Hacker News Reader

Comment by theonething | Hacker News Reader

I'm still incredulous that the M1 only supports one external monitor. Pro and Max support two, but still, in this day and age, supporting only one external is ridiculous.

View on HN

Apparently the M1 can support an external plugged monitor and an iPad via SideCar. Not a big monitor, to be sure, but it's not nothing. [1]

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_pBL2fMux0

Yeah, I do this; 2020 M1 13" MBP; 4K external monitor and iPad Pro on Sidecar, plus I keep the laptop open so I have three screens. I find Sidecar a bit flaky (it disconnects or freezes a bit too often to be breezily accepted), but with a big iPad (mine is basically A4 paper sized) and SwitchResX in play, it's not bad at all.

Edit: ... and having said all that, I'm looking forward to upgrading some time in the next year and going back to two "proper" external monitors. I'll still love using the Sidecar'ed iPad Pro as a second screen when working in cafes, though...

Remember that the M1s are intended a the consumer line. Very few customers at that level are using multiple external displays. It is a testament to the performance of the M1 that professionals are using them and would want more displays. I hope that they add another display controller so that the M2s can handle more screens.

M1 Mac Mini in my office has 2 external monitors, one connected with HDMI and another one with thunderbolt (usb c).

Right, m1 supports up to 2 displays, including built-in one.

the commenter is referring to the m1 mac mini which is a desktop device last i checked. which does support 2 external monitors

M1 computers work with >1 external displays almost flawlessly with DisplayLink-capable dock-station/adapter. Dock stations are shit though. I use dell d6000 and do not recommend it. It's hot and USB ports on it stopped working. Charging and display outputs still work. And it's expensive.

So it's flawless and shit? Am I missing something?

My reading: Dock display output was flawless, other aspects of the dock (overheating, USB port reliability) were shit

I've got a displaylink adapter and run 3 monitors on my M1 mini. I don't do anything intensive on the 2 of the monitors though, so I don't know how it would do if you were doing some crazy 3 monitor gaming. Works fine for software dev though.

> so I don't know how it would do if you were doing some crazy 3 monitor gaming

Let's hear it for all the Mac gamers!

stock cricket chirping sound effect

Ridiculous for their entry level product?

their previous entry level models did

The M1 Mac Mini can drive two monitors.

i had one and returned it because of this i KVM between devices and like using the same setup so it broke the deal for me.

seems m1 is still highly praised though so maybe i should reconsider..

Not to take away from your point, but Max supports 4 displays.

The Max supports three external monitors!

Four displays, actually, with the last being limited to 4K60.

Have you used an M1?

It does suck, but the incredible speed made the tradeoff worth it for me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com