I have spent some time testing Continuum on a Lumia 950 using the wired dock as well as the ScreenBeam Mini Continuum Edition wireless dock.
Here are my notes.
Wired dock
Solid and straightforward. I plugged the wired dock into power, into my phone, and into my display. I tried a wired keyboard, a wireless keyboard/mouse (using a proprietary 2.4GHz adapter) and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. All of these scenarios worked splendidly.
Streamed video was smooth. With no competition for wireless spectrum (between data WiFi and display WiDi), "smooth like butter" comes to mind.
The only negative experience I had here is that plugging a TV in via HDMI resulted in an overscanned (instead of underscanned) image, so the four edges of the display were off-screen, making it difficult to press the start button. I was able to fix this using a configuration settings on the TV but I could not find an option to fix this on the phone. For comparison, the wireless dock automatically scaled the screen perfectly on the first try.
The wired dock also charges your phone which is a nice bonus if you are using Continuum for long periods of time. The tethered cable connection makes using apps on the phone a little less pleasurable since there is a cable in the way of one hand when typing.
Wireless dock
Wireless is pretty magical. You have to click on the Continuum app to start the wireless connection, and there were no defaults for protecting the display from random users--but that latter issue may be solved through a configuration tool that I do not know about.
As I understand it, your phone and Miracast are both going to use the same frequenc(ies). So if you want to use 2.4 GHz or if you want to use 5 GHz, be sure to connect to your Wi-Fi network using the desired frequency before connecting your wireless dock adapter.
My experience using wireless Continuum at 2.4 GHz was okay but not stellar. I was able to connect but I immediately noticed quite a bit of latency (lag). I estimate several hundred milliseconds. But the bigger issue I had was that, while testing the ScreenBeam with my laptop, halfway through streaming a video my Wi-Fi connection (on a high-end consumer Wi-Fi access point) started struggling. So I disconnected from both the ScreenBeam and my Wi-Fi access point, changed to 5 GHz, and life got a whole lot better.
At 5 GHz, the display latency went from very noticeable to almost imperceptible. With 802.11n, I could not detect any lag when using my keyboard or mouse with Continuum. To be clear there is a tiny bit of lag, but it is probably in the low ~100ms range. This is very reasonable for everyday work scenarios.
The one remaining negative experience with wireless Continuum is in regards to streaming video. Simply put, I could not get the same quality of streaming video over Miracast as I could with the wired connection. Watching Netflix over the wireless connection resulted in a lower quality (lower bit rate-looking) image, especially noticeable during scene changes (possibly due to the inability to compress content-rich key frames). Of course I was also sharing bandwidth between Wi-Fi and wireless Continuum--but since a Netflix stream is only around 6 Mbps the reduced available bandwidth should not have been a major issue.
One really nice thing about the ScreenBeam Mini2 Continuum Edition is that it includes a special cable with a USB connection for your keyboard/mouse. I plugged my keyboard/mouse's 2.4 GHz wireless adapter into it. This let me have a wireless display, wireless mouse and wireless keyboard in Continuum mode. I also tried plugging my keyboard/mouse's 2.4 GHz wireless adapter directly into the phone (using a USB-C to USB-A adapter) and that worked fine too. Of course you cannot charge your phone via USB if the USB port is occupied by a single peripheral--so having the wireless keyboard and mouse feature with wireless Continuum is very welcome.
Just for fun, I also tried plugging a flash drive into the wireless Continuum dock adapter. That did not work. I assume that the wireless dock is bridging the USB HID profile of keyboard and mice into UIBC (User Input/Interface Back Channel) or UoIP (USB over IP)--and can only handle HID devices. This means that a gamepad might work in addition to keyboard, mice, trackballs, trackpads and such. If UoIP is being used on the backend it's even possible that proprietary "driverless" USB HID devices will work with their respective Windows 10 apps. But the USB port on the wireless dock is really meant for keyboards and pointing devices.
Overall winner
Wired wins. The wireless capability is pretty awesome and, when used with a 5GHz signal, reasonably responsive. But a wired connection provided more consistent video quality, especially when showing videos, and a more PC-like experience.
