Yesterday, Apple announced the MacBook Air with the M3 chip, it introduced a new capability that it can up to two external displays when the lid is closed. That feature seemed to be missing on the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, which has the same chip. However, Apple has confirmed with 9to5Mac that the base 14-inch Pro will have the same feature via a software update. It’ll most likely be macOS Sonoma 14.4 as Apple has pushed out a release candidate for that update, which indicates a public release sooner rather than later.
Both the standard M1 and M2 chips are limited to up to one external display for MacBooks, so this new capability on the M3 chip should be a welcome change for those who prefer using external monitors. The rest of the Mac’s Apple Silicon chips, including the Pro, have had support for at least two external monitors from the very beginning. So this new capability will be applied to only the M3 14-inch MacBook Pro.
With the upcoming software update, here’s a rundown of the display support specs for both the M3-based MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models:
- one external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz when the display is open, or
- two external displays with up to 5K resolution of up to 60Hz when the display is closed.
That means users will be able to work with two Studio Displays with either an M3 MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.
The M3 MacBook Air starts at $1,099, and the M3 MacBook Pro starts at $1,599. The M3 models of MacBook Air are available to order today, and it’ll be available this Friday (March 8).
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