Daisy-chain all your monitors! (But what does it mean?)

Once upon a time, there was a period when a laptop’s screen was just enough to get all your tasks done. It still is, but once people discovered how much you can increase your productivity with an external display, everything changed.

With more information that needs to be processed, you soon realize that the more screen area you have, the more information you can process simultaneously, which means more tasks get done in less time. And as we all know, time is money.

Connecting all those monitors used to mean that your desk was full of cables. That’s where daisy-chaining comes in.

Monitors with daisy-chain capabilities allow you to connect one monitor behind your laptop (or computer) with a DisplayPort cable. To connect a second monitor, you don’t need to connect it directly to your computer. You can connect it to your first monitor. Want to connect a third one? No problems, just connect it to your second monitor. Want to connect a fourth one? Guess what - no worries, just connect it to your third one.

Connecting all those monitors does require, however, a couple of things to keep an eye on.

Firstly, to connect all the monitors your heart desires, you must ensure that your computer’s video card can support such a high resolution in total. For example, if you connect 4x 4K monitors, your computer’s video card must be able to support a 16K resolution.

The second thing to keep an eye on is the port to which the first monitor is connected. Through that port, all your monitors must get their data and video. As we all know, computer sides are filled with all kinds of different ports, many of which may be totally unknown (’cause we never use them). Most data and video-transfer ports attached to computers and laptops in recent years are HDMI and Thunderbolt. HDMI is mostly recognizable, but the Thunderbolt port looks just like a regular USB-C. It is important to determine whether this is a regular USB-C (for simple data transfer between mobile and computer plus charging) or a Thunderbolt port through which you can transfer video and data simultaneously.

The third thing you must consider is that you can attach another monitor only to a monitor that has the daisy-chain feature. If you want to connect three monitors, then the first two must have the daisy-chain feature; the last one is not that important if you don’t want to connect another one to it.

A little cable information as well - the only cable that can connect several monitors simultaneously is the DisplayPort cable, so make sure you use the right one. P.S. Thunderbolt 3 and 4 support DisplayPort as well, which means that if your computer has a TB 3/4 port, then you can connect your first linkable monitor through that cable. Of course, it means that your monitor must have a USB-C-shaped “video-in” port.

The thing is - monitors with USB-C-shaped ports have been on the market for a couple of years already, and they have been upgraded to something more than just a monitor.

To read more about all the possibilities that a USB-C monitor offers, feel free to read more from our “Monitor with Docking Station” article.