5 Tips to Enhance Your Dual Monitor Setup

Dual monitor setup

What’s a dual monitor setup? Dual monitors are definitely a plus for those who work from home. It’s like you have two separate rooms, one for work and another for life. The setup is also used for live streaming or gaming for they require enough room to show two or more apps clearly.

Figure 1. Gaming with Discord on

5 Tips to Enhance Your Dual Monitor Setup

Getting two screens hooked up to a PC is easy while making your setup ergonomic and friendly is another story. Here are some tips that might be helpful if you are planning for this dual-display setup.

Use a KVM switch

If you have two screens, you have the potential to work on two systems simultaneously. A KVM switch is a kit that connects two computing devices (PC, laptop, or console) to the same set of KVM (keyboard, mouse & monitor) and you will get a USB hub shared by both devices.

A KVM switch is extremely friendly to WFHers and you can easily integrate the work PC into your home setup. And a dual monitor KVM switch is a plus to enable you to utilize two systems at the same time (and in the same space).

Get a good mount and chair

It’s good to have an extra screen but how to place it? It’s natural that when we work on a single screen, we adjust the screen and our body to get in a comfortable position.

For a dual monitor setup, a monitor mount that enables you to easily adjust your screen angle and distance, and a chair with caster wheels that can move would be extremely helpful.

Line up your screens

If you have two monitors of the same make and model, Windows should automatically extend your desktop horizontally when you plug them both in. Just adjust each monitor’s stand so they line up perfectly, and you’re good to go.

However, if you have two different monitors, you may need to do a bit more work to make them work together. For example, align the brightness & color settings. Make the switching friendly to your eyes.

Level up your graphics card

Extending an extra screen requires more GPU from your computer. If you are a big gamer and find the two monitors dragging down the image quality, you may like to check on your GPU.

If you are installing the graphics card yourself, do good research before you blow up your computer. There are plenty of articles introducing how to upgrade your graphics card, like this one.

Set an ultra-wide wallpaper

As you have got your dual screens lined up, pick an ultra-wide wallpaper and make them look like a small video wall. One thing to mention, the wallpaper shall be in the right resolution: add up the width of both screens, and use the shorter height. By default, the wallpaper would repeat itself on different screens. Don’t worry, it’s easy to make it show across your dual monitors (even multiple monitors).

For Windows users, go to your desktop, right-click, and choose “personalize-background”. In the “Choose a fit for your desktop image”, choose “Span”. And you will see the wallpaper stretch to both screens now.

Figure 2. Windows display settings

More Resources

An extra monitor boosts productivity for work-from-homers and multi-taskers. If you are ready to try on a dual monitor setup with a KVM switch, you may be interested in more of our blogs here. 

• 4 Things to consider before setting up dual monitors
• KVM switch 101 and how to choose one?
• Why isn’t my KVM switch working?