I want to know whether a laptop can do 2560x1440 via HDMI

[mikeymikec]

The laptop in question is a Lenovo V15 G4 AMN with an AMD Ryzen 3 7320u CPU with an integrated Radeon 610M graphics chip. The laptop has 1x HDMI and 1x USB-C on it. I'm not a huge fan of using USB-C while leaving the only port with only one purpose unused, so IMO HDMI would be best. I suppose I could use a USB-C hub with say a DisplayPort connection on it as a fallback, but the simpler the better IMO.

According to the official specs it can do 4k @ 60Hz via USB-C and can do 4k @ 30Hz via HDMI. According to a supplier's website the HDMI revision is 1.4b, which I personally think is the reason why it doesn't list HDMI 4k 60Hz support (which apparently requires HDMI 2.0).

Datasheet: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/Lenovo/Lenovo_V15_G4_AMN/Lenovo_V15_G4_AMN_Spec.pdf

One might think that a logical thing to do is to ask Lenovo. Lenovo online chat and phone sales are capable of reading of spec sheets so they weren't much help, the former referred me to tech support which referred me to sales.

My thinking is that since the graphics hardware is evidently capable of doing a far higher resolution than I'm asking and HDMI 1.4b is at least capable of 2560x1440 @ 75Hz according to some guy on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3bjqf7

... that it's a pretty safe bet that HDMI should work?

 

[Tech Junky]

Take the laptop and cable to Best buy and try it. Easier than ordering a monitor and finding out it doesn't work. Or go the other route and upgrade the laptop panel to 2K. I upgrade mine to 4K though for more real estate.

 

[mikeymikec]

I tried it out today. It was an interesting experience.

I plugged the monitor in and the laptop immediately fired it up in the 'duplicate display' configuration, unsurprisingly running the monitor at 1080p just like the laptop screen.

I then told Windows (this is a clean install of Win11 23H2 with the latest AMD display driver) to only use the second display, which it did but still only at 1080p. Furthermore, the screen resolution option was greyed out. I tried restarting, no difference.

I then switched the display configuration to 'extend', which automatically fired up the monitor at its native resolution (1440p), then I switched it back to show only on the second display which it did correctly at 1440p.

The display resolution setting is still greyed out though as well as the scaling setting. The custom scaling setting worked fine.

 

[Tech Junky]

The display resolution setting is still greyed out though as well as the scaling setting. The custom scaling setting worked fine.

I think that's due to the internal display topping out at 1080.