M4 MacBook Air can simultaneously drive two 6K external displays and the built-in display without clamshell mode
The updated MacBook Air laptop can drive two external 6K displays (like Apple’s Studio Display) with the lid open—no need for clamshell mode.
The official technical specifications for the M4 MacBook Air reveal the laptop is capable of simultaneously supporting the built-in display and two external 6K displays at 60Hz with the lid open. This is an improvement over the M3 MacBook Air, which could also power two external 6K displays at 60Hz but only in clamshell mode. Clamshell mode lets you keep your Mac laptop running with the lid closed when connected to an external display and a wireless keyboard and mouse or trackpad.
In other words, you can run three screens simultaneously by putting two external displays next to the MacBook Air’s built-in Liquid Retina display. This addresses one of the biggest complaints about the MacBook Air in the Apple silicon era.
External display support on the MacBook Air
When Apple began transitioning Macs from Intel chips to its own silicon in 2020, the MacBook Air—which is Apple’s most popular consumer laptop—was among the Cupertino company’s first devices to get the then-new Apple M1 chip.
However, both the M1 MacBook Air and the M2 MacBook Air could drive only one external display, whereas their Intel-based counterparts could power two external displays simultaneously. The situation improved with the M3 MacBook Air, which supported two external displays but only with the lid closed.
And now, the M4 MacBook Air (finally!) brings native support for two external displays without clamshell mode. Like before, it supports digital video output via the built-in Thunderbolt 4 port and native DisplayPort 1.4 output over USB-C.
Also, when Apple updated the MacBook Pro line with the M4 chips, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro was the only model that supported a single external display. However, Apple later issued a software update that unlocked multi-display support.
One way Mac owners can connect multiple external displays to M1, M2 and M3-based Macs is DisplayLink software and external USB-C docks.
The M4 MacBook Air is coming
The refreshed MacBook Air is available to pre-order in Silver, Starlight, Midnight and the new Blue Sky color. The laptop starts at $1,000, which is $100 less than before, and will be arrive to retail stores on Wednesday, March 12.
The M4 chip powering the refreshed MacBook Air brings ten processing cores instead of eight and the option to increase GPU core count from eight to ten. The M4 is about 20 percent faster than the M3, supports 32GB of unified memory instead of 24GB and has a faster memory bandwidth at 120GB/s instead of 100GB/s.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/03/06/apple-m4-macbook-air-support-two-external-displays-lid-open/
Leave a Reply