me too, I have an M4 mac mini pro and I’m using a single 43” display connected to the HDMI port, considering getting the Asus Proart. I’m reminded of the Bart Simpson trick of placing 12-odd megaphones in a row and says “TESTING…” chaos ensues.
@@newQns yeah the 1440 resolution is 5k. It just acts like at 1440 monitor. It apples Hi Dpi mode where apple treats a monitor as if its a lower resolution for scaling UI, but uses 4x resolution asset . If were truly running at 1440 it'll add the tag (low DPI). And its correct that 4K monitors are running at 1080P Hi DPI mode. Apple makes this confusing.
@@ryane8485On my single 4K 43” monitor with M4 mac mini pro, it runs at 4K 60 Hz, if I then reboot it, I get the option to select 144Hz. It never runs at 144Hz first up, I have to reboot it. I suspect that the mac never knows what monitor to use but always defaults to 60Hz, presumably this is like “Safe Mode”. A Macbook always knows there will be a display attached. I think the Macbook can run at 120Hz but not sure if you can boot into that mode.
@@darylcheshire1618 Not talking about refresh rate, just resolution. 1440P, which is an low DPI standard for a monitor, before the creation of 5K monitors. Im just saying apple treats the GUI interface as 1440P, but runs at 4X resolution. But apples resolution menu makes this confusing by calling the HIDPI resolutions by their LOW DPI names. But if you were to place a 1440P and 5K monitor side by side, the GUI interface would look the same size.
It's always cool to do weird stuff and get clarity on the doubts we have and hey, if you happen to have a spare laptop or monitor I'm happy to take it away that is if you wish to.
I have a windows work laptop and a personal MBP connected via a DisplayPort KVM to one monitor. The windows laptop wakes up instantly but the Mac takes significantly longer to wake up. Very weird for a significantly more powerful machine.
You can get up to 6 displays with the M4 MAX without any docks: 1 laptop screen + 4 external screens + 1 iPad running sidecar. You should try the setup that you used to get 6 external displays and then try Sidecar on an iPad, you may be able to get 8 total displays!
I used to have 4 external monitors but I’ve become more minimalistic and now I just have one monitor, the studio display 😅 but still I think for a lot of people that really need a lot of external monitors it’s very useful information. Great video.
9:45 You could also try a TV/Apple TV that has screen mirroring support. Those could potentially be workarounds with the display limits and stream the extra screen. Maybe that could work. Worst case scenario, Apple has a 14 day return policy. You could also see if you can do more displays at an even worse resolution.
I used to have a 2 - 24" FHD monitors plus the Macbook Pro M3 Pro, now I changed it for a Mac Mini M4 with a 55" 4k USB-C display and it works like a charm, I have connected 1 of the 24" monitors connected just in case but barely use it. Thanks for the info it is handy.
Have M1 pro and a MacBook Air M2. Use a dock with display link to a 49” ultra wide. But with 2 connections for a seamless “dual” screen. And I love it.
I use 4 - one studio display, one 31" Benq and Two 49" Samsung G95C stacked on top of each other on a M1Max MBP... I was afraid to by the MacMini Pro because of the limitations of 3 monitors, but you've proved there's a way around this now.... thanks - very good! And I've tried display link in the past - found there was some lag and colours were harder to correct... but that was a few years ago, so maybe it's better now.
For a 27" display, 5K is perfect. It's the same ~200ppi as the MacBook's bulit-in display. If you're squinting to see UI elements on a 27" 5K display, it's because your monitor is further away than they're designed to be. My wife has 3 of those 5K 27" ASUS displays you showed plugged into her M4 Mac Mini. She has them vertically, they sit about 2ft from her face, and they're the perfect pixel density.
Great video!!! Love it. Although, at 12:00 you are NOT changing the resolution of any of those monitors. You are changing the scaling only. 2 very different things.
I use 1 LG UltraGear 48 or 2 Dell Monitor 1080P or 2 Dell Monitor 1080P with iPad (sidecar) + portable USB display. It really depends on what I am doing.
Thanks for sharing, I only use one external display and it works great for my workflow. BTW I always look forward to your content. Keep up the great work!
