The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is a mediocre 13 inch portable monitor with a 1080p IPS screen. Like most portable monitors, it's designed for extra productivity when you're on the go. It has a unique design, with a case that mounts on the back of your laptop and slides out, so you can keep the display mounted on your laptop, and it's always ready to go. Unfortunately, like most portable monitors, it delivers a sub-par gaming experience, with a terrible response time and no gaming features. It's also not a good choice for anyone who requires accurate colors, as it has a narrow color gamut even in SDR, so colors can appear dull and muted with some content.
We buy and test more than 30 monitors each year, with units that we buy completely on our own, without any cherry-picked units or samples. We put a lot into each unbiased, straight-to-the-point review, and there's a whole process from purchasing to publishing, involving multiple teams and people. We do more than just use the monitor for a week; we use specialized and custom tools to measure various aspects with objective data-based results. We also consider multiple factors before making any recommendations, including the monitor's cost, its performance against the competition, and whether or not it's easy to find.
Our Verdict
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is a mediocre monitor overall. It's best-suited for extra productivity when working on the go, like in a coffee shop, as it gives you a bit more screen real estate to work with. It's a sub-par gaming monitor with a terrible response time and no gaming features. It's mediocre for watching movies or media creation, and it has a limited color gamut, even in SDR, so colors can appear muted.
- Excellent text clarity.
- Excellent gray uniformity.
- Terrible response time.
- Low contrast.
- Not very bright.
- Text clarity changes depending on which side of the screen it's mounted on.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is an okay office monitor. The small size isn't great for a main display, but it's useful for a bit of extra screen space to work when you're on the go, and the high pixel density delivers excellent text clarity. It has excellent gray uniformity and great gradient handling. It has good reflection handling, but low peak brightness, so glare can be an issue in a bright room. Unfortunately, it might be disappointing if your work requires accurate colors, as it has a very limited color space, even in SDR.
- Excellent text clarity.
- Excellent gray uniformity.
- Colors appear dull and muted.
- Low contrast.
- Not very bright.
- Text clarity changes depending on which side of the screen it's mounted on.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is a sub-par gaming monitor. It has low input lag, so your actions are in sync with the action on-screen, which is great. Unfortunately, it has a terrible response time, so fast-moving objects have a very long blur trail behind them. It's also limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, and it doesn't support any advanced gaming features like a variable refresh rate.
- Low input lag.
- Terrible response time.
- Low contrast.
- Limited 60Hz refresh rate and no VRR.
- Not very bright.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is a mediocre monitor for watching videos. It has low input lag, good reflection handling, and excellent gray uniformity, as well as okay viewing angles. Unfortunately, it has low contrast, so it's not a great choice for dark-room viewing, but it also isn't very bright, so clarity in a bright room can also be an issue.
- Excellent gray uniformity.
- Great gradient handling.
- Colors appear dull and muted.
- Low contrast.
- Not very bright.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is a mediocre monitor for media creators. The compact size and high pixel density can be useful for a bit of extra screen space when you're on the go, and it has okay viewing angles. It has excellent gray uniformity and great gradient handling, so you don't have to worry about banding or dirty screen effect. Unfortunately, it has a limited color gamut, even in SDR, and colors can appear muted.
- Excellent gray uniformity.
- Great gradient handling.
- Colors appear dull and muted.
- Low contrast.
- Mediocre accuracy out of the box.
- Not very bright.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus doesn't support HDR.
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Differences Between Sizes And Variants
We tested the 13.3 inch Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus, but it's also available in a smaller 12.5 inch size, known as the Mobile Pixels DUEX Lite. There's an older model, known as the DUEX Pro, but it appears to have been discontinued, although it's still available from a few online retailers. We're not quite sure what the difference is between the DUEX Lite and the DUEX Pro. We expect our results to be valid for all three models, but there are a few minor design differences. Mobiles Pixels also makes another line of similar models, known as the Mobile Pixels TRIO. The TRIO models are nearly identical but are design to be used in pairs, for a triple-monitor setup with your laptop.
| Model | Size | Native Resolution | Max Refresh rate | Panel Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DUEX Lite | 12.5" | 1080p | 60Hz | IPS |
| DUEX Plus | 13.3" | 1080p | 60Hz | IPS |
| DUEX Pro | 12.5" | 1080p | 60HZ | IPS |
If you come across a different type of panel or your Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus doesn't correspond to our review, let us know, and we'll update the review. Note that some tests, like gray uniformity, may vary between individual units.
