Next, we are going to give you a series of tips when you need to buy a set of two monitors or a second monitor to complement the one you already have. You can also apply these tips if you have a laptop with an additional HDMI or DisplayPort output, either with the standard port or with USB-C Alt DP or Thunderbolt.
First of all, we recommend that you take into account the space on your desktop, as the two monitors will share it. It’s not a good idea to have two large monitors so you don’t have more room to work on later, so keep this in mind. You may have a handy wall on which to hang the second monitor via a VESA mount or even consider using a monitor arm.
As for the second point, you need to consider resolution, refresh rate, and aspect ratio, using two monitors with these disparate specs can cause issues when using them. You may find that the image is incomplete on the second monitor due to the difference, completely cut off or annoying flickering issues and in some cases graphics drivers give you trouble. Size, on the other hand, is less important.
Either way, the refresh rate can be configured, so be guided by resolution and aspect ratio instead. Our advice? If you are going to buy two monitors at the same time, make sure they are both the same model, you will have less trouble setting them up.
Installing the second monitor
Once you have the two monitors you need to place them on your desk and here we are going to give you some basic advice to improve your productivity with two monitors so we will be very brief in this section. You need to set them up in such a way that you can access both just by moving your eyes, if you have to move your neck even a little bit then you will have them installed incorrectly, so make sure both monitors are at the same height for total comfort of use and the health of your necks.
This is the reason why we recommend buying two identical monitors, although we have to keep in mind that if we are using a laptop it will be difficult to achieve, so in this case be sure to buy one. screen with a small foot for the second monitor. or a small monitor like the one you see in the image presiding over this section.
What are your video outputs?
It makes no sense to buy a second monitor if we cannot connect the graphics due to lack of ports, so you need to make sure when buying the PC if it is a laptop equipped with an HDMI output and if it is a desktop computer with a dual video output, whether DisplayPort or HDMI, it goes without saying that the monitor will obviously have to have its corresponding equivalent inputs.
In case you enjoy a monitor with a different video input, you can go for a signal converter and if you have only one video output, you can go for a HDMI splitter
Setting up the second monitor in Windows 10
Alright, we’ve got everything ready and we just need to set up the second monitor, so the first thing we’re going to do is plug it into the HDMI output of the graphics card. This will allow Windows to automatically detect it and search for drivers that match the monitor. In any case, if there are no drivers, it will assign the generic driver and hence it will appear as a Plug & play monitor with no brand and model. If the two monitors are the same, your ICM Profile it will appear to be the same and the graphics card will use the same. So this is one of the additional reasons to buy two identical monitors. If they are different, they will appear as two different profiles. What does it mean? Well, we’ll have to configure them separately when calibrating the color of the two monitors.
So let’s go to what really matters to us, for that let’s go to setting by pressing the Windows key on the keyboard or by clicking the Windows icon in the taskbar, then selecting the option. From there you have to go to System and select on the left side of the screen, you will see that you can configure the second monitor from there, from where we have the following options:
- We can assign the order we want to each of the screens.
- If we click on the identification button, it will show us the number assigned to each of the screens.
- We can choose the orientationhorizontally or vertically from each of the two monitors.
This is also where we can choose how we want the representation to be represented. picture on the screen where you can clone the first screen to the second, use an extended desktop, or use only one of the two monitors.
Monitor setup with VRR
If you have a monitor variable refresh rate oh VRR or your refresh rate is above 60 Hz then you will need to perform a series of additional steps.
- Without leaving the section discussed in the previous section, go to the “Advanced display settings»To adjust the refresh rate.
- Once there, click on the “View adapter properties.. »Where the ellipsis correspond to your monitor model. This will bring up a window like the following:
- Select the Monitor tab and there you will see a drop-down menu that will allow you to select the output refresh rate. Here you need to make both have the same refresh rate if you are using an extended desktop to avoid image rendering issues
That’s it, you have configured the second monitor without any problem, we hope this tutorial has been useful for you.
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