Where's the link for the vertical monitor stand you indicated could be used for one or two? I use 5 monitors at work (Windows). Now that I see the Mac-mini+display_link can handle five - I'm encouraged to try my work setup on Mac-mini. Thank you for the video. I'd not seen this topic covered as completely elsewhere.
You can use a display link dock and download the displaylink driver to get past the limits. However there is a preformance hit and sometimes noticeable quality hit. You can also use better display to hack around apples quality limitations
You didn't need to set all your monitors to 4k/5k because you weren't in the "low resolution" mode. Hence, you only change the scaling. Windows uses a percentage for that. You can see the low resolutions by selecting show all resolutions. Just try if you can see the difference between 1920 low resolution and the non-low resolution, the scaling is the same, but the number of pixels isn't.
Tbh 2 external monitors are plenty for most workflows, I cannot go back to one anymore, streamdeck or something like that helps if you really just want another for your tools or buttons that are not on keyboard
You can try using the iPad and handoff, gives you an ability to have 1 extra external display, source: trust me bro (I do have an M4 Pro, and I have 2 external with 1 more iPad, while the screen is opened, so basically 4 displays)
Apple needs to update their scaling. Ridiculous that the text is tied to the resolution like that. So much sharper using Windows on my 6K. Thanks for your proof in real time of the capabilities.
Hi Alex! Can you please confirm that it does in fact charge at 140 watts when plugging into the dock you showed around 7:45? I guess the question would be, do the Thunderbolt 5 ports support charging at that rate? I thought they topped off at 100w.
Hey Alex, I would you advice for a dock/stand/base (or something similar) to use a MacBook Pro like that: 1- Keep it closed at all times and use it with only external monitors; 2- Not need to open to turn it on (maybe not possible because of the fingerprint authentication?) In the end, use it as a desktop hehehhe. Thanks and cheers from Brazil!
I just moved from an M1 MBP to a used M1 Max MBP (they're refurb now here in Japan), just for external display support. My Windows work laptop can have 3 monitors via the HP Thunderbolt hub that I have. Mac doesn't support the same technology needed to do this, so at best I can only get one of my monitors working with the hub. The Caldigit USB C hub can reliably do two but not three displays. Still, this is better than my previous M1 Pro as I had to use Display Link to get more than 2 external monitors at once, which caused performance hits (RAM, CPU) and also my monitors could not use HDR or run at higher refresh rates this way!
I use a studio display + a Thunderbolt Display on a Mac mini M2. It would be nice to plug an extra monitor in, but I am thinking of buying a Mac mini m2 for that. It is a bit disappointing that my airbook m1 can only support 1 extra monitor. To me that is a big disadvantage. Thanks for the video!
i thnk 2 external monitors is fantastic while in clamshell mode, using Rectangle makes it easy to create workspaces so i really only need 1 external monitor too.
@AZisk Can you confirm that some of these daisy chained displays are all separate/unique displays and not mirrored between them in any way? IME with 4 docks now and MBPs over the past 6-8 years is that some docks are just mirroring the displays on the chain. So yes, you see the monitor has content, but not always unique content. Great video covering a LOT of ground, so thanks!
When I connect my Mac to a monitor, for some reason the screen size is not the original on the monitor or on the Mac. I can choose for only one to fill the screen
Most monitors that support daisy chaining use DisplayPort. This doesn't work because you need MST which is part of DP and apple doesn't support it. Maybe with DP 2.1 they will finally support it. At my office most of desk are connected like this and I'm tired of having to connect more cables every single time I want to connect macbook.
Great test ... I use 0 external monitors with my MBA. And 2 monitors with my PC tops. For office work 1 21:9 monitor is enough for me, cause I split the screen between two apps and it works great. For video editing my 21:9 drives the timeline and I have reference monitor above to see the true colors of my video :D. But I know people who use more than 2.
When you had 6 or 7 monitors in total you just present to us the empty desktops on each monitor. And some of them can be just mirroring. Were you able to have each monitor with it's unique (extended) desktop without mirroring any other desktop?
Great video, was wondering if the display is set to less than 4k and youre playing a 4k video, what resolution is it? 4k or the set resolution ?
ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมา
Not a real concer for me, as I use mostly 1 or 2 external. What is a real problem is ridiculously bad image quality of 4K interpolation on real 8K display. Even more so, that there is no resolution offered between 4K and 8K.
