Dual Displays with 13" Retina MBP - Which Cables Should I Use?

[astewes]

I recently purchased the ASUS VN247H-P display to use with my 13" Retina MBP. It's currently connected with an HDMI cable. I've been happy with this display, so I went ahead and ordered a second one.

Now I'm wondering...what would be the best, most cost-effective way to connect both displays to my MBP? Each has 2 HDMI ports and 1 D-Sub port. Since the MBP only has 1 HDMI port, I'm obviously going to need to buy some sort of splitter (does such a thing exist, and would my picture quality diminish?) OR look into adapters.

So, which is the better way to go?
1) An HDMI splitter and another HDMI cable
2) Make use of the other MBP display ports with adapters and additional cables (if so, which ones?)

or 3) is there an additional method that I'm not thinking of? Perhaps a docking station?

Thanks in advance for any advice you have to offer!

 

[Mindzeye82]

Most straight forward way would be to use a mini-displayport to HDMI cable or adapter. I find that the cable is easier because its just one wire without having to worry about additional adapters

http://www.amazon.com/Mini-DisplayP...2148&sr=8-1&keywords=mini+displayport+to+hdmi

 

[astewes]

Most straight forward way would be to use a mini-displayport to HDMI cable or adapter. I find that the cable is easier because its just one wire without having to worry about additional adapters

http://www.amazon.com/Mini-DisplayP...2148&sr=8-1&keywords=mini+displayport+to+hdmi

Awesome! So I would just need 2 of these cables and nothing else? And do you know if OS X will recognize them as 2 separate displays? I'd like both together to function as 1 desktop, rather than 2 separate desktops, each with a dock at the bottom. What I want may be the default functionality, but I figured I'd ask ;-)

 

[Mindzeye82]

You could use two of those cables or 1 of those cables and 1 of your HDMI cables. And they would function as a continuous desktop (just turn off mirroring)

 

[NewbieCanada]

You could use two of those cables or 1 of those cables and 1 of your HDMI cables. And they would function as a continuous desktop (just turn off mirroring)

No, they function as two separate desktops with mirroring off. You can’t have an app display half on one and half on the other (you can do that with multiple displays in Windows).

However there is only one dock.