Apple’s newly announced 14- and 16-inch M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro models sport and SD card slot and an HDMI 2.0, not 2.1, port along with three Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports with support for: Charging, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gb/s), and USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s).
The HDMI 2.0 port offers support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz and DVI output using an HDMI to DVI Adapter.
The HDMI 2.0 port supports a single 4K display with a refresh rate of up to 60Hz. HDMI 2.1 technology would have allowed the port to run a 4K display with a 120Hz refresh rate.
It’s curious that Apple did not include HDMI 2.1 in the MacBook Pro models because the Apple TV 4K that was released earlier this year does have an HDMI 2.1 port.
MacDailyNews Take: That HDMI port is there for presentations to conference room monitors. HDMI 2.0 is fine for that. That port is there for presenters who whine and moan about having to carry a Thunderbolt (USB-C) to HDMI dongle for such use cases. The same goes for the SD Card slot.
The MacBook Pro has a much different use case for HDMI in general than an Apple TV.
While we’d rather have four Thunderbolt 4 ports than those two “built-in dongles” (HDMI and SD Card; we’d carry dongles for those if needed) we can understand why Apple chose this route and divvied up the bandwidth the way they did (resulting in the need to go with HDMI 2.20 instead of 2.1).
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