My university recently got Samsung Odyssey G9 monitors and I can’t get a connection to it via the provided Lenovo thinkpad docking station unfortunately with my M1 MacBook Air. I installed displaylink too but there’s no signal whatsoever. Funnily enough my cheaper usb c dongle does get a signal though it only goes up to 4K I think? The screen does look garbled though, since it’s probably meant to look good with 4K 16:9 and that monitor has a 32:9 resolution. When I saw you using displaylink this effortlessly I couldn’t believe it tbh. It’s crazy to see how many displays such compact laptops can run nowadays!
Funny thing is that I was testing my friends 2016 Macbook pro, and I was able to connect up to three 4K resolution monitors and that 2 all running at 144hz albiet the fans were running like crazy for the laptop but it could run it. Kind of disappointed how the new chips can't handle that
I have two 32" 4K monitors but I can't really fit them horizontally which would be most useful to me. So this video is playing on a vertical monitor, which isn't handled by macos very well. downloading rectangle app as I type. To be fair, the ability to have multiple desktops to swipe between on just one large external monitor is really enough most of the time no matter what you're doing.
@Alex - I love your videos, but I really cannot stand the shaky frames when you use your handheld cam and handling the plug / unplug... at the same time. It just triggered my vertigo. I would really appreciate if you keep your frames stable.
What annoys me about Apple is these random decisions to be inherently limiting for no reason. I have the Air M3 and I can use my two external monitors just fine (in clamshell), but I can't daisy chain them just because they are not Thundebolt, so I need to waste two ports on the laptop. Of course, any modern PC laptop handles the daisy chaining just fine.
It's required extra chip for each display port, and why they should use the same amount of extra parts on the $1200 machine like on the $4000 machine.. even if there are trucks with 8 wheels, you are still not complains about the only 4 wheels for your car.. that is the same.. you should also demand the same amount of wheels on the smaller products too..
For you tests you should use a show management or Vuing software like MadMapper / Resolume / millumin / touch designer where you can run videos +effets and glsl shaders and process vectors
What I want to know is what 4K monitor doesn't look like crap on MacOS! Whenever I connect my macbook air to an external monitors the fonts look fuzzy and blurry. I want to get a mac mini for the insane value it offers at that price but if I have to pair it with a $1500 retina display then it defeats the purpose. Yes I tried betterdisplay. It gets better but nowhere near the sharpness I get on my Linux desktop.
So my issue with multiple monitors with my Mac Mini M4 Pro has been rebooting/shutting down. It becomes a race condition and MacOS can't seem to remember any settings for each monitor and defaults login to the wrong one. Also find myself constantly rearranging the displays in the settings. My last gripe is in what world should me plugging in an external monitor not default to extending the display, especially if it was the choice I previously made? Rebooting and having to select extend display for each monitor is absolutely insane.
Alex ... one unrelated question. Have you seen any white paper for Apple Silicon Media Engines? I cannot find the answer if they support hardware decoding of H264 10bit 4:2:2 footage. Nvidia and Intel Quick Sync does not support this (only 8bit in H264). Or maybe what was the maximum number of H264 10bit 4:2:2 streams you were able to play in Davinci/any other editing software at once?
Hi Alex, I actually have a need for a 2014 iMac. Should you ever consider passing it on to someone, do consider that I am genuinely serious. Thanks in advance.
