If you’re looking for an adapter to connect your laptop to a monitor, then you might be wondering if your laptop has a displayport. Displayports are becoming more and more common on laptops, but there are still some models that don’t have them. So, how can you find out if your laptop has a displayport? Let’s take a look at some of the ways to determine this.
a. Determine the type of connection your laptop has by going to your display options under monitor settings. This is a very common way of determining if your computer has a displayport, but it’s not always foolproof. Whether or not there will be a monitor port on your laptop can depend on its size and age. For example, some smaller laptops from 5-6 years ago used HDMI connections instead of displayports since their screen sizes were small enough that they could fit more ports into them this way without sacrificing too much quality. This isn’t possible with larger laptops, though, so most 15″+ laptops have a displayport nowadays even if they have an HDMI option as well.
b. If you’re able to determine that your laptop does have a displayport, then you can check your HDMI port or other ports to see if an adapter or cord can fit into it. Many laptops with displayports use mini-displayport connectors, but there are smaller adapters for both these and full-size displayports. Some older models may even use the larger DVI cables instead of displayports, so again it’s important to check all of your options before settling on one type of connection.
c. If you’re able to find out that your laptop has a displayport (and some dead space where an adapter might be able to fit) but the port doesn’t seem like it will work, then you might need to replace your current monitor with something else. If your monitor has a DVI connection and the displayport on the laptop doesn’t seem to be working, then this may be necessary in order to take advantage of both devices.
d. Finally, if you’re unable to find out whether or not your laptop has a displayport, then it might be worth checking with the manufacturer in order to find out for sure if this is something you can add in later on. Not all laptops have them and there’s no way to add an internal one unless you build your own computer from scratch, but some manufacturers offer options for adding displayports after-the-fact so it’s worth checking into before throwing away any money at store like Best Buy Walmart who tend to overcharge for adapters.
e. If you’re still unable to find out whether or not your laptop has a displayport, then either it doesn’t have one (in which case you should move on to the next question) or there’s some other issue at play here like incompatible hardware (in which case refer back to step 1).
check if my laptop displayport
a. You can check your manual for the model to see if it has a displayport connection available, but be aware that some manufacturers will list this as “HDMI” instead so don’t take this at face value.
b. If you have an Apple laptop, then displayports are definitively not compatible with anything you have so you should look into converters to use HDMI or VGA cables instead. Most other laptops with HDMI will also support converters since they’re relatively common nowadays, though this may still lead to issues trying to set up multiple displays at once even with adapters in place.
c. Your laptop might have a different type of port that is similar to a displayport (such as ThunderBolt) but is actually more of a specialized cable instead. Thunderbolt ports are different from displayports in that they use a completely different connector but can do many of the same jobs, so don’t immediately write off your laptop if there’s a Thunderbolt port available instead.
d. If you still can’t determine whether or not your laptop has a displayport connection – and especially if you have an older model with a different type of port available – then it might be worth checking with the manufacturer to see what types of connections are compatible with this machine specifically. This can help you narrow down which types of adapters will work for your specific needs even though the laptop itself doesn’t come with as many options as other models on the market today do.
