Monduo Pro Duo 14-inch monitor review: Turn your laptop into a triple-monitor workstation


Pros

  • Two great screens

  • Efficient attachment system for different laptop sizes

  • 100W traffic charging

  • Elegant metal design

cons

  • Thick and heavy

  • Requires two separate display links

The Monduo 14-Inch Pro Duo is a great product and well executed, but it’s a bit niche. If you need a triple-screen setup on the go, it does a (fairly) nifty job. Its spine wraps around the laptop’s built-in screen, then places a 14-inch display on either side.

With its excellent LCD panels and sleek (if wobbly) design, it really lives up to its premise. There is room for improvement, but only a little. At $749, this is an expensive setup, and not everyone needs two extra displays for their laptop. But if you do, the Pro Duo does the job well.


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Mondo 14 inch Pro Duo

The Monduou can adapt to every 14-inch laptop I’ve tried it on, and it even managed to squeeze in a 16-inch laptop.

Mark Knapp/CNET

Two impressive displays

To start, the displays vibrate. Each screen is 14 inches with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, and the image is very sharp. It also boasts plenty of brightness and colour, hitting 576 nits in testing, and offers 100% coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 color spaces.

The displays are fairly accurate, with the dE1976 averaging a maximum of 2.13 between the two (the right panel was more accurate in my sample). With the average contrast for this type of panels and Cool white dotThey are good for entertainment and powerful for productivity. It’s glossy, not matte, but still provides some slight glare reduction.

Plus, the displays are not only good looking, but fast too. Monduo says they support 144Hz, but I was only able to get it to work at 120Hz with the hardware I had. However, at this speed, the shadows were faint and the movement was smooth.

Monduo 14-inch Pro Duo specifications

price $749
Size (diagonal) 14 inch (x2)
Panel and backlight IPS level LCD screen
Flat or curved level
Resolution and pixel density 2560 x 1600 per display, 215 ppi
Aspect ratio 16:9
Maximum range 100% DCI-P3
Brightness (Nit, Peak/Typical) 323/576
Human development report no
Adaptive sync no
Maximum vertical refresh rate 144 Hz (rated); 120 Hz (tested)
Gray-to-gray response time 3 ms
communication 1x Mini HDMI, 2x USB-C (per display)
My voice nothing
VESA mountable no
Painting warranty One year limited warranty

Well built but wobbly

The Monduo 14 Pro Duo is well-designed, but its flexibility holds it back. It’s able to accommodate multiple laptops thanks to a number of moving parts, which results in some wobbly adjustments here and there. The core of the Monduo 14 Pro Duo is an expanding spine, much like what you’d find on a smartphone controller grip or selfie stick. This allows the back to reach the sides of laptop screens of different sizes.

This version is specifically designed for 14-inch laptops, so it adapts well to the M1 MacBook Pro and Lenovo Legion Slim 5 14APH8. I’ve also had success wrapping it around a 16-inch Asus gaming laptop. However, it didn’t have much room to expand beyond that.

The Pro Duo’s max isn’t just limited to your laptop’s screen size. In fact, it seems to have more to do with the height and thickness of the laptop. It has a rest on the back to help support its weight, but the stand is quite long. So thicker laptops, or laptops with tall tops (screens with large bottom bezels, for example), can be so tall that the kickstand can’t reach the desk below. Without this kickstand in place, your laptop screen and hinge support much more weight than it’s supposed to.

Mondo 14 inch Pro Duo

Voila! Laptop with three screens. If that’s something you want.

Mark Knapp/CNET

This weight is not small. The total weight of the Pro Duo’s spine and displays is 3.95 pounds before accounting for cables. It’s also huge. When the setup is folded and closed, the screens nest into each other for storage, making it 0.87 inches thick.

All of this is enough to raise the question: Why not just get two separate portable displays? In either case, you will need two cables. The Monduo 14 Pro Duo does not work with a single cable connection.

If Monduo built some sort of DisplayPort cascade between the two displays, so a single USB-C connection could power both, it would be much more convenient. As it stands, you need two USB-C ports and cables, connected to each display. Each side of the spine has two USB-C ports and a mini HDMI port for signal feeding. It is possible to charge at least 100 watts.

Mondo 14 inch Pro Duo

When folded, it is less than one inch thick.

Mark Knapp/CNET

Monduo has also deleted any buttons or controls in the system. Although the default settings are fine, getting over 300 nits with decent color, you’ll need Monduo software (available for Windows and Mac) and drivers to adjust brightness and other features.

Do you really need it?

The Pro Duos don’t do anything that two separate portable monitors don’t do, other than connect to your laptop in one piece. Two separate monitors will also give you the option of leaving one at home for occasions when you don’t need to carry three monitors and 4 extra pounds in your bag.

For most people, I recommend Inovio PM408 or Arzuba Z1RC Instead, start with one and then pick up the second if you really need the extra screen space. They’re both large, sharp, lightweight displays with good-looking displays – and both are less than a third of the cost of the Monduo 14 Pro Duo. But if you know you need a triple-screen setup and want to connect auxiliary displays to your laptop (because you use small tables or desks, for example), the Monduo 14 Pro Duo doesn’t fail to deliver on its premise.

Monduo 14-inch Pro Duo test results

Product name measuring White dot Gamma Peak brightness Default brightness Gamut coverage (P3 and sRGB)
Mondo 14 inch Pro Duo 2×14 inches 7500 thousand 2.2 576.9 323.8 100, 100

How we test screens

Monduo 14-Inch Pro Duo measurements were taken with a Spyder X2 Ultra colorimeter using DataColor’s Spyder X2 software for SDR. Results of Delta E 1976 color accuracy measurements are reported using Datacolor’s 48-color correction test.

On the most basic models, we can only test brightness, contrast, and color gamut. With more capable displays, we can also conduct tests of user-selectable modes for gaming or critical use of colours, uniformity, etc. We may also run tests to check how white point accuracy varies with brightness. We also use Blur Busters’ motion tests to judge motion effects (such as ghosting) or refresh rate issues that can impact games.

Keep in mind that individual results can often differ from the results reported by the manufacturer for several reasons.



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