Really a good test but what about the refresh rate and HDR? :) From my experience getting output is fine but having a correct resolution, refresh rate and HDR checkbox is a diff thing. (with apple) :D Is possible to make a round 2 test? :)
You did huge mistake to take dock that has power delivery too, that thing when it freaked out and died many times, it was short circuit protection probably, because one of the dock was trying to charge another and also charge macbook while both cables were connected to Macbook, even though Macbook's are smart enough to know if there is more than one chargers connected and to select which one should work, you did dazychaining which probably caused one of the doc to enable disable enable disable something due to some loop or something and it caused macOS to think it was some power delivery problem or something was faulty and it rebooted to try to cure itself. you risked laptop to be damaged with those docks, if you want to dazychain monitors, safes way is to select dock that doesn't have power delivery, I know you felt it's fancy to have all in one port type of dock, but it's good when you use it as single, I killed my Macbook battery twice with same thing, LG monitor had this all in one port and it wasn't enough for new model, I decided to just use Thunderbolt so it doesn't charge from monitor anymore, but it still did, why? I don't know LG engineers didn't think somebody will decide Apple charger is better than some random display charge port? I replaced display twice and then I found out reason was that, so I never ever use this all in one port that includes charging, I don't care who does that, I don't trust it to be used on my Macbook nor on my ASUS ROG, nobody needs more than 3 monitors, unless you are working in some video monitoring position or something like that, and almost none of the laptops are designed for that. people who use more than 3 monitors or I would say more than 2 monitors, just think it's fancy when someone sees that, that's it. every time I see someone has several monitors, they use maximum 2 and mostly one, and rest of the displays are just showing empty desktop, so if it is so useful, why is showing same screen for hours like 99.99% of the time, so ye that's my personal opinion.
I bought this in summer 2023 for 800€, now I'm using Mac mini M4 for the same price (upgraded ram) and its worth the money. Sell the old one although they dropped in the price drastically in the last months or give it a family member who can need it 😊
Using display link gives more display count but 4k@30hz is unbearable for me. 30hz limit feels very laggy and not responsive enough. I’m stuck with 1 external display with m2 air so I use display link dock to use 2 display but I gave up and bought mac mini m4 pro cus that 30hz display makes me work slower
I don't even use external monitors but watched this whole thing. Shows how great your videos are!
thx
me too, I have an M4 mac mini pro and I’m using a single 43” display connected to the HDMI port, considering getting the Asus Proart.
I’m reminded of the Bart Simpson trick of placing 12-odd megaphones in a row and says “TESTING…” chaos ensues.
To be clear, Usb-c can absolutely drive monitors, just not the ones on mac mini because they choose not to 😛
Well, if it's only a USB 2.0 it's only able to display 1080p resolution..
That's exactly the video i was looking for just last week. Thank you so much.
Glad it was helpful!
@@AZisk So Glad you made my mate.
Excellent! This analysis is needed annually !
Commenting from Ghana and I just love your tech videos..
Awesome! Thank you!
mac doesnt really allow you to change resolution, its the scaling, so every monitor is at its max resolution by default
this!
@@newQns yeah the 1440 resolution is 5k. It just acts like at 1440 monitor. It apples Hi Dpi mode where apple treats a monitor as if its a lower resolution for scaling UI, but uses 4x resolution asset . If were truly running at 1440 it'll add the tag (low DPI). And its correct that 4K monitors are running at 1080P Hi DPI mode. Apple makes this confusing.
@@ryane8485On my single 4K 43” monitor with M4 mac mini pro, it runs at 4K 60 Hz, if I then reboot it, I get the option to select 144Hz. It never runs at 144Hz first up, I have to reboot it. I suspect that the mac never knows what monitor to use but always defaults to 60Hz, presumably this is like “Safe Mode”. A Macbook always knows there will be a display attached. I think the Macbook can run at 120Hz but not sure if you can boot into that mode.
@@darylcheshire1618 Not talking about refresh rate, just resolution. 1440P, which is an low DPI standard for a monitor, before the creation of 5K monitors. Im just saying apple treats the GUI interface as 1440P, but runs at 4X resolution. But apples resolution menu makes this confusing by calling the HIDPI resolutions by their LOW DPI names. But if you were to place a 1440P and 5K monitor side by side, the GUI interface would look the same size.
You've helped us reached a decision... Thanks 🙏
Glad to hear that
It's always cool to do weird stuff and get clarity on the doubts we have and hey, if you happen to have a spare laptop or monitor I'm happy to take it away that is if you wish to.
Why does Apple make display scaling so difficult? On Windows, it is so easy: Native resolution + scaling @150% (or whatever)
One of the few instances where Windows is better than MacOS
That's exactly the kind of experiment I was looking for! Thanks a ton!
I’m a monitor junkie. And this is why I rock a Mac Studio. I currently have 7 screens, and it performs with zero issues.
Thanks for testing and clarifying what you can do. Always everyone is asking about that. ;)
I have a windows work laptop and a personal MBP connected via a DisplayPort KVM to one monitor. The windows laptop wakes up instantly but the Mac takes significantly longer to wake up. Very weird for a significantly more powerful machine.
