[Closi]

Agreed, as an M1 user and usual multi monitor user this is a big limitation!

Realistically I’ll look at investing in an ultra wide soon to offer similar screen real estate.

We also have a Lenovo laptop that we bought two of for our admin staff in our office to only find out afterwards multi monitor support was missing (despite having enough ports for it)... it’s a shame that this isn’t considered standard.

[MobileVet]

This was such a pain... we tried several combos and dongles. In the end we found this to work for driving the 2nd monitor.

Startech Dual Display Port adapter https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C69HG33/

We have noticed that the refresh rate on the second monitor isn’t great... but it works and isn’t horrible for developers.

Edit: and we also have this due to the lack of ports (Thanks Jony)

HyeperDrive USB C Hub https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MUAEI7J/

[waheoo]

+1 for startech. Thunderbolt should be able to drive dual 4k at 60. Haven't used with the M1 but have with ThinkPads.

[wslh]

That is why I think Dell XPS 13 is top: three external monitors via a Thunderbolt TB16 and a desktop experience only plugging a single cable.

This is not to say that the XPS 13 is perfect (need to change battery every two years in all the notebooks at the office and the notebook gets hot) but the notebook is great in many other factors.

[dijit]

FWIW (and, anecdotally); my company just started rolling out XPS 13's and had to stop as they are overheating constantly.

Instead, people are going to be getting latitudes.

[andrewmackrodt]

I have the XPS 13 2-in-1 and the thermals under Windows leave a lot to be desired. It's possible to apply a small undervolt and increase the Intel turbo limits which significantly improves performance while being able to run with the balanced fan profile. If anyone wants my ThrottleStop config I can upload it to pastebin.

I run Ubuntu day to day and it has much better performance and less fan noise (presumed better thermals) than Windows.

[tinco]

Our product has a webgl component, and the XPS13 would constantly crash Ubuntu when the webgl view was open. It was so unworkable the developer switched to windows with WSL2 just to have a stable environment.

Which is annoying because the whole reason I was buying XPS laptops for our devs was supposedly good Linux support. Maybe the laptop was overheating?

[ClumsyPilot]

I have given up on 13" laptops for performance demanding work, you just can't stuff cooling into that package.

[rainbowzootsuit]

Perhaps a EGPU via thunderbolt would work? (Not that GPUs are so readily available right now, but just to get N monitor ports as needed offloaded) Have you investigated that at all?

I recently ran into something somewhat similar of needing "active" displayport adapters to connect more than two monitors at a time to a video card.

[FroshKiller]

M1 Macs do not support eGPUs.

[rainbowzootsuit]

Ah ok. Would be functional for the Lenovo presumably.

Another possibility is a device that merges monitors' and then presents as one to the computer intended for video walls.. I know of the ones that Matrox makes but might need windows to setup.

https://www.matrox.com/en/video/products/video-walls/quadhea...