Hacker News Reader

Comment by comboy | Hacker News Reader

Check out DisplayLink. I'm using multiple monitors with M1 macbook air which officially only supports single external display. Works great so far.

I agree with your point though.

View on HN

I used an M1 Air docked with displaylink for about 8 months. 1. The Displaylink software heats the machine lightly in the background, and it just gets worse with resolution. 2. The Adaptor is unreliable and can do some really wonky stuff around dock and undock due to Apple's locked USB policies. 3. The old series of Adaptors do not support 4K60, so if you plan on using it with a 4K display, you need to pony up on costs.

Assuming we see more ~$1600 sales on the M1 Pro 14 inch, that is easily $300 more computer than a $1299 M2 macbook pro.

Not to mention DisplayLink can be broken by MacOS updates. Tunneling video over USB was a clever hack back in the day, but with USB-C and TB3/USB4 docks, things are much less software-dependent.

DisplayLink is a daily source of frustration for me. If I disconnect my DisplayLink hub, and then plug it back in... I have to open and close my 13" M1 MacBook Pro a few times; restart the DisplayLink software; and sometimes reboot my computer before it will work again. For some reason, Zoom will just _hang_ after all of this. I just keep repeating the above until Zoom works again.

This is my employer provided MacBook Pro. I hate the experience so much that when it's time for a laptop refresh, I'm going to ask for the Windows option if they haven't upgraded their Mac offering to one that supports two monitors.

I love Apple products -- but I never understood how they could release a "Pro" laptop that supported only one external monitor.

Interesting as for me it mostly just works, I wonder if has to do with the dock as much as the software.

That wouldn't work with my desk and screen setup that uses MST. I use devices that do support MST but not displaylink like my Steam deck, or out the box Linux installs.

I'm not sure the downvoting is warranted. For what it's worth, I use display link every day (with an M2 MacBook Air) and it's fine. The refresh rate really suffers when driving two 4k monitors (as well as the built-in panel), but I've found it to be a reasonable workaround.

Of course, it's also helpful to know that others have had worse experiences.

I've had two displaylink docks fail on me. To displaylinks credit they sent me the second dock free after the first one failed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com