How to Use an External Monitor for a Better Working Experience

Posted by Jennifer Truong on June 25th, 2019

As a consumer who uses a computer for basic tasks like managing a small to medium work database, or some light content editing that is mostly text, you can simply use the new all-in-one type of laptops in the market. One that folds into tablet mode for touch screen web scrolling, and has a full keyboard to type out long emails, or make content strategies. But if you have ever tried to edit video or stream games on one of those laptops, you know that we are slightly far from eliminating a full size, customizable desktop setup.

A customizable desktop setup gives you the freedom to use whatever monitor you want, a keyboard you are comfortable with, a mouse that doesn’t make you hate scrolling and speakers that actually sound like they are trying to put in some work. The processor, RAM, and storage should cater to your requirements too.

The most important thing about a customizable setup is that you can switch out anything you want, whenever! No need to compromise on anything.

A crucial part of this setup is your monitor. You can have one that has widescreen, or you can have a setup with more than one monitor or even a wide curved monitor. The choice is all yours. We are here to talk about the various things that you might want to connect to these monitors.

These monitors can be additional screens sometimes, not necessarily connected to any input devices, but simply as an output device, because of various reasons.

USB-C cables power them, or standard c14 power cords depending on what your requirement is. USB-C powered monitors are still new, and they can transfer both power as well as video through the same cable. However, since not everything that you might want to connect to a monitor uses USB-C yet, you need to have a monitor that has dedicated power input and more than one type of input ports.

Let’s take a look at some of the things you can connect to a monitor and how you can connect them:

CPU:

If you want to connect a CPU to a monitor, you will have a display cable that connects it, according to what ports your CPU and monitor have. They vary from old VGA ports to new USB-C ports, with DIV, and HDMI in between. The great thing about this is that you are not limited to using a particular CPU. You can connect any CPU you like.

Camera:

You cannot view or edit pictures on the small screen of a camera. So you will have to connect it to a monitor. Most cameras come equipped with HDMI mini, USB-B or USB-C ports now, so you would need to connect it to the monitor via a display cable that has compatible connectors.

Tablet:

A monitor can act as either an extended screen of a tablet or an additional screen. In both cases, it connects to the monitor via a video connector with a compatible cable. As tablets get more and better features in terms of the processor or touch display, they still have a smaller screen, which is not always enough to show off its computational power. So an external monitor is how you can see the output of all that power. This is a great option if you are editing a video clip or putting together a presentation.

Another monitor:

Very long video or audio files are much easier to edit when you can see them in detail. So you can add a second monitor to your setup using computer monitor cables, which can act as an extension. It gives you a much better idea when you are editing and helps keep things less cluttered. It is also easier to work if you are someone who needs to have multiple windows open and need to be able to view all of them at once. It increases your screen real estate.

There are plenty of reasons that you will need a monitor, but with monitor comes a whole lot of other computer monitor cables that you need to keep at hand to connect it to anything you may require. If you need to input plenty of different devices into a monitor then it only makes sense to buy one that has a dedicated power input from c14 power cord, because while a single port monitor is new and that’s where the future might be going, it is not practical right now, because not everything is USB-C yet.