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Comment by lynguist | Hacker News Reader

The single external display driver can drive more than one display at resolutions at 4k or lower. You can daisychain two 4k monitors on a Mac that has only one external display driver when you use the Displaylink adapter (it’s a driver). It somehow internally reuses the same display output for both displays.

The USB-C can power one 6k or 2 4k monitors.

The HDMI port on M2 Pro and newer can power one 8k.

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any experience with the displaylink driver? i always read that its a performance hog and comes with all kinds of issues. I'm running an m1 air and having daisychaining work properly would safe me from switching to an m1 pro + thunderbolt dock. I don't want to give up my single usb-c cable solution.

Displaylink really doesn't work well on a mac. Even with intel there was a time period where it flat out stopped working and currently when you connect it, it enables screen recording which doesn't allow you to use certain hdcp functions.

It's like Apple re-enabled displaylink, but only begrudingly after they didn't allow it for a few generations of the OS.

Thunderbolt docks too — with a single cable they can drive two 4k displays plus provide power to the laptop.

They really can't on plain (not Pro/Max) M1/M2/M3 chips. No matter what, these machines will only support one external display unless you go the (IMO kludgy) DisplayLink route. It's a hardware limitation and no matter what Thunderbolt dock you have it will not do it.

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