Hooking up to external monitor.

As a user who never had a use for an external monitor I'm still very new to this stuff. I want to get an external monitor with 1080p resolution however I was wondering if I could be able to run both my laptop's (Envy 14) monitor and external monitor at the same time. I know that it is possible but I've only seen it done on a laptop with 1080p and a monitor with 1080p. My Envy's resolution is 1600x900, but will it also render the external monitors full resolution of 1080p or will it only render the resolution of 1600x900? I'm not sure if I worded this correctly as it is very late here, but any help is appreciated!

 

Provided you have enough GPU power (and you probably do), there should be no reason why you can't run different resolutions on the two different video outputs. However, you might notice some weirdness in the way Windows handles this. For example, your wallpaper might be stretched on the second monitor due to the increase resolution. Your mouse may not enter the same distance from the top/bottom of the screen when you switch between the two. Moving windows from one resolution to the other may seem odd as the window will change sizes between the two (and look weird when you try to rest it between the monitors). Some older applications (ie. games) won't let you run different resolutions and will force your monitors to the lowest capable resolution when they are running. Etc.

 

This is exactly the answer I was looking for cleared everything up that I was confused about. Thanks!

 

I'm running a 1080p monitor off my envy. No issues. Wallpaper is centred on the larger monitor. When I hooked it up it wasn't filling the whole of the external monitor because the "projector" setting defaulted to shrinking it 15%, I changed this in catalyst control center and no problems since.