Which docking station should I use to connect two external displays with my TM P648-MG and my Mac?

lobster00

Hi,

I have two external displays with a resolution of 2560x1440 which I would like to connect to my laptops. Just to be safe for the future it would be nice to be able to support two 4K-displays@60Hz. One is the TM P648-MG, the other is a MacBook Pro a1707 (but I think my acer laptop is the limiting factor here). I'm working with Manjaro Linux, MacOS and sometimes windows. Unfortunately the P648 does only support one video output a time (tried it with VGA, HDMI and USB-C ports). So I searched for docking stations and found three technologies: DisplayLink, DisplayPort over USB-C and Thunderbolt.

I am sure it will work with a docking station using DisplayLink technology as it is a software solution using some Chip inside the docking station but I've heard people complain about this type of docking stations (using additional cpu, unstable connections, need for drivers).

DisplayPort over USB-C will only support one 4K-display@60Hz if I understand correctly.

Thunderbolt will support two 4K-displays@60Hz but I guess my laptop must have two outputs from my graphics card connected to the thunderbolt-port so I am afraid this will not work with my acer laptop.

I found this specification of the usb-c port:

https://us.answers.acer.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/45694/~/usb-c-specifications-for-acer-travelmate-p648-m-series

Would be nice if someone can give me some insights on the topic!

Regards

Leostat

You are actually spot on for the display link. It will work hit will be heavy on the CPU, you need drivers which Linux does have, but I never used my display on a Mac so can't comment on support in that os. It claims to be supported but unsure. I only ever used 1 DisplayLink monitor, and apart from the faff with the driver never had a problem

USBC *can* do two screens through a tech known as diasy chain, but it's an absolute pain, and not cross platform . Never seen it work on nix , and you run into problems with anything above 1080 which you have (so it wouldn't work most likely)

Thunderbolt 3 should be able to output two displays with one connection with the correct hub / dock as it's 40gbps and has pass through displayport. Your laptop claims to have this, so it should work. 

Dell docks are bad, they work well on Dell laptops but don't seem to work well anywhere else, pluggable and star-tech are pretty good, and are my two goto brands . I don't think Acer make any