Using Dual External Displays on my M1 MacBook Air?

[tardman91]

Is it possible to use two external monitors with my M1 MacBook Air? I have a 2020 M1 MBA, and a 2015ish MBA from work, and a Thinkpad form work too. I’m looking at getting dual 24” monitors and a stand and wondering if it’s possible to use the 2 monitors with my M1 MBA? I’ll also probably connect the other two to one of the monitors as needed. Just wonder if I’m better off going with a single 27” or dual 24”. There’s killer deals on both on my neighborhood Facebook page, so I’m trying to decide. Thanks!

 

[JPack]

You would need to purchase a DisplayLink dock like Dell D6000S as a workaround because the M1 doesn’t support more than one external monitor.

I would suggest a pair of 24-inch monitors as it tends to work better due to the wider workspace.

 

[ipsedixit]

This has some suggestions.

How To Connect Multiple Monitors To M1, M2 & M3 Macs

The base model Apple Silicon Macs with the M1, M2 or M3 chips only support one external display but the good news is, there are workarounds. Even the

machow2.com

 

[pshufd]

I'm trying to build and test this as a general solution to allow M1 Macs to support more than two displays.

 

[pshufd]

I ran a test at 5k this afternoon and performance is quite good running 5k over GB Ethernet. I was rather limited in scaled resolutions, though, as my VM software doesn't support most of the 5k iMac scaled resolutions. I'm not completely sure that I can get this to work but I will certainly try. I also tried another VM program, suggested in another thread, and it ran slower. It's also a pay program.

 

[lucaspc]

I bought this for 20 bucks, installed the displaylink driver and it worked o my two oldish dell monitors at 1920x1080p

 

[chkay]

At 1080p you'll probably be fine. I found after hooking my M1 Air up to a 4k display (was previously a 2k) theres been noticable stuttering and lag. Not all the time, but it's something to bear in mind. Adding a second 4k monitor would 100% be too much for the M1 to handle.

 

[pshufd]

At 1080p you'll probably be fine. I found after hooking my M1 Air up to a 4k display (was previously a 2k) theres been noticable stuttering and lag. Not all the time, but it's something to bear in mind. Adding a second 4k monitor would 100% be too much for the M1 to handle.

My M1 mini is hooked up to 2 4k monitors and it's perfectly smooth. I sometimes run a third 2k monitor off of it and it's smooth as well. I'm running on a 16 GB mini with Big Sur. I have had memory leaks on Monterey but it looks like they have all been fixed on 12.5 (just checked my laptop). I'd guess that swapping a lot could affect monitor performance as M1 doesn't have discrete graphics RAM.

 

[pshufd]

Here's my video on doing this in general. There are four ways that I know of to do this with software and this should provide enough information on how to do it using those four methods.