Can I Drive Dual External Monitors With One HDMI or USB 3.1 Without Issues?

[jazee]

I'm shopping for a new laptop. Most of them in the under $1,000 range with good battery life just have one HDMI. I'm used to using business laptops with a VGA port in addition to HDMI so easy to setup dual external monitors without any additional cost of special adapters.

Most machines with USB 3.1 Gen 2 are probably going to be out of my budget. So I assume Gen 1 at best.

Is using a USB 3.1 to drive a second monitor (or to connect a docking station) a viable solution that isn't problematic on Windows 10? My long time IT experience is skeptical there won't be issues using 3rd party solutions for laptops that don't have a VGA port.

 

[jojesa]

Yes, if you get a laptop with USB 3.0 you could use a docking station to drive two or more displays.
-Plugable USB 3.0 Dual Monitor Docking Station.
-AmazonBasics USB 3.0 Docking Station
By the way you could get a business laptop with dual (HDMI/VGA) displays connections for less than 1k (Dell Latitude).

 

[k1114]

Those are still 3rd party solutions and cheaper usb adapters work perfectly fine. Video ports will typically only do 1 monitor unless you want to duplicate. Usb isn't a video port and goes down to sufficient bandwidth. 3.0 is enough for 1080p.