That said, for Office and pretty much anything other than HD streaming video, wireless Continuum (especially at 5GHz) is pretty compelling.
Here are my notes.
Wired dock
Solid and straightforward. I plugged the wired dock into power, into my phone, and into my display. I tried a wired keyboard, a wireless keyboard/mouse (using a proprietary 2.4GHz adapter) and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. All of these scenarios worked splendidly.
Streamed video was smooth. With no competition for wireless spectrum (between data WiFi and display WiDi), "smooth like butter" comes to mind.
The only negative experience I had here is that plugging a TV in via HDMI resulted in an overscanned (instead of underscanned) image, so the four edges of the display were off-screen, making it difficult to press the start button. I was able to fix this using a configuration settings on the TV but I could not find an option to fix this on the phone. For comparison, the wireless dock automatically scaled the screen perfectly on the first try.
The wired dock also charges your phone which is a nice bonus if you are using Continuum for long periods of time. The tethered cable connection makes using apps on the phone a little less pleasurable since there is a cable in the way of one hand when typing.
Wireless dock
Wireless is pretty magical. You have to click on the Continuum app to start the wireless connection, and there were no defaults for protecting the display from random users--but that latter issue may be solved through a configuration tool that I do not know about.
As I understand it, your phone and Miracast are both going to use the same frequenc(ies). So if you want to use 2.4 GHz or if you want to use 5 GHz, be sure to connect to your Wi-Fi network using the desired frequency before connecting your wireless dock adapter.
My experience using wireless Continuum at 2.4 GHz was okay but not stellar. I was able to connect but I immediately noticed quite a bit of latency (lag). I estimate several hundred milliseconds. But the bigger issue I had was that, while testing the ScreenBeam with my laptop, halfway through streaming a video my Wi-Fi connection (on a high-end consumer Wi-Fi access point) started struggling. So I disconnected from both the ScreenBeam and my Wi-Fi access point, changed to 5 GHz, and life got a whole lot better.
At 5 GHz, the display latency went from very noticeable to almost imperceptible. With 802.11n, I could not detect any lag when using my keyboard or mouse with Continuum. To be clear there is a tiny bit of lag, but it is probably in the low ~100ms range. This is very reasonable for everyday work scenarios.
The one remaining negative experience with wireless Continuum is in regards to streaming video. Simply put, I could not get the same quality of streaming video over Miracast as I could with the wired connection. Watching Netflix over the wireless connection resulted in a lower quality (lower bit rate-looking) image, especially noticeable during scene changes (possibly due to the inability to compress content-rich key frames). Of course I was also sharing bandwidth between Wi-Fi and wireless Continuum--but since a Netflix stream is only around 6 Mbps the reduced available bandwidth should not have been a major issue.
One really nice thing about the ScreenBeam Mini2 Continuum Edition is that it includes a special cable with a USB connection for your keyboard/mouse. I plugged my keyboard/mouse's 2.4 GHz wireless adapter into it. This let me have a wireless display, wireless mouse and wireless keyboard in Continuum mode. I also tried plugging my keyboard/mouse's 2.4 GHz wireless adapter directly into the phone (using a USB-C to USB-A adapter) and that worked fine too. Of course you cannot charge your phone via USB if the USB port is occupied by a single peripheral--so having the wireless keyboard and mouse feature with wireless Continuum is very welcome.
Just for fun, I also tried plugging a flash drive into the wireless Continuum dock adapter. That did not work. I assume that the wireless dock is bridging the USB HID profile of keyboard and mice into UIBC (User Input/Interface Back Channel) or UoIP (USB over IP)--and can only handle HID devices. This means that a gamepad might work in addition to keyboard, mice, trackballs, trackpads and such. If UoIP is being used on the backend it's even possible that proprietary "driverless" USB HID devices will work with their respective Windows 10 apps. But the USB port on the wireless dock is really meant for keyboards and pointing devices.
Overall winner
Wired wins. The wireless capability is pretty awesome and, when used with a 5GHz signal, reasonably responsive. But a wired connection provided more consistent video quality, especially when showing videos, and a more PC-like experience.
That said, for Office and pretty much anything other than HD streaming video, wireless Continuum (especially at 5GHz) is pretty compelling.
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