Dual Monitors with Air M1?

Thank you for the notice! I now will leave this thread, definitely forever!

how does someone as snarky as you are not get thrown out of this forum. Your comments are not helpful to anyone

lol

Shaun — what set up are you running so successfully? Looking to purchase a reliable workaround

If you’ve already established it doesn’t work, then get off the comments an

You having a bad day, bud? Keep that type of talk for Windows.

I’m still holding out for Apple to give us the dual native monitor option in a future update… naive or likely?

It would be an interesting update but it is possible. If it is not 100% up to standard I'm sure IPv6Freely will punish his keyboard for us.

Naive. It’s not a software limitation, it’s a hardware one. But I guess mrmochabear knows better…

It’s not possible. Why is this so confusing for people?

That would be good, thanks for your thoughts. I’m a relative amateur, so it’s good to get the thoughts of the more tech minded!

The M1 notebooks support one external display, up to 6K but only one. Doesn’t matter if you’re using the internal display or not. A splitter will just mirror the two displays (they won’t be separate desktops), same thing would happen if you use a dock like the one you linked.

DisplayLink is a combination hardware/software ‘trick’ to drive another display. It’s limited to 1080p (HD) resolution and the refresh rate is very slow and laggy. IMO, it’s not a good solution unless you just want a basically static display of something.

Keep in mind these new M1 Macs are at the low end of the lineup. Likely at some point in the not too distant future Apple will release higher end machines with a better Apple silicon chip and proper support for >1 external display.

Sadly the M1 chip only supports 1 external screen. So you can only hook up 1 of your Dell monitors next to the Air's own screen. So you can dual "monitor" with your laptops screen and 1 Dell monitor :)

I got my M1 MacBook Pro to with with 2 additional monitors by using the Targus DisplayLink connected to the monitors with Display Port cables. Here is a video of it and the video has the link for the Targus Dock.

https://youtu.be/YRIiB__vpTg

I got the new Air M1 and herewith my experiences so far:

PROS

• I love it!
• It's super fast and snappy - no more waiting! (Chrome is already translated for M1)
• It's dead quiet so no more fans in my ears for hours!
• No more touch bar - yes!
• Can't even feel any temperatures rising near the screen above top keys row anymore and remains cold al the time (indexing, am doing same tasks as before on my Macbook but with only one external 2K monitor hence:

CONS

• DisplayLink drivers are currently unreliable and stopped working for me after installing a suggested login add-on. Every time I try to run DL manager (DLM) to enable additional horizontal Dell 2515H it always kicks me out back to the login screen. I've tried un/reinstalling everything from scratch but no joy.
• DL driver still doens't handle screen rotation on M1. My two identical but vertically positioned monitors are pretty much useless on my desk atm and presume will have to wait some time for an update... could be weeks or months as DL are not giving me any ETA (current drivers at version 1.1 released in Aug 2020). At the moment it's way too risky to reload OS X Big Sur due to an Apple bug and there's still a risk that my new MBA will be bricked when I do it (google about the problem).
• When DL drivers worked, using HDMI 4K < version 2 cable there was a significant and visible lag. However, to my surprise even over USB 3.0 -> DP cable it's as smooth as native external monitor - didn't play any movies but moved windows and mouse cursor. I was using my old StarTech hardware so a massive improvement and would be very happy with such performance for office use.
• You'll be always at DL's mercy because drivers may not work correcty or at all with each new OS X releases. If your system is mission critical then you either don't update OS X and wait for others to confirm DL is working well or end up with not working external monitors then waiting months for a fix. Alrernatively reload OS X to previous version but that's a waste of precious time.

Also, I've been considering replacing my 3 Dells 2515H with two stacked 49" ultra wide monitors so I don't have to worry at least about DL's screen rotation anymore. Unfortunately, I have not found monitors that I like - a Dell 49 IPS was a candidate and even at poor 60Hz would do the job for office use but came to the conclusion its curvaure of a mere 3800R is too weak for such as ride screen and 1200mm x 800mm desk. Those with curvature 1800R and much higher refresh rates unfortunately are VA panels and have worse image quality + other things that don't like. I am not going to compromise - my eye sight is no. 1.