Why is my external screen so dark?

Moin folks, I recently got an external screen for my laptop.

I have neither changed any settings on the laptop nor set anything on the screen itself and it is still mega dark / contrast is relatively high.

Could it be because of the HDMI cable, etc?

LG, thanks for all the answers

Could be due to the cable, however various standard settings could simply have been adopted in terms of driver technology. Have you already checked the brightness with the monitor buttons? Otherwise there are options for brightness in Windows under the display settings.

I have reset everything to the default setting…

You can usually not control the brightness of the screen via the laptop, for this there are usually some hardware buttons on the monitor with which you can change the brightness in the monitor menu…

Everything on the standard setting…

Make it brighter anyway? Or do I not understand the problem?

I don't know if it's just the brightness or the contrast. For example, you can no longer tell the difference between light and dark gray because everything is just dark

Then you can just make the screen brighter and adjust the contrast. Usually everything can be set on the monitors…