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M2 'only supports one external display' + base model 1519€

MrGunny94

MrGunny94

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 3, 2016
1,154
678
Malaga, Spain
Was just checking Apple page for this and it says that it still only supports one display at a time.. Even with the increased prices of the base model starting at 1500€.

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Glad I bought the M1 Pro.

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So Apple thinks to connect multiple monitors a time is a "Pro" feature and will not make it into the entry level chips to save some transistors(reduce cost).
 
Gnattu said:
So Apple thinks to connect multiple monitors a time is a "Pro" feature and will not make it into the entry level chips to save some transistors(reduce cost).
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Well the M1 Pro base model is also a higher SKU in ROI for them as well!

They do want power users to be forced upon the M1 Pro and this shows it...
 
MrGunny94 said:
Well the M1 Pro base model is also a higher SKU in ROI for them as well!

They do want power users to be forced upon the M1 Pro and this shows it...
Click to expand...

Yeah, except using two external monitors to do office productivity and web browsing at your desk is pretty much bog-standard office-admin level now. My employer just gave everyone in our office 2 x 24" monitors and a new lower-mid level HP laptop with a dock, and we are just MS Office users all day long. And I have two at home as well, for light personal use. I should have to pay A$4k for a MBP just to get second monitor support? Forget it.
 
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Stuart in Oz said:
Yeah, except using two external monitors to do office productivity and web browsing at your desk is pretty much bog-standard office-admin level now. My employer just gave everyone in our office 2 x 24" monitors and a new lower-mid level HP laptop with a dock, and we are just MS Office users all day long. And I have two at home as well, for light personal use. I should have to pay A$4k for a MBP just to get second monitor support? Forget it.
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Same here, I had a M1 Air and I still have it and use it on the go but at home I have a M1 Pro hooked up to my dock.

I bought the M1 Air base model is great but I do like 10-15GB of swap every day.. These days is being used as a Plex server :p
 
Not too surprising, why would Apple canabalize their product line by allowing more than 1 display on a consumer SOC? Most people who buy the M1 and now M2 machines are regular consumers that are not likely to use more than one external display. Apple considers support for more than one external display as a pro feature.
 
chikorita157 said:
Not too surprising, why would Apple canabalize their product line by allowing more than 1 display on a consumer SOC? Most people who buy the M1 and now M2 machines are regular consumers that are not likely to use more than one external display. Apple considers support for more than one external display as a pro feature.
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I would disagree. As argued above, many regular consumers now have two external monitors at home and at work. External monitors are cheap as chips, at least in 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 resolutions, and many many people are happy with those resolutions for day-to-day computing life. 6K is wonderful, but it's a very small share of the external monitor market. Even 4K isn't that big a slice of the total installed base of monitors on the planet.

FWIW, I think the issue is that the M2 is really the M1S, the same basic chip just hotted up a bit, and I suspect that basic M1/M2 design doesn't have the horses to drive two externals under demanding conditions. (Not that us MS Office warriors would want to drive it that hard, but if they make it an option, some users inevitably will decide to go hard-core on a computer that obviously wasn't meant for that, and will then complain that it doesn't work right for their heavy-duty needs. Le sigh.)

That was probably a deliberate choice they made to keep the base chip within the MBA thermal envelope, and we'll have to wait for the improved 3nm (or whatever) efficiency of the M3 - the first major redesign since the M1 - to get dual monitor support on the base chip.

I think my 2017 MBA is about to get an SSD upgrade to get me through the next 18 months until that happens.
 
chikorita157 said:
Not too surprising, why would Apple canabalize their product line by allowing more than 1 display on a consumer SOC? Most people who buy the M1 and now M2 machines are regular consumers that are not likely to use more than one external display. Apple considers support for more than one external display as a pro feature.
Click to expand...

Chromebooks support more than 1 external display. This has been a standard feature for the PC for nearly a decade.

Even Apple MBA (2018) supports dual external displays. That was simply dropped with the M1 and now marketed as an upscale feature.
 
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JPack said:
Chromebooks support more than 1 external display. This has been a standard feature for the PC for nearly a decade.

Even Apple MBA (2018) supports dual external displays. That was simply dropped with the M1 and now marketed as an upscale feature.
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Perhaps Apple did a market study to see how many people actually used more than 2 displays with a MBA and the answer came out to almost no one or a negligible amount.
 
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The 13 inch MacBook Pro is similarly limited. The base M1/M2 is designed to also be used in iPads, and I figure this is the main reason for the limitation.
 
Stuart in Oz said:
Yeah, except using two external monitors to do office productivity and web browsing at your desk is pretty much bog-standard office-admin level now. My employer just gave everyone in our office 2 x 24" monitors and a new lower-mid level HP laptop with a dock, and we are just MS Office users all day long. And I have two at home as well, for light personal use. I should have to pay A$4k for a MBP just to get second monitor support? Forget it.
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I do office work with multiple applications, but my 2nd display is always off. Somehow I prefer one bigger display than two monitors.
 
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If you need to connect your notebook to two or more monitors clearly the entry level notebook computer Apple offers is the wrong tool for the job.

Once the smallest SoC gains support for Thunderbolt 4 it will support at minimum dual 4K monitors. Right now both TB3 and USB4 only mandates the computer need to support a single monitor.
 
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The M1 MBA was decent value, but I think this new M2 MBA is unreasonably expensive. The rest of the market has moved on.
 
Dual monitor plus laptop setup is now a very standard way of working in the office for desk drones like myself and pretty much everyone I know in London. Of course there's not many Macs issued to the likes of us either, but it's definitely a bog standard feature expected even on cheaper hardware.

I am sure Apple is well aware and doubt they are segmenting their product line - I would be shocked if this feature did not return to the Air. I suspect it's the revisions to the relevant part of the chip were either late or not focused on this time around.
 
When the M1 MacBook Air lacked dual external display support, I thought that’s just a typical shortcoming of a first-gen product that would surely be fixed at the next spec bump…
 
Stuart in Oz said:
Yeah, except using two external monitors to do office productivity and web browsing at your desk is pretty much bog-standard office-admin level now. My employer just gave everyone in our office 2 x 24" monitors and a new lower-mid level HP laptop with a dock, and we are just MS Office users all day long. And I have two at home as well, for light personal use. I should have to pay A$4k for a MBP just to get second monitor support? Forget it.
Click to expand...

At work, we have Dell D6000 docks that support Displaylink, and are connected to 2 24" monitors. We just install DisplayLink Manager on our Macs and we can use both screens (or 3 if we use the laptop display too).

For WFH, I have an ultra-wide, which I prefer to the 2 monitor setup.
 
… well at least I don’t have to upgrade from my M1 Air 🙃 …

But it’s really unfortunate that even older Intel MacBook Airs support more than 1 external display … but not this 3x faster Apple Silicon one 🙂

I tried DisplayLink as I had a dual 24” setup at home … but it’s crap. No Night Shift (they have implemented f.lux support lately but from what I’ve read it doesn’t work flawlessly). Also forget Apple TV or similar things (Netflix, Udemy…) while the DisplayLink Manager is running.

Therefore I migrated to an ultrawide monitor (ThinkVision P44w-10). Doesn’t work flawlessly also but it’s one native display connected with single cable that also powers the laptop.

… and I agree with the guys above - two external displays is now an office standard - I work for a company where most workers only do some Office stuff or use some other not very power demanding software… and we have two monitors on the desk… a 24” Dell connected via Type-C with a DP out to the other monitor (usually some 22” office tier) … so yeah … DP MST - another thing that Apple cannot figure out properly (read the Medium article on that topic if you’re interested).
 
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