Can I use a laptop as a second monitor?

One of the best quality-of-life upgrades you can make to your PC set up is adding another monitor. Anyone who went from working in an office to working from home when COVID ruined the world for a bit will remember the pain of trying to work on a single screen after being used to dual monitors in the office.

Gaming is also improved with the addition of a second screen. While your fancy high refresh rate OLED one takes care of the gaming, the other handles Reddit and Discord, or MS Teams if you know what you’re doing.

But what if you don’t have a second monitor, but you do have a laptop with a screen sat doing nothing? Why can’t it put in a stint as a second monitor? It might be able to, but it’s not a common feature.

To use the laptop as a second monitor, it needs to have an input port, such as an HDMI or a DisplayPort, that functions as an input, not just an output. This is why it’s not a common feature. Laptop I/O is so limited these days that if the manufacturer decides to use the space for a video port, it’s more useful to more people as an output instead.

So, if you’re laptop has a video input, then yes, you can use it as a second monitor. If it does not, you are unfortunately out of luck and might just have to invest in another monitor. The good news is that basic monitors are very affordable these days so it’s well worth the money.

Of course, if you have a laptop, and you don’t need to use your PC, then it’s pretty likely that the laptop has an output port like we mentioned. In this case then you can still have two monitors, but the laptop will be running both, not acting as one.