The support readers share in the comments section is one of the things we love most about the Engadget community. Over the years we’ve known you to offer sage advice on just about anything from Chromecasts and cameras to drones and smartphones. In fact, our community’s knowledge and insights are why many of you participate in the comments.
We really appreciate the time and detail you all spend answering questions from your fellow tech-obsessed commenters, which is why we’ve decided to bring back the much-missed “Ask Engadget” column. This week’s question asks how to choose a new laptop for a user who relies on an external monitor setup. Weigh in with your tips in the comments — and feel free to send your questions to ask@engadget.com!
I’m buying a new Windows 10 laptop or 2-in-1. Given the small screen, I would like to connect it to a large monitor, keyboard and mouse on my desk. Can you talk about things a customer should consider to make this work well? I’m referring to concerns such as compatible screen resolutions, touchscreens, single-cable connectivity, and ports (eg USB 3.0, USB-C, SD card reader, laptop power, charging).
Steve Dent
Associate editor
That’s a good but surprisingly complicated question!
A lot will depend on the resolution of the external display and your needs. If it’s 4K or anything above 1080p, then you’ll need to consider discrete graphics from AMD or NVIDIA. Even with a fairly powerful GPU like the NVIDIA GTX 1070 Max-Q, if you’re using both a laptop screen and a 4K external monitor in a dual-screen configuration, expect your machine’s fans to kick in and slow things down compared to drives the laptop screen. I personally experienced this while testing the Gigabyte Aero 15X. Pushing all those extra pixels obviously puts a lot more strain on the GPU.
If the new machine is for content creation or gaming rather than business or entertainment use, that would also determine whether or not you need a separate GPU (which obviously increases the price of the laptop). Microsoft has finally succeeded fair enough seamless for mixing multiple screen resolutions, so I wouldn’t worry too much about matching resolutions. I have a 1080p laptop and a 4K display, and everything works fine; I can move windows around without getting unreadable, tiny text on a 4K screen, like Windows used to do.
Choosing a touchscreen again depends on what you’re using it for — it’s mostly good for graphics work with a pen or on a convertible like the Surface Book when you’re using it as a tablet, in my opinion. On a regular laptop doing regular tasks, I imagine most people never touch their screens because it just slows you down.
At the high end, if you want to power a fancy 10-bit, HDR external monitor for apps like Photoshop or Premiere, you’ll need to spend a little on a laptop with NVIDIA or AMD pro graphics (Quadro and Fire Pro models). That’s because, for some odd reason, consumer-grade graphics displays don’t support 10-bit (one billion) colors for applications like Photoshop. So you would need a model like the MSI WS63 VR, which has NVIDIA Quadro P4000 graphics.
For gaming, graphics or with a 4K display, I would try to find a laptop with discrete graphics (NVIDIA, AMD) and a DisplayPort connector, which has superior bandwidth compared to HDMI and supports up to 144 Hz (240 Hz for the next generation ) refresh rate and NVIDIA G-Sync/AMD Free Sync. This should also work with the upcoming wave of HDR monitors. Laptops with USB-C ports should also support the DisplayPort standard, but you may need an adapter.
If the laptop is for basic business with two screens, streaming entertainment or web use, an HDMI port and integrated graphics (at least Intel HD Graphics 400, but preferably better) will do the job. Finally, to save money on a monitor for streaming entertainment or basic dual-screen computing (not gaming or graphics), power you want to consider getting a TV instead of a monitor as a second screen. This will give you conveniences like 4K HDR and a very large screen, which most monitors don’t have.