This is the video I was waiting for. Thank you very much
You can get up to 6 displays with the M4 MAX without any docks: 1 laptop screen + 4 external screens + 1 iPad running sidecar.
You should try the setup that you used to get 6 external displays and then try Sidecar on an iPad, you may be able to get 8 total displays!
Your videos are very helpful with the added benefit of entertainment thanks alex
I used to have 4 external monitors but I’ve become more minimalistic and now I just have one monitor, the studio display 😅 but still I think for a lot of people that really need a lot of external monitors it’s very useful information. Great video.
At Last, My fav video rolled out. 😍😍😍😍😍😍. Thanks Alex, I used to three extranl monitor.
Zed is my choice!
i’m still in vs code, but zed is looking better every day
Tried it a few month ago but did not like it. Just started using it again and now it seems to have the bare minimum i need. Not going back this time😊
9:45 You could also try a TV/Apple TV that has screen mirroring support. Those could potentially be workarounds with the display limits and stream the extra screen. Maybe that could work.
Worst case scenario, Apple has a 14 day return policy.
You could also see if you can do more displays at an even worse resolution.
I used to have a 2 - 24" FHD monitors plus the Macbook Pro M3 Pro, now I changed it for a Mac Mini M4 with a 55" 4k USB-C display and it works like a charm, I have connected 1 of the 24" monitors connected just in case but barely use it. Thanks for the info it is handy.
Great video as always (PS it’s mice as plural for both animal and peripheral!)
Have M1 pro and a MacBook Air M2. Use a dock with display link to a 49” ultra wide. But with 2 connections for a seamless “dual” screen. And I love it.
I think you answered ALLLL questions with this video😂✌🏽 thank you!
I use 4 - one studio display, one 31" Benq and Two 49" Samsung G95C stacked on top of each other on a M1Max MBP... I was afraid to by the MacMini Pro because of the limitations of 3 monitors, but you've proved there's a way around this now.... thanks - very good! And I've tried display link in the past - found there was some lag and colours were harder to correct... but that was a few years ago, so maybe it's better now.
Base m4 mini with 49” 5k wide screen and a 1080p portable and I can run 2 iPads. Works fine.
i don't think I could focus on more than 2 monitors at the same time so 3 should be enough for normal work
For a 27" display, 5K is perfect. It's the same ~200ppi as the MacBook's bulit-in display. If you're squinting to see UI elements on a 27" 5K display, it's because your monitor is further away than they're designed to be.
My wife has 3 of those 5K 27" ASUS displays you showed plugged into her M4 Mac Mini. She has them vertically, they sit about 2ft from her face, and they're the perfect pixel density.
Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station with DisplayLink and/or Dell Universal Dock UD22 with DisplayLink
Great video!!! Love it. Although, at 12:00 you are NOT changing the resolution of any of those monitors. You are changing the scaling only. 2 very different things.
this!
Great fun! A round up of all the cables next!
I use 1 LG UltraGear 48 or 2 Dell Monitor 1080P or 2 Dell Monitor 1080P with iPad (sidecar) + portable USB display. It really depends on what I am doing.
Thanks for sharing, I only use one external display and it works great for my workflow. BTW I always look forward to your content. Keep up the great work!
Where's the link for the vertical monitor stand you indicated could be used for one or two? I use 5 monitors at work (Windows). Now that I see the Mac-mini+display_link can handle five - I'm encouraged to try my work setup on Mac-mini. Thank you for the video. I'd not seen this topic covered as completely elsewhere.
Forgot to add. Thanks for the reminder. Here it is: amzn.to/42nTA4I
You can use a display link dock and download the displaylink driver to get past the limits. However there is a preformance hit and sometimes noticeable quality hit. You can also use better display to hack around apples quality limitations
I also use 4 external monitors or just use my ultra wide with an portable external monitor below it.
