Add 5 or More External Monitors for Laptop Using Docking Station/USB. Go Beyond Dual Monitor Setup.

In this video I'll show you how to add up to five  additional monitors to your laptop. Most laptops   will have one video port so that you can add one  additional monitor but if you wanted to add two   or more monitors you were pretty much out of luck  except on very high-end laptops. Today with the   advent of fast USB ports on laptops something  called a docking station is now available to   any laptop that has a USB 3.1 Gen 2 type-C port. I  know that's a mouthful but let me show you how you   can do this: This is a docking station. There's  a large variety of these docking stations on the   market. This particular model is highly rated by  thousands of users on Amazon so I decided to give   it a test. By the way this is not a sponsored  video. Everything you see in this video are   products I purchased myself. So this docking  station is a 13-in-one device meaning that it   has 13 different ports on the side that give you  all kinds of added capabilities. I'll be doing   an in-depth video on this stocking station and  when that's ready you'll see a link up here to   watch it. Three of these 13 ports are used to  connect a video. On the end there is a single   DisplayPort and on the side are two HDMI ports.  Now with these three ports you should be able to   connect to just about any monitor that you have  even older ones and I will talk about connecting   to old monitors a bit later. I'll be connecting  this to a PC but this docking station will work   on a Mac. However there are Mac limitations which  I will explain later. Okay let's hook up some   monitors. So first thing I'll plug this docking  station into the USB-C port on the laptop. There   are no drivers to install. It's plug-and play.  Next I'll plug in this DisplayPort cable which   is already plugged into the back of this monitor.  In just a few seconds Windows detects the monitor   and connects to it. You'll probably want to do  a little bit of housekeeping in Windows to make   your displays just the way you want them. To do  that just right-click on the desktop preferably   on the laptop itself then click display settings.  Now I'm using Windows 11 but previous versions of   Windows will look similar. At the top you'll  see a representation of your monitors. Each   little box here represents one of your monitors.  The box labeled as "1" is your laptop itself so   this box labeled "2" is the external monitor I  just plugged in. You can click on either box to   adjust settings for that individual monitor. The  first setting to adjust will determine how this   monitor behaves. It can show you a duplicate of  the main screen or an extension of the screen.   So I'll change...click this here. Change this  to duplicate these screens. And keep changes.   And now you can see the exact same thing on both  screens. Or you can extend the display and that   means that both screens are now separate and show  unique parts of the desktop. They're independent   of each other and you can put different things  on either monitor. So I'll change that to extend   these displays. Keep the changes. And now if  I minimize that let's say I open up a notepad   and now I can move this from one screen to the  other. Now I'm trying to move over here to the   right but there's a reason I can't do that. I  actually have to go to the left and there is   my notepad. Together both of these screens now  equal one giant desktop that you can work on.   Back in display settings this isn't just a pretty  picture of your monitors. This also controls the   relationship of one monitor to the other on your  physical desk. In my case this external monitor   is sitting to the right of my laptop but on the  display settings page here it is sitting on the   left. All right so I've enlarged my mouse so you  can easily see where I'm moving here. Now if I try   to move my mouse over to the right side of my  screen my mouse cannot go past the edge of the   screen and that's because in the display settings  the external monitor that's box number two that's   this this one is on the left side of the laptop.  And so I need to actually drag the monitor this   monitor over to the right so that it resembles  the way the monitors actually are on my desk. So   I'll just drag this over and drop that and so  now these represent the way they are actually   are on my desk. Now if I click Apply and now if  I move my mouse to the right you can see that   it travels to the external monitor just the way  that you would expect it to. I can fine tune the   precise position of the monitors so they closely  match the way the monitors sit on the desk. The   external monitor is a 4K monitor so obviously  this docking station does support 4K monitors.   Its resolution is 3840 by 2160. My laptop screen  is just 1920 x 1080. All right I've got this one   monitor connected let's add another monitor this  time by connecting it to one of the HDMI ports. And the HDMI cable is plugged into the back of  the monitor already. And very quickly Windows   recognizes this second external monitor. However  you may find that some settings need a little bit   of fine-tuning for example the displays may be  duplicates instead of extended and the screen   resolution may be wrong on one or more of the  monitors. Now when you start adding a bunch   of screens like this the representation you see  here could become a little confusing. You may not   realize you may not be able to determine which  screen is which. So you can click the Identify   button and you'll see it actually puts a number on  the screen so you can tell which screen is which.   