MacBook Pro 13" M1 Dual Monitors using Dell D6000

DisplayLink technology creates a "fake" display buffer in RAM, sends the data out over a slower interface to a stunt box with DisplayLink custom chips that put that data back onto a "legacy" interface. It is not a true "accelerated" display, and it suffers from lagging.

It may be acceptable for a second display showing slow-to-change data such as computer program listings, stock quotes, or spreadsheets, but NOT for full motion Video, and mouse-tracking on that display can lag, and can make you feel queasy.

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It is really nice to know that you can use a DisplayLink display if you MUST have an additional display for some of the types of data I mentioned. But that is NOT the same as the computer supporting a second, built-in, accelerated display.

These displays depend on DisplayLink software, and are at the whim of Apple when they make MacOS changes. There have been cases where MacOS changes completely Borked DisplayLink software, and it took some time for them to recover.

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I think the Big Surprise for a lot of Hub/Dock buyers is that they thought they were getting a "real" display, but actually got a DisplayLink "fake" Display. If you got what you expected in every case, I would not use such strong terms to describe DisplayLink.

I dont have two dell monitors. But I have two acer monitors and can only use one of them with the pro 13 inch m1 chip. There are several videos on youtube showing a potential workaround using a displaylink adapter. I have ordered one and waiting to see if it works.

The Apple-Silicon M1 Macs have one display-generator/rasterizer for the Built-in display, and ONE for an external display, which can be as large as the Apple 6K displays. You can not attach two hardware-accelerated displays.

Actually the Displaylink performance on an M1 MacBook Pro is very good and using a dock such as the HP Universal USB-C G2 dock (5TW13UT), I have 2 external 27" Acer Predator monitors at 1440P plus the built in display active in extended desktop mode. The fast performance might be due to the unified memory architecture and will probably get better since the displaylink drivers haven't been optimized for the M1 chip yet (the are coded for Intel arch as far as I know). There are currently 3 issues though:

1). Clamshell mode needs to implemented, currently its all displays active or none while using Displaylink in extended desktop mode

2). HDCP/DRM needs to be implemented. While displaylink app is active, video from the Apple TV app only shows as a black screen. This happens on all displays while displaylink is active

3). unlock with Apple Watch does not currently work, since the OS thinks the screen is being recorded.

In all it's a good solution for an M1 but obviously it needs refinement/improvement. When I say good, I mean good for standard productivity, non DRM movie watching, etc. Obviously, gaming of any sort is a different beast and not sure how that would perform with this type of setup but suspect it would have issues with gaming.

On my M1 MBA, the HP Thunderbolt G2 (2UK37AA) did not seem to work.

However, the (old) USB-C Universal Dock (1MK33AA) seems to be doing the trick.

Am not sure if the firmware on the docks needs to be upgraded.

I would like to see some more data on these docks, as I do like them, in general.

Thanks for your reply. I have done some digging and I found a macrumors thread where someone has confirmed that the D6000 works to support a total of two external displays on their M1 macbook. This was before the new drivers came out, so hopefully the performance will be better too.

Link to thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/external-monitor-support.2266844/page-10

Hi tmoldovan,

The dock has to be the HP Universal USB-C G2 displaylink dock, the part number is in my original post (P/N: 5TW13UT). This is not the same as the thunderbolt dock G2. The thunderbolt dock is a different technology and does not support displaylink, I know it's confusing since the USB-C and thunderbolt 3 connectors are physically the same. The displaylink dock also has specialized hardware/logic for video compression over USB-C (this is part of the displaylink solution along with Displaylink's driver software for MacOS/Windows). Also note that the HP USB-C G5 dock (5TW10AA) is not a displaylink dock either...it does not have the Displaylink chipset and thus will not work either.

have you used that HP dock with an M1 macbook?

The D6000 from Dell is also a usb-c displaylink dock and is fairly cheap on ebay. Going to take a punt, but my Mac doesn’t arrive for another two weeks 😔

P/N: 5TW13UT is the HP Displaylink Universal USB-C G2 dock I am using with my M1 Macbook Pro and yes it does work. I haven't had a chance to try out the December release of the Displaylink drivers yet to answer one of the previous posts. Links to the dock info and compatibility below:

https://www.displaylink.com/products/find?res=3840x2160&num=2&br=5&vid_dp=1&usbc=1

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-usb-c-a-universal-dock-g2

Tried out the latest driver ver 1.2.0 Build 55.125. They work great. Looks like clamshell mode is now implemented!

DRM movie/video playback still has to be implemented. Unlock with Apple Watch still has to be implemented as well.

DisplayLink technology creates a "fake" display buffer in RAM, sends the data out over a slower interface to a stunt box with DisplayLink custom chips that put that data back onto a "legacy" interface. It is not a true "accelerated" display, and it suffers from lagging.

It may be acceptable for a second display showing slow-to-change data such as computer program listings, stock quotes, or spreadsheets, but NOT for full motion Video, not for Video editing, and absolutely not for gaming. Mouse-tracking on that display can lag, and can make you feel queasy.

In a pinch, it may even play Internet videos without (as one user put it) "too many dropped frames".

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It is really nice to know that you can use a DisplayLink display if you MUST have an additional display for some of the types of data I mentioned. But that is NOT the same as the computer supporting a second, built-in, Hardware-accelerated display.

These displays depend on DisplayLink software, and are at the whim of Apple when they make MacOS changes. There have been cases where MacOS changes completely Borked DisplayLink software, and it took some time for them to recover.

--------

I think the Big Surprise for a lot of Hub/Dock buyers is that they thought they were getting a "real" display, but actually got a DisplayLink "fake" Display. If you got what you expected in every case, I would not use such pejorative terms to describe DisplayLink.

You should try it out on an M1 MacBook, the implementation for this architecture actually works quite well and seems quite fast to me. Non DRM video and YouTube playback without dropped frames as far as I can tell and my experience has been excellent so far. What you state regarding displaylink is true in a conceptual sense with respect to how the technology operates, but there are caveats here to differentiate from what you may have experienced in the past on Wintel displaylink setups or even older Intel Macs; The M1 MacBooks have a unified memory architecture for RAM which is different compared to Intel models and also note that displaylink has a few different generations in chips too, the latest supports 4k but on their website I saw older devices that are limited to older USB speeds and 1080p. There's a few others that have tried out displaylink on an M1 Mac and their experiences and YouTube videos correlate strongly to what I have experienced performance wise.

Agreed, if you have it try it. I should have clarified, it works great for me, but I use it for looking at browsers, spreadsheets, databases, VNC, Remote Desktop, work stuff. I have used video, I don't notice any problems or lag, but I don't use it for home theatre. Displaylink will probably be less than optimal for games because of how it work, but if you are using a Mac as your gaming platform, I am not sure the DisplayLink stuff will bother you or interfere too much. For gaming you could also switch back to direct HDMI or DP video and skip the dock.

I copied this setup (Dell D6000) with my M1 MacBook Pro and 2 HP Z27 4K monitors and it works great with both monitors running at 3840x 2160 , 60 Hz. There’s also no noticeable impact to the M1s performance.

Has anyone found any work around to the HDCP video content turning into a black screen? I can’t see any content from Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime when it’s plugged into the dock.