Will a external monitor make my new M1 Air hot?

[darwichee90]

Hi,

I´m about to buy a fully specced Macbook air m1, and was going to buy a monitor to it as well. My question is if this will make the Macbook run hot or not? And what is the best monitor for the macbook, that can also charge it?

 

[deeddawg]

Not necessarily. Obviously if you're scaling the display it'll create more work than using a non-scaled display, but I've not seen reports of external monitors causing a M1 MBA to run hot. My M1 MBP stays cool with external 1440p monitor.

Second question is unanswerable as asked. What does "best" mean to you? What size? What resolution? What viewing distance? What's your budget?

I'd suggest reading through the accessories forum, there are many threads discussing different monitors.
See Mac Accessories | MacRumors Forums

 

[darwichee90]

Not necessarily. Obviously if you're scaling the display it'll create more work than using a non-scaled display, but I've not seen reports of external monitors causing a M1 MBA to run hot. My M1 MBP stays cool with external 1440p monitor.

Second question is unanswerable as asked. What does "best" mean to you? What size? What resolution? What viewing distance? What's your budget?

I'd suggest reading through the accessories forum, there are many threads discussing different monitors.
See Mac Accessories | MacRumors Forums

thanks for the fast reply. I was just affraid because i know that the air doesn´t have any fans. Will check the link, thanks again .

 

[darwichee90]

@deeddawg Just one last question. So if i choose a monitor with same resolution, the mac don´t need to scale, which is better? Can you just sum it up short please, what i should look for?

 

[deeddawg]

@deeddawg Just one last question. So if i choose a monitor with same resolution, the mac don´t need to scale, which is better? Can you just sum it up short please, what i should look for?

What I mean by scaling is choosing an effective display resolution that's not an integer multiple of the display's physical resolution. Usual example is taking a 4K monitor (3840 x 2160) and displaying a 1440p desktop (2560x1440) -- that makes the mac translate with a 1.5x scale. That take more resources than displaying a 1440p desktop on a 1440p monitor (1:1) or displaying a 1080P desktop on a 4K monitor (2x scale)

This has nothing to do with the resolution of the mac's screen, sorry if I wasn't clear.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Hi,

I´m about to buy a fully specced Macbook air m1, and was going to buy a monitor to it as well. My question is if this will make the Macbook run hot or not? And what is the best monitor for the macbook, that can also charge it?

You don't mention whether you have 8GB or 16GB RAM. You might want to consider the effect of screen resolution on your memory usage, depending on the software you run. Anything that is graphically intensive (using shared memory to process or render multiple buffers) might start to eat up your RAM more quickly if you have 4 or 5K display compared to a lower resolution screen.

 

[Tagbert]

What I mean by scaling is choosing an effective display resolution that's not an integer multiple of the display's physical resolution. Usual example is taking a 4K monitor (3840 x 2160) and displaying a 1440p desktop (2560x1440) -- that makes the mac translate with a 1.5x scale. That take more resources than displaying a 1440p desktop on a 1440p monitor (1:1) or displaying a 1080P desktop on a 4K monitor (2x scale)

This has nothing to do with the resolution of the mac's screen, sorry if I wasn't clear.

I’m currently using an external 27” 4K monitor running it at scaled 1440p from an Intel 13” MBP and not seeing performance/fan/heat problems. I would imagine that the M1 Airs will have no problem with this. I should have direct experience when my new Air gets here in a couple of weeks.

 

[deeddawg]

I’m currently using an external 27” 4K monitor running it at scaled 1440p from an Intel 13” MBP and not seeing performance/fan/heat problems. I would imagine that the M1 Airs will have no problem with this. I should have direct experience when my new Air gets here in a couple of weeks.

You may very well not see any. Others have reported some.

This is why I stuck to just saying that (non-integer) scaling will utilize more resources than integer scaling or no scaling -- whether that then results in any performance/fan/heat problems may depend on various other factors.