This was the second external monitor and now it  has become the third. So the third one here and   the second one is this one. And so I also want  to rearrange this a little bit to represent how   it is on our desk here. So I'm going to drag this  up and see if I can make this fit the way I need   it to and I click Apply. And so now if I move my  mouse around it should roughly go from one screen   to the next in a way that is representative  of the way these monitors are on my desk. Let's plug in the final video port on the laptop  docking station. This is the second HDMI port.   Once Windows recognizes the monitor you'll  notice that these boxes have changed size. So   what's going on? Now if I click on one of these  bigger boxes here and look at the resolution   scroll down you'll see that the resolution is  2560 by 1440 and that's been reduced from 3840   by 2160. In fact the maximum resolution of  these monitors is no longer available. The   same is true of this center monitor here. And if  I click on this monitor it's showing the maximum   resolution is now only 800 by 600. In fact there  is no choice other than 800 by 600. These are   three identical monitors. What's happened?  This docking station will support three 4K   monitors but there are some limitations based  on the limitations of my particular laptop. My   laptop uses the DisplayPort 1.3 standard but  according to the information for this device   it needs DisplayPort 1.4 or higher to be able to  support 4K on all three monitors simultaneously.   Apparently it has to scale down in my case to  handle the video for all three screens. So for   most people you probably don't even have 4K  monitors but if you do just know that if your   laptop doesn't support DisplayPort 1.4 or higher  you may not be able to get full 4K resolution on   all monitors. But they all work and are usable. So  looking at them you may not even be able to tell   which is which except maybe this one over here  where everything is really cropped in and huge. Now I mentioned earlier that this docking  station is usable with a Mac. However you   can only extend the desktop to a single  monitor. You can also use three monitors   but they will either duplicate the laptop  or all three external monitors will show   the exact same extended desktop. I'm not a  Mac User so I have not tested this on a Mac. Let's talk briefly about the USB-C port you  plug the docking station into because this   is critical to the success or failure of this  process. You need to make sure the port is USB   3.1 Gen 2 or higher otherwise the video ports  won't work. Your USB port may also be labeled   as USB 3.2 Gen 2. This is the same as 3.1 Gen 2.  Crazy I know. The naming convention has changed   over the years creating a lot of confusion. So  this type of port can handle up to 10 gigabits   per second. That's the critical part. But if  you don't have this type of port stick around   because I have another solution that should  allow most other computers to add monitors.   I don't want to make this confusing but it's  very important to mention that your computer   might have a USB-C port that does not support  USB 3.1 Gen 2. A USB type-C port is this type   of port. Type-C tells you the shape of the port  but it does not guarantee the USB protocol. The   protocol is the version number of USB that I've  irritatingly repeated way too many times already.   The version number tells you how fast the port is  and other details about it. But Type-C just tells   you the port is shaped like this one. USB-C is the  only USB port that is reversible meaning you can   plug it in in either way and it just works. Refer  to the manual provided with your laptop or search   online using your model number plus keywords  like "manual" or "specs" to find the speed of   your USB ports. Also you'll need a fairly recent  GPU and CPU to get the most out of this device.   I'll link to this docking station on Amazon  where you can read the specific requirements. I bought this laptop in 2019 but it was a  fairly high-end machine at the time. Now   more recent laptops will likely support  this docking station. Understand this   docking station is mostly just a conduit for  the video signal. Your computer still needs   to be fast enough and powerful enough  to output video on multiple monitors. We've covered a lot and three external monitors is  probably enough for most people. But what if you   want even more monitors or what if you don't  have a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port on your computer?   Is there still an option for you? Well yes of  course there is. Most laptops have these blue   USB ports and for the sake of simplicity let's  just call these USB 3 ports. They use the Type-A   port. That's the rectangular shaped port that  you see here. And they're usually moving data   at 5 gigabits per second which is half the speed  of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports that we are using with   this docking station. So if you have one of these  USB ports you're in luck. USB 3 was released in   2008 so your computer almost certainly has one  of these. So with this nifty little gadget here   you can plug into a USB 3 port and plug in an  HDMI cable and add a monitor to your computer.   So let's add a fourth external monitor and  first I'll plug this adapter into the USB port. The first time you use this you will need  to install a device driver. But don't panic,   It's easy. A driver is simply software that makes  the adapter talk to the computer and the monitor.   