this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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It's still ridiculous to limit it.
Pretty much any modern computer should be able to output to more monitors than that.
There isn’t some software limitation here. It’s more that they only put two display controllers in the base level M-series chips. The vast, vast majority of users will have at most two displays. Putting more display controllers would add (minimal, but real) cost and complexity that most people won’t benefit from at all.
On the current gen base level chips, you can have one external display plus the onboard one, or close the laptop and have two externals. Seems like plenty to me for the cheapest option.
If true they are some pretty shitty chips.
Having two external monitors + the built it minor is extremely common.
At work almost everyone has at least two monitors because anything less sucks (a few use just a big external one plus the built in) and it's also common to also use the built in monitor for stuff like slack or teams.
Having more than two monitors isn't a "pro" feature. It's the norm nowadays.
Sure it might be enough for the cheapest option if the cheapest option was cheap. Unfortunately they are absolutely not cheap, and are in fact fairly expensive.
At work, my work PC laptop drives two 1080p monitors. I don’t keep it open to use the onboard one because Windows is so terrible at handling displays of different sizes, and the fans run so much when driving three displays that I think it could take off my desk. So I know what you’re talking about.
But. Have you ever used a Mac with two displays? A current-gen MacBook Air will drive a 6K@60Hz and a 5K@60Hz display when closed, and it’ll do it silently. Or both displays at “only” 4K if you want to crank the refrsh rate to over 100Hz. You think that’s not enough for the least expensive laptop they sell?
I’m really tired of people who don’t know what they’re capable of telling me why I shouldn’t enjoy using my computer.
Yeah people don't get that they are trading output quantity for output quality. You can't have both at the same time on lower end hardware. Maybe you could support both separately, but that's going to be more complex. Higher end hardware? Sure do whatever.
Not really. There is a compromise between output resolution, refresh rate, bit depth (think HDR), number of displays, and the overall system performance. Another computer might technically have more monitor output, but they probably sacrificed something to get there like resolution, HDR, power consumption or cost. Apple is doing 5K output with HDR on their lowest end chips. Think about that for a minute.
A lot of people like to blame AMD for high ideal power usage when they are running multi-monitor setups with different refresh rates and resolutions. Likewise I have seen Intel systems struggle to run a single 4K monitor because they were in single channel mode. Apple probably wanted to avoid those issues on their lower end chips which have much less bandwidth to play with.
There is no reason that they couldn't do 3 1080p monitors or more especially when the newer generation chips are supposedly so much faster than the generation before it.
Well yeah, no shit Sherlock. They could have done that in the first generation. It takes four 1080p monitors to equal the resolution of one 4K monitor. Apple though doesn't have a good enough reason to support many low res monitors. That's not their typical consumer base, who mostly use retina displays or other high res displays. Apple only sells high res displays. The display in the actual laptops is way above 1080p. In other words they chose quality over quantity as a design decision.
1080p is perfect for getting actual work done though.
And there is not reason why they couldn't allow you to have multiple normal res monitors. It's not a limitation to get you to overspend on a more expensive computer.