You didn't need to set all your monitors to 4k/5k because you weren't in the "low resolution" mode. Hence, you only change the scaling. Windows uses a percentage for that. You can see the low resolutions by selecting show all resolutions. Just try if you can see the difference between 1920 low resolution and the non-low resolution, the scaling is the same, but the number of pixels isn't.
me just casually connecting a 1080p 24inch monitor to my 2018 macbook pro lol
it cost me like 140 bucks and has a 65w usb pd output just love it
Tbh 2 external monitors are plenty for most workflows, I cannot go back to one anymore, streamdeck or something like that helps if you really just want another for your tools or buttons that are not on keyboard
You can try using the iPad and handoff, gives you an ability to have 1 extra external display, source: trust me bro
(I do have an M4 Pro, and I have 2 external with 1 more iPad, while the screen is opened, so basically 4 displays)
yep. i do this in the video
@@AZisk Oh must've missed that lol😆
great vids btw.
Alex, why are you talking about daisy chaining ducks... it thought this is IT channel ;)
i’m transitioning to a channel about ducks 🦆 🦆 🦆
Apple needs to update their scaling. Ridiculous that the text is tied to the resolution like that. So much sharper using Windows on my 6K. Thanks for your proof in real time of the capabilities.
Hi Alex! Can you please confirm that it does in fact charge at 140 watts when plugging into the dock you showed around 7:45? I guess the question would be, do the Thunderbolt 5 ports support charging at that rate? I thought they topped off at 100w.
DisplayLink adapter might be your answer to the external display limit.
mac users using multiple monitors while virtual desktops are available with a swipe of the trackpad... insanity!
you can use virtual desktops ON EACH extra monitor for the ultimate desktopalooza
Cool! Thank You
Hey Alex, I would you advice for a dock/stand/base (or something similar) to use a MacBook Pro like that:
1- Keep it closed at all times and use it with only external monitors;
2- Not need to open to turn it on (maybe not possible because of the fingerprint authentication?)
In the end, use it as a desktop hehehhe.
Thanks and cheers from Brazil!
I just moved from an M1 MBP to a used M1 Max MBP (they're refurb now here in Japan), just for external display support. My Windows work laptop can have 3 monitors via the HP Thunderbolt hub that I have. Mac doesn't support the same technology needed to do this, so at best I can only get one of my monitors working with the hub. The Caldigit USB C hub can reliably do two but not three displays. Still, this is better than my previous M1 Pro as I had to use Display Link to get more than 2 external monitors at once, which caused performance hits (RAM, CPU) and also my monitors could not use HDR or run at higher refresh rates this way!
I use a studio display + a Thunderbolt Display on a Mac mini M2. It would be nice to plug an extra monitor in, but I am thinking of buying a Mac mini m2 for that. It is a bit disappointing that my airbook m1 can only support 1 extra monitor. To me that is a big disadvantage. Thanks for the video!
i thnk 2 external monitors is fantastic while in clamshell mode, using Rectangle makes it easy to create workspaces so i really only need 1 external monitor too.
@AZisk Can you confirm that some of these daisy chained displays are all separate/unique displays and not mirrored between them in any way? IME with 4 docks now and MBPs over the past 6-8 years is that some docks are just mirroring the displays on the chain. So yes, you see the monitor has content, but not always unique content.
Great video covering a LOT of ground, so thanks!
With upcoming. MB Air M4, hope it support two ext. displays🎉🎉🎉
I wish the Pro would allow you to close the lid and get a third external display...
When I connect my Mac to a monitor, for some reason the screen size is not the original on the monitor or on the Mac. I can choose for only one to fill the screen
So technically that Ipad trick can be added to other mac devices as well ?
Most monitors that support daisy chaining use DisplayPort. This doesn't work because you need MST which is part of DP and apple doesn't support it. Maybe with DP 2.1 they will finally support it. At my office most of desk are connected like this and I'm tired of having to connect more cables every single time I want to connect macbook.
Great test ... I use 0 external monitors with my MBA. And 2 monitors with my PC tops.
For office work 1 21:9 monitor is enough for me, cause I split the screen between two apps and it works great.
For video editing my 21:9 drives the timeline and I have reference monitor above to see the true colors of my video :D.
But I know people who use more than 2.
I started my job 20 years ago with dual 15" displays and it was a big deal a couple of years later to get dual 17 inch screens!!! 😂
Oh boy that crazy but exciting to watch. Just wondering what would happen if you directly daisy chain the monitor without going through the dock?
