I've been thinking of getting an M1 but the single monitor off the thunderbolt is a deal breaker for myself. I need at least 2 external monitors for my work and my workflow is already set up to run from thunderbolt dock. It appears that the M1 has a limitation that 40Gb/s of thuinderbolt can only drive a single external monitor. Does anyone know if this is a software or hardware issue with the M1. I don't really want to have to change my entire working setup to Display link to get multiple monitors. Apple seems to have always had issues with external monitors even not support chaining of these but the limitation of 1 external monitor on the M1 just seems another backward step to the point the Mac looks like a phone.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
M1 and limited external Monitor support
- Thread starter tommiy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hardware limitation. Remember that the M1 is the entry-level Apple Silicon platform. Better machines are coming.
But the M1 Mac mini will support two displays -- one on the TB bus and one on the HDMI port.
Well that is disappointing that the tunderbolt bus is relagated to minimal use in M1 by Apple now. I guess the need to have multiple monitors from a thunderbolt connection is deemed professional by Apple now. Thats a bit of a step backwards even my 2013 MBA supported mmultiple monitors off thunderbolt 2. I guess that the entry level means periheral support that is very old as the M1 chipset is not based upon supporting PC users. I guess another 2 years or so before i move to a M1 machine then. Thaks for the reply the fact that this is hardware has definitely made my mind up about the current M1s.
It's anticipated that the presumed upcoming revised M-series (either M1X, M2, whatever) 16" MBP will support multiple external displays. I don't think you'll need to wait two years.
Early on, when the M1 was first available, someone posted a YT video that showed 5 or six monitors being active on his M1 computer. One monitor was Thunderbolt connected. The others through HDMI and DP. He used a CalDigit TS3+ Dock to connect those. I would suggest for you to do some research and find out whether you could make that work for you. Good luck.
Not a cheap option but one that would solve the problem would be two 23.7" LG Ultrafine Displays, one to each TB port. (EDIT just read something that implies this might not work, surprising since the two ports are independent channels)
The 23.7" LG has two TB3 ports so doesn't have to be the end of the chain. Review.
Maybe there are other displays with two TB3 ports would do the same.
Last edited:
It won’t work. The M1s only support 2 monitors. On the MacBooks this means the internal monitor takes up one and another can be used via the USB-C connection. Clamshell mode doesn’t alter this. The M1 mini can use two external monitors but only one on the USB-C connection and one on HDMI.
I don't know but seems like it is going backwards to use a new chip. Less and less capability for greater Apple profit I suppose. Yes its faster, yes is limited in Ram, yes is limited in external monitor support, Yes requires recompilation of software but seems that usability as a laptop is taking second place to it being a iPhone with a keyboard just at the present. It probably will take a couple of years to get past the entry level hardware back to the same capabilities I guess. Thanks for the responses has total answered my question and saved my $$.
The M1 MacBook Air is my favorite Mac of recent years. I only use a single external monitor though. If 2 or more monitors were important to me I wouldn’t have bought it and would’ve waited for the higher end machines. They are coming. Probably very soon.
I feel this is really lost on this forum among the million "OMG M1 fast, Geekbench score HIGH" posts. The current M1 line is good for very casual users who: don't use external monitors, or if they do, it's a single standard max 4k monitor; who don't use external hard drives and expect them to perform; who don't use many professional apps and who don't need much RAM or GPU power. For everybody else, the M1 lineup, while being great in many ways, is a serious downgrade from the older Macs. I'm waiting to upgrade, so I'm really hoping that Apple at the minimum brings parity to Intel Macs with the M1x/M2 model release. Hopefully at the WWDC at the latest. But I definitely won't settle and use my LG 5K2K ultrawide at a lowered resolution, be limited to a single external monitor, or tolerate slow speeds of my external drives.
Do NOT do this if you want a good experience. Why do people even suggest this garbage? This is acceptable on like 5y old PoS office PCs to add another low res monitor for excel or something for office workers used to slow machines, so the company doesn't have to upgrade the whole computer. Even if displaylink worked perfectly, it is really not okay to be giving it as a required purchase to somebody investing over $1k into a shiny new computer. M1 laptops clearly don't fit his needs and that's okay.
Do you speak from experience? Have you tried this and thus have authority to speak as such? What would it hurt to try it if you have a nice return policy on an Amazon purchase?
It's hard to really appreciate your reply without some actual data and metrics. For example, using the other 3 or 4 monitors attached via DisplayLink tech has worked great in my case where I am running at 1080 on them on an older Mac Pro 2010 system. The quality is amazing and even is able to do video just fine, but frankly I don't use them for anything more than monitoring certain services, text editing and messages, etc. while using my main video card for the 3 other monitors that have video editing, 3D animation, etc. going on.
I suspect the bandwidth and latency will be even better on the M1 units and therefore the experience will be even better and I've heard some very interesting and good results for even 4k video on such setups on the M1.
So while I'm not saying you're full of crap, I'd really like to know if you're speaking from actual experience and test results. Otherwise I'd tell the OP to give it a shot and let us know how the DisplayLink device(s) work for them!
While I take your general point, the above is far too overstated. M1 Macs work with external drives and a single monitor up to 6K, which makes them highly usable for far more than "very casual users".
Please! Apple had to start somewhere and it is low end models, if the features doesn't suit your needs and the work-around is not satisfactory, these machines are not for you plain and simple. You must either wait for higher end models with next generation apple silicon hoping they suit your needs better or buy an Intel mac now, which you know does.
I would have preferred to wait for 32GB ram, smaller bessels, armv9, multiple display etc. But rumors about delay to autmn due to semiconductor shortage and the temptation of a silent fanless MBA now forced my hands, knowing the shortcomings of my choice.
I would have preferred to wait for 32GB ram, smaller bessels, armv9, multiple display etc. But rumors about delay to autmn due to semiconductor shortage and the temptation of a silent fanless MBA now forced my hands, knowing the shortcomings of my choice.
Very true. Like stated many times, the M1 is Apple's entry-level chipset. A $899 (education price) MacBook Air is simply not going to outperform a maxed-out $4000 16" MacBook Pro in all areas. But even given its well-documented limitations, the MacBook Air can do some impressive things.
Here's my weekend workstation:
It’s new hardware so Apple probably decided to start with the minimal feature set. If you need multi-monitor support, wait. M2 next year should support it on entry-level hardware. It’s a temporary limitation.
It's entry level, beating the i9 8 Core in all realtime compute tasks.
As long as you don't really need more than 16 GB of RAM and multiple monitors, there's no point in waiting.
My M1 mini performs as well if not slightly better than the 2013 Mac Pro 3/7Ghz quad core w/ 32mb ram it replaced. So while it is an entry level machine, it is a beast in terms of power for the non-professional users. I use it to edit short videos, and photoshop pictures. No intensive games, but the video and pictures work is slightly faster. And as stated earlier I run two 32" monitors using HDMI.
In Logic Pro X it outperforms the i9 8 core MBP and is maybe 5% behind the 12 Core MP 2013