We don't know when our unit was manufactured, but you can see the label here.
Popular Monitor Comparisons
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is a mediocre portable monitor with a unique design. It can help improve productivity when you're on the go, but it's not very good overall.
For more options, check our picks for the best budget monitors, the best USB-C monitors, and the best office monitors.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is better than the MSI Optix MAG161V. The Mobile Pixels is more accurate out of the box, has better reflection handling, better contrast, and slightly better viewing angles. The MSI, on the other hand, has a larger screen, and it feels much better built.
The Mobile Pixels TRIO and the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus are very similar overall. The TRIO has slightly better viewing angles, higher peak brightness, and slightly better reflection handling, so it's more capable of overcoming glare in a bright room. On the other hand, the DUEX Plus has much lower input lag. The biggest difference between them is in the design, as the DUEX is designed to be used as a single additional monitor, whereas the TRIO is designed to be used either as a single additional monitor or as a pair of additional monitors.
The Lepow Z1 is slightly better than the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus, but the difference is extremely minor. The Lepow supports HDR, but there's practically no benefit to using HDR, as it can't get very bright in HDR, it has low contrast, and it can't display a wide color gamut. The Lepow also has better gradient handling and a slightly larger screen.
The ASUS ZenScreen Go MB16AHP is better than the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus. The ASUS has a much faster response time, higher peak brightness, a larger screen, and slightly better viewing angles. The Mobile Pixels has better reflection handling and slightly better black uniformity, but this can vary between individual units.
Test Results
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has a unique design. Instead of a traditional stand, it's designed to attach to the back of your laptop and slide out. Once installed, it can be rotated to almost any position. The stand can also be used to support the monitor in a standalone position, but only in a portrait orientation. There's a kickstand available from Mobile Pixels that supports the monitor in landscape orientation, if you prefer to use it like a standard monitor.
The stand is very different from most monitors. It's normally not visible, as it's designed to attach to the back of your laptop. It can also be used to support the monitor in portrait orientation if you prefer to leave it detached from your laptop. There's a kickstand available from Mobile Pixels that supports the monitor in landscape orientation, if you prefer to use it like a standard monitor.
Due to the unique design of this monitor, it doesn't really have traditional ergonomic adjustments. Once mounted on a laptop, it can be rotated to multiple viewing positions at up to a 270° angle, even facing the opposite direction of the laptop screen:
While it's mounted to the case it can't be tilted, but it'll follow the tilt angle of whatever it's attached to, so you can just tilt your laptop screen to whatever's the most comfortable.
The back of the monitor is pretty plain. As there's no traditional stand on this monitor, there's no cable management.
The borders are surprisingly thick. The measurements here are for the thinnest borders, which are on the left and right side of the screen when it's in landscape orientation. The top and bottom of the screen have slightly thicker borders, at 0.47 inch (1.2cm).
The thickness of the display with the stand was measured with it attached to a laptop, but from the back of the laptop to the back of the screen. It represents the additional thickness added when this monitor is mounted to a laptop. The thickness without the stand is the thickness of the thickest part of the display itself, not counting the housing that attaches it to the back of the laptop. The thickness of the laptop screen isn't included in either measurement.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus feels pretty cheap overall. The main frame around the display is entirely plastic; it doesn't seem very solid and has a lot of flex to it. The panel itself tends to flex even when navigating the OSD with the buttons. The slider on the case doesn't feel very solid either, and the hinge that allows you to rotate the display feels flimsy as well. Finally, the adhesive that holds the magnets for the case on the back of your laptop isn't designed to be reused, so if you need to move the screen between laptops, you might want to consider swapping the adhesive pads (extras are included in the box).
We took a few extra photos to show some of the areas that stood out to us during our testing:
Unfortunately, the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has mediocre contrast, so blacks look gray in a dark room. These results are roughly what we expected from an IPS panel, but contrast can vary between individual units.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus doesn't have a local dimming feature. The video is for reference only, so you can see how the local dimming feature on other displays compares to one without local dimming.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has disappointing peak brightness in SDR. It's not bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room or outdoors. On the other hand, there's very little variation in brightness with different content, which is great.