M2 Max Mac Studio with 27” 1440p + M2 12,9” iPad Pro
I only use one monitor, the internal one, at lowest resolution. Kinda hard tracking a pointer with 5° central vision.
When you had 6 or 7 monitors in total you just present to us the empty desktops on each monitor. And some of them can be just mirroring. Were you able to have each monitor with it's unique (extended) desktop without mirroring any other desktop?
Nice job holding Apple accountable for their multi-monitor claims.
Great video, was wondering if the display is set to less than 4k and youre playing a 4k video, what resolution is it? 4k or the set resolution ?
Not a real concer for me, as I use mostly 1 or 2 external. What is a real problem is ridiculously bad image quality of 4K interpolation on real 8K display. Even more so, that there is no resolution offered between 4K and 8K.
Very nice video
Thanks for watching!
Usb c can deliver 4k @ 60 Hz no problem. Mac mini ports dont the althdmi to power video
My university recently got Samsung Odyssey G9 monitors and I can’t get a connection to it via the provided Lenovo thinkpad docking station unfortunately with my M1 MacBook Air. I installed displaylink too but there’s no signal whatsoever. Funnily enough my cheaper usb c dongle does get a signal though it only goes up to 4K I think? The screen does look garbled though, since it’s probably meant to look good with 4K 16:9 and that monitor has a 32:9 resolution.
When I saw you using displaylink this effortlessly I couldn’t believe it tbh.
It’s crazy to see how many displays such compact laptops can run nowadays!
Use a dock with display link drivers, it is independant.
You are one of my favourite tech youtuber. Love form India.
Two 4K displays and one 1080p displays on my base M4 Mac Mini. Planning to replace the latter to 4K as well. 🤘🏼 (I watch charts.)
I wonder how much ram was used.
Great video.
I use a displaylink dock that can output 2 external monitors from M1 MBA that allows only 1 external monitor.
Funny thing is that I was testing my friends 2016 Macbook pro, and I was able to connect up to three 4K resolution monitors and that 2 all running at 144hz albiet the fans were running like crazy for the laptop but it could run it. Kind of disappointed how the new chips can't handle that
You were only one monitor away from getting a sunburn! Keep trying. 🤣
😆
M4 MacBook Air or M4 MacBooks Pro?
zed is so good now but it still needs more stuff like css color picker like vscode
I have two 32" 4K monitors but I can't really fit them horizontally which would be most useful to me. So this video is playing on a vertical monitor, which isn't handled by macos very well. downloading rectangle app as I type. To be fair, the ability to have multiple desktops to swipe between on just one large external monitor is really enough most of the time no matter what you're doing.
I run Windows and MacOS at the same time on my trusty M1 Max mbp. ALLmost ready for an upgrade.
@Alex - I love your videos, but I really cannot stand the shaky frames when you use your handheld cam and handling the plug / unplug... at the same time. It just triggered my vertigo.
I would really appreciate if you keep your frames stable.
What annoys me about Apple is these random decisions to be inherently limiting for no reason. I have the Air M3 and I can use my two external monitors just fine (in clamshell), but I can't daisy chain them just because they are not Thundebolt, so I need to waste two ports on the laptop.
Of course, any modern PC laptop handles the daisy chaining just fine.
yeah, definitely gotta read the fine print with apple
It frustrates me that Apple adds arbitrary limits just to differentiate their products
It's required extra chip for each display port, and why they should use the same amount of extra parts on the $1200 machine like on the $4000 machine.. even if there are trucks with 8 wheels, you are still not complains about the only 4 wheels for your car.. that is the same.. you should also demand the same amount of wheels on the smaller products too..
For you tests you should use a show management or Vuing software like MadMapper / Resolume / millumin / touch designer where you can run videos +effets and glsl shaders and process vectors
I believe I was able to get one extra display by running airplay to my apple tv. I did this to get 4 displays on my m2 Mac mini.
