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Comment by Terretta | Hacker News Reader

That laptop feels like liquid power. It's uncanny.

Macbook Airs (way back when) felt sluggish. The MBA M1 changed that, it was "fine". These M2s are unexpectedly responsive on an ongoing basis.

The MacBook Pro M1 Max is great (would be fantastic except they lost a Thunderbolt port in favor of legacy HDMI and memory card jacks), but you expect that machine to be responsive, so it's less surprising.

The Studio Ultra, though, never slows down for anything.

Still, if the Air could drive two external screens instead of one, I'd "downgrade" from the Max.

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I'd give the M1 air more credit - I moved from a 2019 16" Pro to the Air and performance was nearly identical except for long running tasks (> 10 minutes.) So for mobile app builds, it was blazing fast. And in the meantime the intel machine was blaring fans after the first 30 seconds while the Air barely got warm.And then the real kicker was watching the battery on the intel machine visibly dropping a few percentage points, while the air sits at the same level the whole time.

I've since moved to the M2 air, and it is noticeably faster than M1, but it isn't the huge leap from last gen intel that the M1 was. But the hardware itself feels way better.

I dont like lack of open source drivers, but honestly for work DisplayLink works just fine on MacOS. E.g I used 4 monitors on M1 Air using DisplayLink:

* Air built-in display

* 2K display connected via USB-C -> DisplayPort adapter

* Two more 2K displays of same model via DisplayLink connected via USB hub

For all practical means it's almost impossible to see any DisplayLink compression artifacts even in most of games.

PS: Each adapter cost me $40:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HN2X88P/

Appreciate this reply, TY for sharing the exact product that's working for you!

Been nervous to dip into it, given the architecture change and last year's challenges with display link docks.

// UPDATE: Oops, looking at the product, I see I should have specified: 4K screens or higher. About half our desks are 2 x 4K, about half 2 x 5K, except the Air M1 folks who are 1 x 5K.

Sadly I can only report it working on 2560x1440. Even though lower resolution is specified on Amazon.

For higher resolution some other solution is required.

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