MacAir M2, Kensington SD5500T, dual HP x24ih Monitors not working

[JoeTwo PointOh]

I recently decided to "upgrade" to a Mac from windows. Possibly a huge mistake, as I didn't realize how much I took for granted on Windows that was just simple to do.

That said, I'm giving this Mac a try but have been hitting a wall for days with trying to get it to work with dual monitors, which I really like to have after having gotten used to them at work.

I bought a Kensington SD5500T docking station after reading around and seeing that lots of people had luck with getting it to run dual monitors. I've tried every combination possible of DisplayPort, HDMI, adapters etc to connect my monitors to the dock, but no matter what I do, I can only get one monitor to work. The dock is being detected by the Mac. I;m 99% certain that the one monitor I can get to work is only because that monitor is being natively detected by MacOS, NOT because of the DisplayLink driver.

I've installed DisplayLink driver, and while I have all the permissions enabled for it, it just doesn't seem to be detecting either monitor. I'm sure some of the problem may be my infamiliarity with MacOS, however even a poorly trained monkey can usually repeat what it sees, and I've been completely unable to repeat any of the myriad of videos I've found online demonstrating my Mac running dual external monitors with this setup.

Any help/advice?

For reference:

MacBook Air M2
Kensington SD5500T
2x HP x24ih monitors

[Szymon]

Hi JoeTwo PointOh,

Unfortunately, Kensington SD5500T is not a DisplayLink technology based device. It uses Thunderbolt technology and MacBook Air M2 is only capable to extend to one external screen when connected via Thunderbolt.

Regards,
Szymon

[JoeTwo PointOh]

Thanks for the prompt response. Apparently my online research misdirected me. Can you recommend a dock that is compatible with DisplayLink and is confirmed to work?

[Szymon]

We don't recommend any particular brand. You can find a list of products with DisplayLink chipsets here: https://www.synaptics.com/products/d...ylink-products

There is a dedicated "GPU Agnostic Docking Stations" category.
Hope that helps.

Regards,
Szymon

[JoeTwo PointOh]

Thanks for the response. I looked around online and found a DisplayLink compatible docking station, and am now running dual monitors, which is sort of a win.

The frustrating part now, though, is that I'm getting awful stuttering and lag on all three screens (both external and the main display) when scrolling down on any page running on one of the external monitors. Any scrolling of any window on any of the three monitors causes about a 5 second stutter where all screens freeze. When the scroll does finally happen, it's very jumpy and either scrolls down the page minimally, or several pages. The only work around seems to be moving the window down to the main page, scrolling where I need to be at, then moving the window back up to the external monitor again.

Currently, I'm testing this with literally only DisplayLink Manager and a single Chrome browser with 1 tab running. I can understand some issues if trying to run intensive programs on the externals, or HD video, but it's pretty disappointing that there's this much lag when simply trying to scroll down on a web browser forum page.

Is there anything I can try to smooth this out (besides returning the Mac and going back to my Windows PC)?

[Szymon]

You should expect comparable performance experience of DisplayLink on Windows and Mac.

Though, we have had some reports on macOS that connecting monitors at refresh rate 200Hz and above sometimes causes freeze of the display when scrolling web sites. This is proven to be macOS issue which we reported back to Apple. A workaround is to change monitor mode to lower refresh rate.

If the above hint doesn't solve your problem, please raise a support request following this FAQ: https://support.displaylink.com/know...to-displaylink

Regards,
Szymon