How Many Projectors Can I Connect To A Mac?
This analysis concerns only the connection of displays. It is equally important to consider the total number of video files and effects that can be handled by the Mac. Reference our Mac Playback Benchmarks guide in addition to this one.
Macs with Apple Silicon are incredibly powerful and efficient media servers. Apple sets a maximum number of displays for each product, but it’s possible to design a playback system with many more projectors than that.
Basic Adapters like our USB-C to Single HDMI Adapter or Thunderbolt to Dual HDMI Adapter have the lowest display latency and the most efficient rendering path. Any pixel dimensions are supported up to at least 3840x2160.
QuadHead2Go slices a HDMI or DisplayPort display into four separate HDMI outputs. It appears to the Mac as just one 4K Display. It can be configured up to 3840x2400, so four HDMI projectors up to 1920x1200 can be connected. Video mapping software can adjust its playback to accommodate the slices. It will have slightly more latency than a direct HDMI display. The four displays will be perfectly synchronized.
UltraStudio Monitor 3G is a Thunderbolt peripheral with one mirrored HDMI+SDI output. It requires special Blackmagic drivers to be installed. The Mac does not recognize it as a display, but software like QLab or Mitti can. This prevents accidentally showing macOS on your projectors and requires a slightly less efficient rendering path compared to a direct HDMI display. Its maximum resolution is 1920x1280.
DeckLinkQuad2 is a PCI card for advanced users with eight SDI outputs. It requires the same Blackmagic drivers as the UltraStudio Monitor 3G. It must be installed in a PCI enclosure (or directly into a Mac Pro) and requires consideration of Thunderbolt bandwidth. Multiple PCI enclosures may be required.
| via basic adapters |
via QuadHead2Go (HDMI) |
via UltraStudio Monitor 3G |
via DeckLink Quad 2 (SDI) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 Mac Mini, M2 Mac Mini |
1 | 4 | 2 | 16 |
| M2 Pro Mac Mini | 2 | 8 | 4 | 32 |
| M4 Mac Mini, M4 Pro Mac Mini, M4 MacBook Pro |
2 | 8 | 3 | 24 |
| M2 Max Mac Studio | 4 | 16 | 4 | 32 |
| M2 Ultra Mac Studio | 6 | 24 | 6 | 48 |
| M2 Ultra Mac Pro | 8 | 32 | 8 | 48 |
*This table assumes the built-in HDMI port is reserved as an operator monitor and not available for playback.