Windows and Mac users can connect laptop to monitor such as an LCD monitor, projector, or TV. The external display can extend the viewing area, offering you more room for applications, or mirror your laptop screen.
How to connect a laptop to a monitor: 5 simple steps
Time needed: 2 minutes.
You can connect your laptop to your monitor in five simple steps
- Check for compatibility
Make sure your external monitor and your laptop are compatible. Check the manual to make sure you are using the correct cable.
- Turn off your laptop
It isn’t required, but we recommend turning off the laptop ahead of attempting the connection. Even though new generation laptops are less probable to have a loss of data or a hard disk crash, you should always be careful.
- Plug in the cable
Plug the cable into your laptop and monitor and ensure it fits correctly.
- Turn on the laptop
Switch the laptop back on. There is a notification button on the keyboard featuring a monitor icon on certain laptop types. Press it to shift to the exterior monitor. The button typically belongs to the F# key, or at times it might even be your Fn key.
- Connection successful
On various laptops, the external monitor should be found automatically, and you do not have to switch on anything.
Ways to connect monitor without HDMI
If your laptop does not have an HDMI or DisplayPort you can use USB- or VGA-Adapters or Chromecast.
USB Adapters
USB graphics adapters permit you to add an extra monitor to your Mac or PC effortlessly. You can employ your current video display unit, connect it to the USB graphics adapter, after installing DisplayLink software and insert it into whichever USB port. Up to six extra monitors can be added to your PC or four more monitors to the Mac, Ubuntu, or Chromebook installation – you only require a single USB graphics adapter for every monitor you wish to include.
VGA
For VGA only monitors, you can employ an HDMI-to-VGA adapter. Remember that VGA doesn’t support audio. Thus you need to find another method to get out the sound. Your TV may have an analogue audio input linked with one of your HDMI ports. If that’s the case, you can utilize a 3.5mm male-to-male audio cord to connect the laptop’s sound system to the TV’s speakers.
You will have to employ other speakers if it does not. If you got a separate receiver inside the room, connect the audio of your laptop to that. Or else, consider purchasing some computer speakers.
Chromecast Screen Casting
Google’s low-priced Chromecast provides an easy means to have your computer’s display onto the monitor devoid of any cords. Whereas Chromecast is usually employed to “cast” content from an exact app or web page to a monitor, you can as well cast a precise browser tab. Not just that, still, the Chromecast browser extension as well permits you cast the computer’s full desktop to your Chromecast, plus thus view it on your monitor/TV.
A couple of factors determine how great this method functions depending on: how strong the Wi-Fi signal you receive, how dependable that Wi-Fi signal is and how dominant the PC is. Casting the screen over Wi-Fi will work as flawlessly as an HDMI cable; however, it is perhaps amongst the most hassle-free method to do wireless mirroring from whichever proximate desktop computer or laptop.
Written by Graham Bell
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