S7-392 HDMI - Poor image quality

The image quality on my second monitor is poor. This is a brand new S7-392 connected to an Acer 23" monitor via HDMI. IThe display is noticeably less sharp. This same monitor/cable were used for several years with a Dell Studio and provided sharp 1080p image. Other laptops connected to the monitor yield excellent images. The Image quality on the S7 13" laptop display is sharp and crisp. Am running 8.1 and then "upgraded" the driver to version .3304 at the recommendation of Acer support, even though the driver installed during the Win 8.1 upgrade was newer (3331, i think). This had no impact on image quality. This is the Intel 4400 graphics subsystem i believe.

This feels like a driver issue - there is nothing that indicates hardware problems that i can see. Are others noticing poor image quality on their second monitor? Has anyone resolved this issue?

Any help is greatly appreciated. I like the S7, but absolutely have to have a good quality 2nd display.

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Vince53

M55, there are several possible explanations for your problem, and I'll give the one that makes the most sense to me.

Your graphics card is deliberately underclocked in order to use less power, thus improving battery life. It is designed to give an excellent image on your laptop monitor, and it does. But when you go from the 13" monitor it is designed for, up to a 23" external monitor, your graphics card is not designed to handle it.

rn55

Thanks for the reply. While this does somewhat "make sense" it would really surprise me if the graphics subsystem was not able to handle a high quality 2nd display. If this proves to be true, then i'm not sure if i can keep this otherwise excellent laptop. Just for fun, i plugged in a 3rd monitor using the proprietary adaptor (USB/VGA/Enet) and it would in fact drive the 3rd screen. So the graphics subsystem seems to have quite a bit of capability. But the image quality is definitely a problem.