Connecting dual monitors with MacBook Air 2024 (M2 chip and two Thunderbolt/USB-Cs)

The M1/M2 Macs support one external display.

MacBook Air 13- and 15-inch with M2 - Tech Specs - Apple

"Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:

One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz"

hausofprince wrote:

From what I've read online (Apple's website), my model of MacBook can have two external displays, one per usb-c port)

You can use either USB-C port to connect your one display. But a 13" or 15" M2 MacBook Air can only drive one external display in a first-class, hardware-supported manner.

hausofprince wrote:

Thanks for the link. This is so disappointing because the help article said MacBooks with thunderbolt 3 or 4/USB-C ports can support one display per port. Thanks for your help.

Thunderbolt 4 makes some things mandatory that were optional in Thunderbolt 3. One is the ability to drive at least two displays over USB-C or Thunderbolt. To date, every Apple Silicon Mac with TB4 ports supports that; none of the Apple Silicon Macs with TB3 ports do.

There were many Intel-based Macs that had TB3 ports and that could drive two displays. But I don't think that first statement ("You can connect a single display to each port.") was entirely accurate even for them. E.g., the MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports) had four ports, but could only drive two displays. The writer may have been trying to say that you could not attach multiple displays to a single USB-C port; that each (up to the number your computer supported) would need to be connected to its own host port.

It's true that a Mac can support more than one external display via the Thunderbolt port...but only if that Mac supports more than one monitor. A MacBook Pro, for example, does support multiple monitors in the way HP has suggested (as long as it's not the "base" M3 MacBook Pro).

I'd suggest contacting HP and let them know their advertising needs to be cleaned up.

My bad! You're right. Apple needs to add some details to that.