Can I Connect My Laptop to a Monitor
Multiple monitors are awesome. They actually are—ask anyone who'southward used a 2- or three-screen setup for their desktop, and they'll tell yous that they have a difficult fourth dimension going back to just i. Laptops have a built-in reward here, since they have i screen: to boost productivity, just add a monitor.
RELATED: How to Use Multiple Monitors to Be More Productive
But what if you want more than than one screen hooked up to your notebook at once? What if your laptop lacks a bunch of external video ports? What if you're travelling, and you can't lug around a full-sized monitor? Don't worry, you notwithstanding have more options than you lot might think.
The Ideal Solution for Newer Laptops: Thunderbolt
Thunderbolt three, which uses the new USB Type-C connector standard, is the newest mode for laptops and tablets to output video. The advantages are obvious: a unmarried cablevision can handle video, audio, standard data manual (for external hard drives or a wired Internet connection)andpower, all at the same fourth dimension. Non only does this reduce clutter on your desk—bold you lot have the hardware to take advantage of it, of form—information technology ways laptops tin be made smaller and thinner past consolidating ports.
And so, if you have a laptop with Thunderbolt 3 and a Thunderbolt-capable monitor, this is past far the all-time solution. You tin can just hook up each monitor to one Thunderbolt/USB-C port.
However, information technology's rarely that simple. Unless you have a very new laptop and very new monitors, yous'll probably demand a scrap more to make this work:
- If you have a laptop with multiple Thunderbolt/USB-C ports but older monitors that don't accept Thunderbolt input, you'll need some sort of adapter for each monitor, like this USB-C to HDMI or this USB-C to DVI adapter. Call up, y'all'll need one adapter for each monitor y'all're connecting.
- If your laptop merely has one Thunderbolt/USB-C port, you'll likely need some sort of docking station to connect 2 monitors to one port. Nosotros recommend checking out this Dell Thunderbolt Dock, though there are others out there every bit well. Annotation that some laptops, like the pocket-sized one-port MacBook, do not support running multiple displays from one port using these docks, so bank check your laptop's specifications, and if y'all're going to try a dock, buy from a store with a skillful return policy in instance it doesn't work.
Thunderbolt has a massive amount of video bandwidth, and it's more than that capable of supporting multiple standard monitors (the new Macbook Pros can output to two 5K displays at once, and then long as you lot have the right adapters). Specialized adapters—basically mini-laptop docks—are designed for the purpose of regular docking to a multi-monitor setup with mice, keyboard, and other connections.
Once USB-C and Thunderbolt go more common on laptops and monitors, it'll exist the best pick around for connecting to just most whatever kind of video output. That may have a while, since some manufacturers (like Microsoft) seem oddly hesitant to prefer the standard.
For About Older Laptops: Get a Display Splitter Box
If you have an even slightly older laptop, information technology probably doesn't have Thunderbolt/USB-C, instead sporting a VGA, DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort port. This will allow y'all easily add an external monitor, but if y'all want to connect two, things get more complicated.
Virtually laptops only have a single video-out option, with a rare few (like some of Lenovo's ThinkPad line or older Macbook Pros) offering multiple ports. It's sometimes possible to utilize 2 ports at in one case for multiple external monitors, but this is rare, as manufacturers tend to expect you to use your laptop's screen and a monitor together.
Then yous'll likely have to turn to a 3rd-party solution, like the Matrox line of dual- and triple-head docks, which use a unmarried video cable to output to multiple monitors. These are a scrap expensive, but they're probably the best solution for near people. Just keep in mind that they'll be limited by your laptop'southward graphics card, so if you take integrated graphics, don't wait to run a agglomeration of 4K displays without problems.
A Cheaper, but Less-Than-Ideal Option: USB Adapters
If those multi-port docking stations are just too much coin for y'all, there is a cheaper option. While older versions of the Universal Serial Bus standard weren't designed to handle video-out, since version 2.0 companies accept made handy adapters that tin can plow any USB port into a monitor-out port—like this USB-to-HDMI adapter from Cable Matters. The vast majority of these adapters are using Intel's DisplayLink technology.
This choice has a lot of advantages. Non simply is it an easy way to go video-out on almost any mod Windows or macOS car, information technology's inexpensive, portable, and expandable. Information technology'southward possible, at least technically, to add as many monitors every bit your laptop has USB ports in this fashion.
However, USB video-out adapters basically function as their own depression-power graphics cards, and they take a bigger hit on system resources like processor cycles and RAM than a standard external brandish. Most laptops will start to show serious performance issues if you try to add two or more than monitors in this mode. For quick and cheap multiple monitor setups, it'due south best to combine your laptop's own screen, one monitor attached with HDMI/DisplayPort/DVI, and ane on a USB adapter.
A Semi-Permanent Solution for Business and Gaming Laptops: Docking Stations
We covered this briefly under Thunderbolt, but a docking station is a popular alternative to multiple adapters for power users. These gadgets usually aren't made for specific laptop or tablet models unless they're explicitly business-oriented; examples include Dell'southward Latitude line, Lenovo ThinkPads, and Microsoft's Surface Pro tablets. USB-only alternatives are available, but by and large less powerful—more expensive options offer more flexible video ports. A model-specific expansion dock with multiple video outputs might do if you desire to keep your laptop mobile with the minimum corporeality of setup and teardown time at your desk.
RELATED: The Best Ways to Connect an External Graphics Card to Your Laptop
A more specialized version of this idea is the external graphics card. These gadgets are really cool, because they let you hook upwardly a full desktop-form GPU to a laptop and output to as many monitors as that card can support—usually three or four, for the mid-range options from NVIDIA and ATI.
Unfortunately, these are both limited (typically restricted to only a few models of laptop from a unmarried manufacturer like Razer) and expensive, with docks costing $300 or more thanwithoutthe bill of fare that goes into them. They as well crave a USB iii.0 or ThunderBolt port to operate. External GPUs should become a more feasible option in the time to come, simply for the fourth dimension being near consumers can merely use them if they're prepared to buy a whole new laptopanda dockanda graphics carte du jour at the same time, a $2000 investment on the depression cease.
Image Credits: Matrox, Dell, Lenovo, Apple tree, Asus, Amazon
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/306237/how-to-use-mulitple-external-monitors-with-your-laptop/
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