16:53 you need an edid manager
What I want to know is what 4K monitor doesn't look like crap on MacOS! Whenever I connect my macbook air to an external monitors the fonts look fuzzy and blurry. I want to get a mac mini for the insane value it offers at that price but if I have to pair it with a $1500 retina display then it defeats the purpose. Yes I tried betterdisplay. It gets better but nowhere near the sharpness I get on my Linux desktop.
you need to enable hidpi, otherwise it looks bad
So my issue with multiple monitors with my Mac Mini M4 Pro has been rebooting/shutting down. It becomes a race condition and MacOS can't seem to remember any settings for each monitor and defaults login to the wrong one. Also find myself constantly rearranging the displays in the settings. My last gripe is in what world should me plugging in an external monitor not default to extending the display, especially if it was the choice I previously made? Rebooting and having to select extend display for each monitor is absolutely insane.
I don't see your monitor arms linked in the gear below. What brand are they?
fixed now
Maybe it's just a software limit apple imposed, can be it's going away when running asahi linux once DP over USB-C feature is available in driver.
Alex ... one unrelated question.
Have you seen any white paper for Apple Silicon Media Engines?
I cannot find the answer if they support hardware decoding of H264 10bit 4:2:2 footage. Nvidia and Intel Quick Sync does not support this (only 8bit in H264).
Or maybe what was the maximum number of H264 10bit 4:2:2 streams you were able to play in Davinci/any other editing software at once?
Hi Alex, I actually have a need for a 2014 iMac. Should you ever consider passing it on to someone, do consider that I am genuinely serious. Thanks in advance.
I just use an 11 inch iPad Pro as external display for my M3 Pro Macbook Pro.
Really a good test but what about the refresh rate and HDR? :)
From my experience getting output is fine but having a correct resolution, refresh rate and HDR checkbox is a diff thing. (with apple) :D
Is possible to make a round 2 test? :)
You did huge mistake to take dock that has power delivery too, that thing when it freaked out and died many times, it was short circuit protection probably, because one of the dock was trying to charge another and also charge macbook while both cables were connected to Macbook, even though Macbook's are smart enough to know if there is more than one chargers connected and to select which one should work, you did dazychaining which probably caused one of the doc to enable disable enable disable something due to some loop or something and it caused macOS to think it was some power delivery problem or something was faulty and it rebooted to try to cure itself. you risked laptop to be damaged with those docks, if you want to dazychain monitors, safes way is to select dock that doesn't have power delivery, I know you felt it's fancy to have all in one port type of dock, but it's good when you use it as single, I killed my Macbook battery twice with same thing, LG monitor had this all in one port and it wasn't enough for new model, I decided to just use Thunderbolt so it doesn't charge from monitor anymore, but it still did, why? I don't know LG engineers didn't think somebody will decide Apple charger is better than some random display charge port? I replaced display twice and then I found out reason was that, so I never ever use this all in one port that includes charging, I don't care who does that, I don't trust it to be used on my Macbook nor on my ASUS ROG, nobody needs more than 3 monitors, unless you are working in some video monitoring position or something like that, and almost none of the laptops are designed for that. people who use more than 3 monitors or I would say more than 2 monitors, just think it's fancy when someone sees that, that's it. every time I see someone has several monitors, they use maximum 2 and mostly one, and rest of the displays are just showing empty desktop, so if it is so useful, why is showing same screen for hours like 99.99% of the time, so ye that's my personal opinion.
Thanks for sharing your experience! yeah i. wouldn’t recommend people do this and glad i kept it in the vid
Any chance of a review of the Asus 5K monitor
For me the best set-up is 3 monitors, but I use windows.
Still on MacBook Air M1 😢
I bought this in summer 2023 for 800€, now I'm using Mac mini M4 for the same price (upgraded ram) and its worth the money. Sell the old one although they dropped in the price drastically in the last months or give it a family member who can need it 😊
@ yea, been seriously considering the M4 Mac Mini, might make the jump soon
🥲 I feel your pain bro
do you prefer 12 cores or 14 core pro?
Try also iPad. I had macbook air m1 with 1 4k external monitor and wi-fi paired iPad pro as second monitor.
Using display link gives more display count but 4k@30hz is unbearable for me. 30hz limit feels very laggy and not responsive enough. I’m stuck with 1 external display with m2 air so I use display link dock to use 2 display but I gave up and bought mac mini m4 pro cus that 30hz display makes me work slower
Is it only 60HZ output on the MAC mini, it is possible to go to 144HZ like a lot of modern monitors can?
What if you plug in the monitor after using in clampshell mode?
Currently using only 1 external