These measurements were taken after calibration, with the Temperature setting set to 'Off', and brightness at its max. The peak brightness can change depending on which mode you're using.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus doesn't support HDR.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has okay horizontal viewing angles. At moderate angles the brightness starts to decrease and gamma shifts, causing colors to appear washed out.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has alright vertical viewing angles. Like the horizontal viewing angles, at moderate angles, the image appears washed out as brightness decreases and gamma shifts.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has excellent gray uniformity. The sides of the screen are a bit darker than the center, but there's almost no dirty screen effect. In near-black scenes, the uniformity is even better, with no noticeable issues. Gray uniformity can vary between units, but it's rarely an issue on most recent monitors.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has decent black uniformity. The entire screen is a bit cloudy due to the low contrast ratio. Unfortunately, there's significant backlight bleed from all sides.
Unfortunately, the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has mediocre accuracy out of the box. White balance is great, with no noticeable issues, but all colors are noticeable inaccurate. Gamma follows closet to the sRGB target curve in dark scenes, but bright scenes are too bright. Finally, the color temperature is a bit warm, giving everything a yellowish tint.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has much better accuracy after calibration. Gamma follows the sRGB target curve almost perfectly, and any remaining issues with the white balance aren't visible to the naked eye. Unfortunately, there are still noticeable inaccuracies in most colors, mainly due to the limited color gamut of this display. Pure blues and magentas are the worst.
This monitor has almost no picture settings in the on-screen display, but we were still able to calibrate it using DDC/CI from a PC. Unfortunately, if you don't have the equipment/software to do that, there's no way to calibrate it or adjust most basic picture settings.
You can download our ICC profile calibration here. This is provided for reference only and shouldn't be used, as the calibration values vary per individual unit due to manufacturing tolerances, even for the same model.
Unfortunately, the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has a sub-par SDR color gamut. It has mediocre coverage of the sRGB color space used by most desktop and web content, so colors in most content appear dull and muted. Coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space is even worse, so content creators should probably stay away from this model. This is far worse than most desktop monitors we've tested but similar to many of the other portable monitors we've tested, including the Mobile Pixels TRIO.
Unfortunately, the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has disappointing color volume in SDR. It's severely limited by the incomplete SDR color gamut, and it can't display saturated colors at low luminance levels due to the low contrast ratio.
This monitor doesn't support HDR.
This monitor doesn't support HDR.
There are no signs of temporary image retention on our unit, but this can vary between individual units.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has surprisingly great gradient handling. There's some banding in darker shades, but overall it's not that noticeable.
This test was run with the color depth at 8-bit, as our test laptop for 10-bit gradients doesn't support USB-C, and this monitor only accepts a 10-bit signal over USB-C. We don't expect this to make any difference to our test results. We still took the 10-bit photo, you can see it here, but there's excessive dithering due to the configuration of that PC.
There are no signs of color bleed on our Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus, but this can vary between individual units.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has good reflection handling. The matte finish does a good job of reducing the intensity of direct reflections. Due to the low brightness of the display, we still wouldn't recommend using this monitor in a bright room. Note that due to the small size of the display, the reflection photos look different from most monitors we've tested. This doesn't impact our test results.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has excellent text clarity. We recommend running the ClearType wizard for the best results (top photo). In apps that don't support ClearType, or if you decide not to use it, text still looks good, but diagonal lines or curved lines in text are a bit jagged (bottom photo).
Because the display auto-rotates depending on which side of the screen it's on, if you mount it on the left of your laptop it'll have a BGR sub-pixel layout. Text clarity is a bit worse in that configuration, as many Windows programs aren't able to correct for that, even after running the ClearType settings.
| Response Time Setting | Response Time Chart | Response Time Tables | Motion Blur Photo |
| Default | Chart | Table | Photo |
Unfortunately, the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has a terrible response time, resulting in a long blur trail behind fast-moving objects. Fast-moving objects look blurry, so this isn't a great choice for streaming sports or playing games. Unlike most monitors, the level of overdrive can't be adjusted.
The backlight is nearly flicker-free. It flickers at such an extremely high frequency of about 10kHz, it's unlikely that anyone would ever notice this or be bothered by it.
This monitor doesn't have an optional black frame insertion (BFI) feature.
Unfortunately, the Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus is limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, and it doesn't support any variable refresh rate technologies (VRR), like FreeSync or G-SYNC.
The Mobile Pixels DUEX Plus has excellent low input lag. It's much better than the Mobile Pixels TRIO, resulting in a more responsive user experience.
The small size of this monitor doesn't deliver very much screen real estate to work with. Since it's meant for extra screen space when working, this is normal. The pixel density is roughly the same as a 27 inch 4k monitor, resulting in clear text and a sharp image.
This is a very basic monitor with few additional features. There's automatic rotation feature that automatically rotates the screen depending on which side of the screen it's placed.
