Is it worth me buying a second monitor for my laptop?

[ambuletz]

This is tentative.

I've been toying with the idea of buying a monitor to use as a second screen for my 14'' laptop.

My main purpose of this is to that i can have some kind of youtube video or twich stream playing on the large screen whilst casual browsing or chatting is done on the laptop. i don't know if my laptop can support 4k, but i dont care if it cant. but as long as the monitor can, that will be useful for putureproofing. i want to make sure that the new monitor is a good size, has decent resolution (108-p or above) and a colour gamut that's better than a crap laptop.


i dont need it for gaming, or multitasking beyond what i've mentioned already.


specs as follows (win10)

[warp9]

In short, yes you should. Wouldn't be without mine at work, makes a massive difference.

[randlemarcus]

The graphics card should be absolutely fine with a second monitor. You might like to Google max resolution for your graphics chooser though. Also, be aware that one tiny laptop screen and a huge monitor five inches above it can be a pain...

[beko1987]

Yep! 95% of the time I use the one screen on my Thinkpad R500 (so ancient compared to yours).

The other 5%, mainly when I WFH which hopefully will happen this week due to OMGSNOWCHAOS I keep an old 22" Dell widescreen in the loft, which comes out. Works utterly fine, even with an ancient Nvidia mobile GPU.

[300bhp/ton]

2nd monitors are ace. Either that or use a reasonable HD TV, they work too.

[Pieman68]

Couldn't function with just the laptop

Office environment I have 2 x 22" LG screens connected into a startech port replicator and run both above the laptop itself - Ticketing system/web browser open in one, ERP systems running on the other with Skype and MS Teams on the laptop screen

At home I have an HP 24" Elitedisplay to plug in so that I still have the 2 screens. Really useful to rotate into portrait mode when i am working on proposals

[Mike335i]

I use two extra screens for my work laptop, so three in total. I can't imagine the frustration of just using one screen now! The more the merrier in my view.

[ambuletz]

At work i do have dual monitors, so can appriciate how useful it is. My main query is whether my computer will just be a sluggish mess trying to run two monitors. I'd like a larger screen but i don't necessarily need to run it above 1920x1080 (but a monitor that can do 4k will be good for some future proofing in the event i get a more powerful laptop).

My last laptop had a beautiful OLED screen with great colours, however this one being sort of entry level lacked it. I miss that, especially when viewing youtube videos or streams.

[anonymous-user]

Mike335i said:

I use two extra screens for my work laptop, so three in total. I can't imagine the frustration of just using one screen now! The more the merrier in my view.

I have this at home and the office with a surface and a dock. Works brilliantly, with outlook on surface screen, internet on one and office application on the other.