Any way to use MacBook Air M1 with 4 external displays?

[iHorseHead]

Hey!
So far I've managed to connect 3 external displays to my MacBook Air using Dell's dock and Display Link Manager and two external displays work beautifully. If you connect the third display via USB hub it'll work as well.
The trick is to connect the display via USB hub first (when your dock is disconnected) and then close the MacBook's lid and connect the Docking station that's connected with two external displays. However, since the MacBook Air has only 2 USB-C ports I can't connect 4th display via usb hub and for whatever reason 3 displays wont work on macOS when connected to the docking station. 2 displays do work though.

And please don't start with this: "The MacBook Air only supports 1 external display". It's completely ridiculous for the price. $250 PCs do better than that and I've been using two external displays ever since I bought my MacBook Air. At one point when Monterey was released it didn't work, but after some macOS updates it started to work beautifully again.

Has anyone managed to connect 4 external displays? One of the options would be wireless display or iPad, but the iPad is too little.

 

[Eddy Munn]

According to https://m1displays.com/ the 'Targus USB-C Universal Quad 4K Docking Station' allows you to connect up to 5 (1 native + 4 external 4K) displays via USB-C with charging.

 

[iHorseHead]

You need a MacBook Pro for more displays. Read up on the specs.

The fact that 2 external displays are working beautifully determines that it is a lie.
Apple lies all the time. I can start from the beginning with their lies. Apple can say many things.

 

[iStorm]

It isn't a lie. There are physical display buffers on the chips for native display support. The base M chips have two, and the Pro/Max/Ultra chips have more. Apple is just stating how many displays they support natively.

It's great that DisplayLink is working beautifully for you, but it's not a solution for everyone. There are some cons/caveats to using DisplayLink that some may notice:

• Cannot watch HDCP protected content (i.e. Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.) unless the DisplayLink displays are disconnected or use other work arounds.
• Lagginess and compression artifacts can be seen, especially when working with video or games and/or using 4K displays.
• DisplayLink doesn't support True Tone or Night Shift. The DisplayLink displays won't match the native displays in color temperature if either of these are used.
• MacOS updates can break DisplayLink and have to wait until Synaptics (the makers of DisplayLink) pushes out a software update/patch.

What DisplayLink is essentially doing is creating a virtual/software-driven buffer in RAM, compresses the information in the buffer, sends it to the dock, then the dock uncompresses it and pushes it to the monitor. That is very different than how native display support works and is the cause for the above caveats.