MacBook Pro M4 with thunderbolt 5 and portable monitor

Sorry for the confusion Grant, I seemed to have hijacked dragos's original post with my own different one.

I was just wondering why my M4 Pro Mac mini can't do what my M2 Pro Mac mini does, i.e. power the same 15 inch portable monitor on its own without requiring external power, I'm using the same cable on both. Could it be something to do with the Thunderbolt 5 port.

Thunderbolt-5 only shows as available on the 7 port models, which are the 14" and 16" models.

The 13" and 15" model only show Thunderbolt 4 on Apple's website.

Use a 20" ruler or tape measure and take it to the screen diagonally to figure out its actual measurement.

https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/thunderbolt-5-vs-thunderbolt-4

The true lithmous is the amount of charge your Mac gets when hooked up with a 240W charger.

If they only get significantly less, then there is something to be said about that. Both Dell and HP have CAD/GIS laptops that uses two Thunderbolt ports together to achieve higher wattage. It sounds like from the spec, thunderbolt 5 seaks to offer that without the extra cable.

Thank you. And understood about current lack of TB5 accessories. I have pre-order an external TB5 hard drive from OWC.

My disappoint is that there is nowhere in the machine’s hardware overview to see what Thunderbolt ports are installed. Similar to memory or core count. Only place is see is the read speed of 120gbs.

I have 14" M4 MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro chip (14 core CPU/20 core GPU). As per attached screen shot the system info shows it as havingThunderbolt/USB 4. Why does it not say Thunderbolt/USB 5? I note that the speed is listed as up to 120 Gb/s.

Did you ever get to the bottom of this? I was about to buy a Thunderbolt monitor with the intention to use it with my new M4 Pro MacBook Pro. I like the idea of no power cables and plugging the monitor directly into the MacBook Pro with the appropriate Thunderbolt cable. But now I am hesitant.

I really hope you get some resolution to this important question. I’d appreciate if you keep us informed as I’m very actively looking for a thunderbolt monitor, but if I have to buy one that requires its own independent source of power beyond my M4 MacBook Pro, then that factor will certainly influence my decision.

HDMI cable does not carry power in either direction. Just signal.

if it's a high resolution display, the HDMI cable spec becomes important as well. Best results under 4K at 60 requires "PREMIUM" HDMI cables.

Now that we know it's a TB5 port compatibility issue, does anyone know which portable monitors (other than the one linked by calirap, which is only 16 inches and also unavailable now) actually work unplugged from auxiliary power with TB5? How can we be sure when we're shopping for a new monitor? Any recommendations would be appreciated. If you find one on line, 18" or bigger, please post. Thank you.

Now that we know it's a TB5 port compatibility issue, does anyone know which portable monitors (other than the one linked by calirap, which is only 16 inches and also unavailable now) actually work unplugged from auxiliary power with TB5? How can we be sure when we're shopping for a new monitor? Any recommendations would be appreciated. If you find one on line, 18" or bigger, please post. Thank you.

The particular external display I've been testing with has 2 USB-C ports - I've tried with and without separate power and signal - with the same results. I've been using an Anker 4-port 100W GaN adapter to be able to power multiple devices simultaneously.

Do you know of any portable monitors that do work with M4 Pro Macs? I'm still within the return period and considering returning the Arzopa 2.5k 16" monitor, but would like to replace it with one that actually works!!

(It does work, but only with two cables plugged in - HDMI and USBC for power)