on the phone such as the Chrome Browser, Edge, Microsoft Word, Excel, and etc., etc... work basically the same as they do on Windows
I can use the same glasses with a mini-PC but I usually plug in a portable monitor that can get both its power and video signal from a USB C cable when running Windows. It typically needs a separate HDMI cable with most versions of Linux.
When I am on the road. I run the entire setup either by plugging it into a cigarette lighter adapter in the vehicle, or using a small 10 AH LiFePO4 battery which weighs a little more than 2 pounds. The entire setup weighs about the same as a laptop, but is less convenient to pack around and assemble. So, I usually just use a laptop.
But I often set up a small office in the back of my Ford Explorer when my wife has hours long appointments. I usually use the LiFePO4 battery even with a laptop to make sure that I do not run down the car battery after hours of use. And the mini-PCs and portable monitor work well in this situation.
I am going to have a whole new reason to use a mini-PC in the back of the Explorer starting on Sunday. I ordered a mini-PC that Grok tells me should provide a decent experience running Microsoft Flight Simulator. My gaming laptop uses a lot of power when running Microsoft Flight Simulator. It has a pretty big battery built in but I have to take along a battery from my eBike and my 48V inverter to use it in the back of the Explorer to use it for more than a short time.
The new little mini-PC will be much more energy efficient and should run fine using my cigarette lighter adapter to power it and the monitor, or my AR glasses. But I will let a couple people here who were interested know how this works out. When I am using Microsoft Flight Simulator on the road I use the 2020 version because 2024 is and extreme data hog while at this point it finally does provide a slightly better experience.
Here is the mini-PC that I purchased last night to do this...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FC292HNC
This is the monitor that I use with it on the road:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPGYRL4C
This is the mouse and keyboard:
So the more powerful mini-PC that I purchased the other night on Amazon for $338.99 arrived today. The first thing that I do is make an image of the hard drive (NVME) of any new computer. The quickest and easiest way to do this with this computer was to take the case apart and insert an additional NVME and then boot with Hirens BootCD PE and make an image using one of the programs in the disk imaging menu. I usually use Macrium Reflect and save the image to a file on the 2nd drive. All of this is of course free.
https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
I am used to using my very powerful gaming laptop with Microsoft Fight Simulator 2024. It runs very smoothy at the highest detail and resolution with the gaming laptop. In the past I have used Flight Simulators with much less capable computers. It always takes a bit of effort to find the best display settings. This mini-PC runs MSFS 2024 just fine without any warnings when you start it up, it does not run as smoothly as with my more powerful gaming computer which has a very capable Nvidia GPU and 13th Generation Core I7. But MSFS 2025 is not maxing out the CPU or the GPU the way that I currently have it setup.