How effective is displaylink as a workaround of the 1 external display limitation of the base M chips?

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 can suffer from lagging. Just adding the DisplayLink Driver is not adequate to get a picture -- you need a DisplayLink "stunt-box" or a Dock that includes DisplayLink chips.

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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 (as one user put it) “without too many dropped frames".

If you are only doing program listings spreadsheets, stock quotes, and other slow to change data, DisplayLink can work for you, but requires you to make some strong compromises.

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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 disabled 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 pejorative terms to describe DisplayLink.

The Apple standard for its built-in hardware-accelerated displays, makes them suitable for full-motion video for production/display of cinema-quality video with NO dropped frames, and NO dropouts or partial-blank scan lines due to memory under-runs or other issues. This requires a hardware rasterizer/display-generator for each fully-accelerated display.

If you need more hardware-accelerated displays than the base model M1, M2, M3 built-in and ONE external display, and an un-accelerated iPad if desired, you probably need a more capable computer.

If you are doing ONLY program listings, spreadsheets, stock quotes and other slow to change data, there are some other solutions, but they require you to make some strong compromises.

Executive summary: More than ONE additional Hardware-accelerated display can NOT be added to the entry-level 13-in or 15-in M1 or M2 systems.

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The same rules we learned for the M1 and M2 still apply to the M3 models. Display interfaces are generated deep inside the system on a chip. How many there are depends on the exact type of Processor:

M3 (plain) like the 13-in and 15-in supports up to ONE fully hardware-accelerated external display.

M3 PRO processor supports up to Two fully hardware-accelerated external displays.

M3 MAX processor supports up to Four fully hardware-accelerated external displays.

Persason wrote:

How effective is displaylink for multi-display output on the base M chips?

I have zero use for the computing power of the Pro and Max chips and have no need to pay a hefty premium just for multi-monitor setup. It feels like this is some artificial limitation of the base M chips because even the cheapest intel/amd cpus had multi.display output.

So is display-link good enough? The adaptors aren't cheap though.

The introductory M1 had limitations yes. The newer M2/M3 series addressed these issues.

Why start out behind the times...if you are already planning on an external monitor(?)

I would be tempted to look at the Air for a more updated M2/M3 if you are trying to save money

https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/

or look at open box / returns /refurbs they carry the exact same AppleCare warranty:

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished