Connecting monitors daisy-chained is quite simple once you have the right equipment, and is a great solution if you don’t have enough ports or a long enough cable. Unfortunately, if you want to do this with your standard HDMI cable, you’re out of luck. Without the necessary built-in protocols, HDMI lacks the additional features of its DisplayPort counterpart. There’s no real way to daisy chain monitors via HDMI, so you’ll have to go with alternatives.
Daisy-chaining monitors via DisplayPort is not widely available on most modern monitors, and few brands still equip them with the necessary ports. USB-C and Thunderbolt have instead taken on this role, with brands like ViewSonic opting for the multi-faceted cable over DisplayPort.
HDMI may be the simplest cable for connecting a PC to a monitor, but it lacks key features offered by other cables. Namely, HDMI does not support Multi-Stream Transport (MST), which is exclusive to cables supporting DisplayPort 1.2 or higher, including USB-C and Thunderbolt. Since 2014, USB-C has supported DisplayPort, and with it, MST. However, some modern computers, like Apple Silicon devices, do not support MST. If so, it’s best to use docks equipped with Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 to connect multiple monitors.
Thunderbolt is how to daisy chain in 2026
There are docks that convert DisplayPort to HDMI, but it is not “daisy-chaining” of the same capacity. These dongles and docks simply convert the MST signal into two video outputs, thereby extending a single cable into multiple ones. Daisy chaining involves plugging cables into two separate ports and then to the next monitor, with a single output from the laptop or PC.
If you want to daisy chain monitors in 2026, your best bet is Thunderbolt. Although the USB4 specification can compete with Thunderbolt in several ways, including maximum transfer speeds, it still lags behind Thunderbolt. However, Thunderbolt is also expensive to purchase, with short cables ranging from $20 to $129 if you go through Apple for the 1.2m long version.
Monitors that support daisy chaining will feature different USB-C ports: one for input and the other for your daisy chain connection. Thunderbolt can support up to two 4K displays or a single 8K monitor. If you’ve managed to find a daisy chain monitor equipped with DisplayPort, you’ll be able to get four 1080p monitors from a single source.