The printed instructions that are included  with this adapter explain how to do it. But   just quickly you may see a window that pops up  or some kind of notification from Windows. Don't   worry if you don't see that or react to it before  the notification disappears. You just need to open   File Explorer and you can do that by holding  down the Windows key and pressing the E key.   Now mine opens right away to This PC but in your  case you may need to click on This PC and when   you do that you'll see the different drives that  are already installed in your system. And windows   does see this adapter as a disk drive. You will  have to access that drive and find it. In my case   it shows I have three other drives in here and  the fourth one is USB drive drive F. Yours is   going to be a different drive letter. And so  all you have to do now is just click on that   and you'll see a number of files that are  on this device. And so what you need is all   here and these are three different drivers you  can install either on a Mac a PC or an Android   system. And the PC version is the one that ends  in ".exe" and I will just simply double-click   that and and that will start the installation  of the driver. And you may have to approve a   couple of things along the way. Just follow  the prompts and that will install the driver. Your screens may black out periodically during  the installation of the driver and that's normal. Okay that took a while but it did work. So now I   have to restart the computer and once  I get that done then we'll continue. Okay we've restarted and that's  installed and now I can plug in   an HDMI cable and connect that to this monitor. There you go a fourth external monitor. And this  time connected through a USB 3 port. So how far   can we push this? I've got another USB 3 port  on the other side of this laptop so let's plug   in another adapter and this time I don't have to  install the driver because it's already installed. And nothing. So what's wrong here? Well this particular  monitor has a maximum resolution of 1920 x   1200 and normally that's not a problem. Most  video ports can support that but this little   adapter has a hard limit. The maximum resolution  is 1920 x 1080. That's all it will support. But   that is full HD so it's still great for most  people. And you just need to know that if your   monitor's resolution goes above 1920 x 1080 you  may need to go back into your display settings.   So I'll do that. Go to display settings and  you can see the monitor is there but I need   to adjust the resolution to be 1920 x 1080 or  less. So I'll click on that monitor scroll down   and click click on this and you can see 1920 x  1080 because there's 1920 x 1200 resolution. Even   though that's the recommended that's not going  to work with this adapter. So I'll select that. My computer's running a little slow powering  all these so it'll take a second and it'll   finally accept that and I will keep the changes.  And we should see the monitor come up here in   just a second. And so now we've got the fifth  monitor. Working! And one thing to note about   the USB 3 port that it is connected to here:  because of the slower speed of this port I did   notice in my testing that the frame rate or  the refresh rate of the video on the monitors   here these two is a little bit slower than  normal. In other words if you watch video on   this monitor it won't be as smooth as the video  would look on one of these other monitors that's   plugged into the docking station. You probably  won't want to play games on these but for most   uses the refresh rate will be just fine.  Your spreadsheet won't care. I promise. So could I add a third USB adapter and add a  sixth external monitor? I'm guessing that I   probably could if I needed to. If you need that  many monitors you probably want to consider   using a desktop computer. They're much easier to  equip with high-powered graphics cards that can   support multiple high resolution monitors without  some of the limitations that you've seen here. Earlier I mentioned that you can use the  docking station video ports with older   monitors. I tested this with other monitors  that don't have DisplayPort or HDMI ports on   them. To connect to older monitors like that you  will need to get some converters like these. For   example this lets you go from HDMI to VGA. This  one here goes from HDMI to DVI. If you don't know   the names of the various ports just pause right  here to look at your ports and see what they are. Older monitors use these types of ports  so you'll need an adapter to make them   work I've got links in the description to  several adapters in case you need them. You can do this with your laptop. Check the   description for links to the  various hardware you just saw. And click this link to see a video  on how to use your laptop as a second   monitor for another computer. I'm  Fred Kelley your Nerd Sidekick.

Channel: Nerd Sidekick

Views: 96,550

Keywords: dual monitor setup, additional monitor for laptop, external monitor for laptop, how to connect two monitors to a laptop, multiple monitor for laptop, laptop multiple monitors, connect monitors to laptop, extend display, how to connect two monitors to one computer, how to set up multiple monitors, multiple displays, how to connect multiple monitors to laptop, multiple laptop monitors, laptop docking station, docking station, usb to HDMI, add monitor with USB

Id: YFFRjfhM80A

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024