xpaulso

FYI: There are many drawbacks to DisplayLink Ports. They rely on a soft GPU running on the main CPU that compresses the framebuffer. This compressed buffer then pushed to USB hub embeded in the dock and switched to the a Hardware GPU that decompresses the Buffer and displays it to attached the display. This creates much more latency than PCIe attached hardware GPU. Never mind the DMA based GPU of the M1. DisplayLink is useful for static displays. But video, gaming etc will be noticeably latent. 

JP234 said:

bala1234 said:

JP234 said:

You shoulda just spent the extra $170 to upgrade from the Macbook Air to the Pro.

Probably true but the convenience of just plugging in one cable (into your mac) and you entire accessory list springing into action is worth the $$ for some people.

Agreed. I have a USB-C hub for my MacBook Air, but it cost $18.99. True, it's not as versatile as the $170 hub, but I don't need an Ethernet port, and I don't need support for 3 monitors, either. It has everything else.

This is more like a USB3 HUB, external GPU and power supply then a simple USB-C adapter. This external GPU is the only option available for providing multiple displays to the Base M1 chip. 

The Display Link SoC (GPU, Hub, ethernet, audio USB-PD) is about $100 chip on it own, then you have a 100W PD, cables ports. You're $20 device essentially just provides ports for all the capabilities already embedded in your macbook. I'm not a big Fan of DisplayLink, but if you're limited by a lowerend macbook its the only solutuion avaible. They are literally the only vendor that creates this type of solution. The lack of competition tells me its expensive to create these ASICs and driver code.