Independent Comparative Evaluation of the Neon—A New Mobile Eye-tracker

Due to the rapid adoption of (mobile) eye-tracking devices in both academic and consumer research, it becomes more important that the increasing number of datasets is based on reliable recordings. This study provides an independent evaluation of the Neon (Pupil Labs GmbH), one of the newest and most affordable mobile eye-trackers, by comparing its performance on a variety of tasks to the Eyelink 1000 Plus (SR Research Ltd.). Using Ehinger et al. (2019)’s test battery, a set of 10 tasks evaluated the accuracy and its decay over time of some of the most common eye-tracking-related parameters: fixations, saccades, smooth pursuit, pupil dilation, microsaccades, blinks, and the influence of head motion on accuracy. Gaze position, eye movements and pupil diameter associated with each task were recorded simultaneously by the two eye-trackers and compared concurrently. This dual-tracker setup revealed Neon’s high susceptibility to infrared (IR) interference from the Eyelink tracker, resulting in poor average accuracy (4.27°). When this interference was eliminated in a dedicated Neon-only setup, accuracy substantially improved to 1.45°. Further comparative analyses highlighted both Neon’s strengths and its inherent performance trade-offs, particularly in relation to microsaccade detection.