The Mobile Pixel Portable Monitor Will Take You Places

I recently switched from an iMac to a MacBook and while I am enjoying my new laptop, I am missing the extra screen space. So, when I got the opportunity to review the Mobile Pixel Portable Monitor I jumped at giving it a go.

I was a little reluctant at first since the monitor, which slides out of its holder, felt a little clunky and heavy to me, but I quickly started to warm up to it.

First things first, it is a pretty simple plug and play set up, electronically. You can either plug it into your computer (PC or Mac) or an Android/Samsung phone. It comes with a normal USB and a USB-C connector, and it boots up right away with connection. I did download the driver for my Mac, but I’m not sure if I needed it. I used it on two different devices, a Macbook and an Android. Both connected very easily, but let’s break down the differences below:

Connecting to a MacBook:

The Pros:

-Easy to set up and use.
-Basically doubles my screen size.

The Cons:

-My least favorite part of this monitor is that it comes with magnets that they want you to adhere to the lip of your laptop via some adhesive on the underside of them, then the magnet connects to metal on the case of the monitor. I get the concept and how this will keep your extra screen tight and in line with your laptop screen, but I’m not super comfortable gluing magnets to my brand new MacBook. Also, the whole point of having a laptop is that it is portable. I am not ready to commit to having this extra monitor on my laptop all the time. The magnets actually fall off pretty easily for the most part, which is a good and bad thing, the glue didn’t really support the weight of the monitor. But at least they were not stuck to my laptop for life! However, the magnetism is pretty strong – one of them stuck to a metal part of my laptop and I needed to use a kitchen knife to remove it. I should note that my laptop does have a case, and it still really stuck to it, these guys are pretty powerful! Maybe some people love this feature, I’m not sure, but I would have been way happier if the monitor just came with a stand that I could put right next to my laptop. My end solution was that I just propped it up on some stuff and it was good enough.

-The resolution isn’t as amazing as my Mac (although, I didn’t expect this) and it gives a more blown up view of the screen. This isn’t a huge deal depending on what you are looking to do with it. I didn’t really care so much.
-The mouse seems confused by where the monitor is. I put the monitor on the right of my laptop, but it acted as if it was on the left side. In all honesty, I didn’t put a lot of thought into how to fix this, but there is no obvious app or anything that seems to let you define which side the monitor is on.

Overall, for me, even with these issues this extra monitor is worth it because I like to stream and work at the same time. I could put my streaming on the extended monitor and do everything else on my laptop and it worked out great! I plan to keep using the Mobile Pixel Portable Monitor in the future this way!

Connecting to an Android:

Pros:

-100% plug and play!
-Really lets you see your phone at a much higher scale. This could be very handy when needing to show things to a client or just watching a movie or something on a more comfortable sized screen.
-It turns your phone into a touch mouse pad, which is pretty easy to use. All typing still happens on your phone, but you are probably already used to this.

Cons:

-This monitor is much bigger than your phone so you probably won't drag it around everywhere with you.
-The resolution isn’t as nice as the phone.
-Again, I wish there was some kind of stand for the monitor. Again, we just propped up on some stuff.

Overall, fun to use this way, but you probably won’t use it like this all the time. My partner doesn’t have a computer so this is very nice for him when he wants a bigger screen, but he will have to fight me for it.

Take away, is the Mobile Pixel Portable Monitor flawless, of course not, but it is easy to use and quite helpful! For more information please check out the Mobile Pixel Portable Monitor here!