I tried a DisplayLink dock once with my M1 Max MBP. It was incredibly laggy, pegged my cpu at 40%, and didn't let me set the correct resolution/scaling level for either of my monitors (horizontal 4k 32" and a vertical 4k 27", nothing exotic).

A TB4 dock fixes most problems, but I have to hack the EDID to disable YCbCr and force RGB, or the colors look like absolute shit. The external monitors still look significantly worse under macOS than either Windows or Linux, and I have no idea why.

External display handling is easily the worst part of using a Mac for me.

> External display handling is easily the worst part of using a Mac for me.

Using more than is explicitly mentioned that is supported, you mean? I mean yeah, duh.

An M1 Max MBP should, according to Apple, support up to 4 external displays.

i think the fact that so few are supported is part of the issue (not parent commenter, also not a user of apple products so i admittedly do lack experience in this area)

Relying on DisplayLink too. It's neat, but it's a hack. Uses a fair bit of CPU constantly and makes my Mac say "your screen is being observed." Was disappointing coming from my 2009 Mac Pro which could run 5 displays no questions asked.