How to Connect Your Laptop to TV? HDMI and Wireless

Need to use your TV for something other than watching TV? With more people working from home, there are several ways you can use your TV as an extra display – without a lot of fuss. We will show you the three different ways to turn your TV into a collaboration space.

As an alternative, wireless methods of connecting a laptop to a TV are growing in their popularity. There are a lot of benefits to wireless screen mirroring. It enables you to connect to a TV without any cables – from all kinds of different sources. The best ones can split up your 4K TV into different sections so you can have multiple presenters or sources on the screen. 

Imagine if you are a realtor with a home office – you can have one section connected to your notebook showing a listing, a second to your phone showing the Zillow page, third to a tablet running a tour video, and the fourth section to your desktop computer showing MLS comps. More importantly, with the right equipment, you can do this without having to call in an IT expert to get it running. 

One of the least expensive ways to connect a laptop to a TV is with Google Chromecast.  If you have a single Windows laptop, and only occasionally want to connect to your TV, this is is a solid option.   If you are Mac user, then you may want to look at an Apple TV – which works great with a MacBook or an iPad – but won’t connect to your Windows notebooks.

Both these solutions are good for sharing videos or an occasional presentation, but if you are going to use your TV for business or education applications such as a home school, you need something that can provide secure and reliable data transmission.  

In the last couple of years, there are many new ways to use your TV to collaborate and share can notebooks, phones, and Blu-Ray players players without compromising security or having to load risky apps on your device. For a classroom, meeting room, or huddle space, you want a system that uses HDMI and/or USB-C buttons to connect a laptop to a TV without an app – and enables encryption so that you don’t have to worry about having your content recorded. These are more expensive than the consumer-oriented solutions but enable neat features such as splitting up a 4K TV screen into four separate sections to see multiple inputs at the same time.  

BenQ InstaShow screen mirroring systems are designed for classroom and meeting use, where you may have more than one presenter and need an easy to use and effective wireless presentation system. There’s no driver, no app, and no network logins needed. Any team member simply plugs in an InstaShow button on their notebook and can present on the TV in just seconds. Depending on the model, you can have up to four people using laptops, tablets, and smartphones to share your TV simultaneously – enabling vital team collaboration.  According to Projector Central, InstaShow’s “combination of video quality with ease of set up and use is nothing short of amazing.”

Sometimes it can be difficult to find answers to your questions when trying to find the right wireless screen mirroring system to connect to your TV.  Since many resellers don’t have experts in this area that can help –where can you turn?

If you are looking for advice on choosing the right system for your business or classroom, you can talk directly to an experienced BenQ product expert who has access to many different models and can guide you to the best one for your application.  We also can help you find a reseller nearby, or if you want, you can purchase one right on the phone.   

Wireless screen mirroring systems are relatively new on the market, but you can find more detailed answers to your questions on the BenQ Wireless Presentation System page which has more detailed articles on common topics such as using Mac’s or AV devices with a screen mirroring system as well as comparison of popular models.