While HDMI connectors are the same, the signals won’t transfer, so you can plug one end of an HDMI cable into your Xbox and the other into your laptop but your laptop won’t receive any signals. On top of that, laptop’s screens are usually LCD panels that use a different voltage than regular monitors, called Low-Voltage Differential Signalling (LVDS) and the connectors are different too. There are many reasons why this isn’t possible, but the main reason is that the incoming signals from HDMI need to be decoded, a process that requires specific hardware not usually found in laptops at the moment. Unfortunately, the reality is that it’s not possible to get HDMI input on a laptop unless it has a separate HDMI port labelled “HDMI-in”, and that’s very rare. I think we can all agree that having a laptop with HDMI input would be really handy – it’s essentially a portable display!

So you noticed that your laptop has an HDMI port, and since HDMI is backwards compatible, wouldn’t it be possible to use your laptop as a display for another device?įor example, maybe you want to use your laptop’s screen for playing games on a console or as an external monitor for your PC.

Dell laptop with hdmi port