Okay, so at this point we've had a fair few issues
surrounding the M1 MacBooks.
Most of them have turned out to be not an issue at all,
such as the whole swap memory debacle,
and also the USB-C hubs
that were supposedly killing MacBooks.
Most of those have been debunked,
I've made videos on them on my channel.
But the one issue that I see continuously mentioned
not only on my own videos but other M1 MacBook videos,
is the fact that the M1 MacBooks can only output
to one single external display.
And for a lot of people this is kind of annoying
because especially if they use their Mac in clamshell mode,
it means you can realistically only have a single display
connected to it.
So, guys, what I'm about to show you
will allow you to use your Mac in clamshell mode
with two external monitors.
Now, for some people this doesn't really matter
but for a lot of people, they use two screens frequently.
And a lot of these people have actually gone out
and purchased an M1 MacBook Air, or a MacBook Pro,
thinking that it's going to work the exact same way
as the old Intel ones did,
only to get it home
and find out that it just doesn't work at all.
Now, I kind of understand
where these people are coming from,
Apple doesn't exactly make this very obvious on the website.
So, in this video I'm going to be examining a fix,
or a solution, for this issue
in the form of a DisplayLink adapter.
Now, for those of you who are curious,
the M1 Mac mini does not suffer from this issue
because it has two different graphical outputs
in the form of Thunderbolt via the USB-C connectors
on the back, and also a HDMI cable.
So, the solution to this problem is actually getting a
DisplayLink dock and adapter,
like this one here from Plugable.
Guys, this is not sponsored by the way,
I reached out to Plugable
and asked if they could send this to me for free,
but that's it, they're not paying me to say this
or anything like that.
Plugable is a pretty good brand, I've used them in the past,
which is why I initially reached out to them.
Now, this particular model here
is obviously the Dual DisplayPort,
or HDMI Display Docking Station,
a bit of a mouthful of words,
but you should be able to output up to 4k, 60 Hertz
on two 4k external monitors.
Now, if you want to save a few bucks
you can actually get a 1080P version of this,
there are some cheaper options out there
so do check them out.
Not just from Plugable as well
there are other brands that offer this.
So, in today's video we're going to unbox this, set it up,
and we're going to see what the actual experience is like
using this on two external displays.
Okay, so let's get this bad boy out of the packaging,
first of all,
and we're going to see what you actually get in the box.
So, here's obviously the dock.
(plastic rumbling)
So, as you can see, we have some ports on the back there,
so some USB ports, ethernet, that's a one gig ethernet port.
And these are the two DisplayLink adapters,
and this is how you can actually connect
this particular dock to your Mac, I'll show you in a second.
That's the side.
And then the front, you get a couple more USB-A connectors,
and then it just kind of sits on your desk like this,
nice and neat.
So, I'll put that to the side
and we're going to have a look and see
what else we get in here.
(dull thump)
Okay, so we get a couple of power adapters,
which is pretty standard, I'll put those to the side.
This is the power adapter so, yes, this will need
to be plugged into its own separate wall socket.
(dull thump)
And you also get some cables,
so this one here is actually going to allow you to connect
your MacBook to the dock via one single cable,
so you don't need to get other adapters and other cables,
this is all you need.
And then we have here just a standard connection
which I probably doubt most of you are going to be using,
so I'll put that to the side.
So, what I'll do now, guys, is I'll quickly set this up
with my M1 MacBook Air, and also two external 4k monitors.
And we'll test it out
and we'll see what the experience is like.
Okay, so I've got everything set up
and I've got a couple different camera angles here
so you guys can see what's going on.
So, here is the display dock,
so I've actually got a HDMI
and a display port cable plugged into the back.
And then it's connected to my MacBook
via a single USB-C cable,
and this is just the MacBook charger
that came with the Mac as well.
You need this plugged in
in order to actually be able to use this with clamshell mode
and be able to use wireless accessories
with the screen shut.
And in terms of monitors,
so I've got two 4k monitors here,
I've got a 4k 60 Hertz one from LG
and the Dell UltraSharp 4k 60 Hertz Monitor.
So you can see that both monitors are coming up,
they're both running at 60 Hertz and they definitely...
I can confirm that
because I'm getting the same amount of smoothness
as I am on the actual screen of the M1 MacBook Air.
So, both of them work perfectly fine.
You can see, I can actually...
If I move this logo.
(upbeat music)
See, it's working perfectly fine between the two,
the transition is fine.
You will see some very minor difference in colors guys,
just because of the different types of screens
at different panels.
But in terms of color uniformity,
I haven't really seen any kind of differences
or anything like that.
You can see they're very, very smooth.
So, at this stage it's been a pretty good experience.
Now, for those of you guys that do want to use this
in clamshell mode, so obviously with the screen shut.
You need to be on Big Sur 11.1, at least,
and you also need to have the adapter,
the power adapter plugged into the MacBook.
Okay, so as you guys can see
now I have the MX Keys keyboard from Logitech,
and also the MX Master mouse also from Logitech.
Great peripherals guys, by the way,
I'll link these down below if you want to to check them out.
So, you can see here that I am connected,
my mouse is connected, working totally fine.
If I now shut the screen,
and we can see we're instantly in clamshell mode.
I can switch between different tabs here,
so I can open up Discord if I wanted to,
everything works perfectly fine.
And say, for example, I can have Discord
full screen over here, and then I have a logo, for example,
if I'm checking out some graphics on the side here.
Working totally fine.
And, again, guys, you can see the refresh rate.
You probably can't see it in the actual screen
of the camera, but it definitely is 60 Hertz.
Again, you can confirm that
by coming in here to display settings.
And in terms of lag as well,
I really haven't noticed anything crazy.
If I bring up a Word Document here,
and if we actually start doing some typing...
(keyboard clacking)
So, guys, there's actually no lag at all, whilst I'm typing,
I can't detect any kind of noticeable delay.
So, that's really great to see as well.
So, give me about an hour to actually do some more testing
and also do some word and some web browsing,
and some color correction kind of stuff.
And I'll get back to you and give you my thoughts.
Okay guys,
so it's been about an hour and, I have to say,
it's been a pretty good experience.
So, like I mentioned before,
these two monitors are actually being powered by
essentially virtual graphics,
or virtual GPU, or display adapter.
And they both work really well.
What I did earlier is I actually connected my Mac mini
to one of these monitors natively,
so directly with a USB-C cable via Thunderbolt.
And then I connected one via the dock,
and I couldn't tell any difference between the two.
There was maybe a tiny little smidge of lag
and maybe a couple of glitches every so often,
like every 10 or 15 minutes, with the DisplayLink monitor.
But apart from that,
the experience was pretty much seamless across the board.
So, yeah, I can definitely recommend
picking up one of these DisplayLink adapters
and using it only, of course, if you need to use
two or three external monitors with your machine,
because this definitely does work.
And from what I've seen so far,
it works really, really well.
Anyway, guys, thanks for watching this video.
Hopefully I answered some questions that you might've had
about this particular issue.
If you want to know anything further, do comment down below,
but apart from that, I'll catch you in the next one.
(upbeat music)