Note: I was not paid by Plugable to write this post-- I genuinely love their product.
Have you ever wanted to run dual-displays with your MacBook Pro? With the Plugable USB 2.0 UGA Multi-Display Adapter, it's easy and affordable ($64.50 on Amazon at the time of this writing). But before we get into details, here is the finished product
Yes, I know-- I have three displays hooked up. Why three? Why not. You only need one Plugable adapter (and a Mini DisplayPort adapter) to run two displays, but I thought it would be cool to abandon the Mini DisplayPort and run two Plugable adapters through my USB hub.
As it turns out, abandoning the Mini DisplayPort probably isn't the best option. The Plugable adapter uses your computer's CPU instead of the graphics chip, so you'll lose CPU cycles if your display is rapidly refreshing a large area (e.g. playing video). This is by far the most underwhelming thing I noticed-- on my circa 2010 MacBook Pro, there is noticable choppiness when watching fullscreen video at 1920x1080 resolution. That said if you're not playing video, you probably won't be able to tell the difference between your Mini DisplayPort display and your Plugable display.
My recommendation: Buy one Plugable adapter and keep your second display hooked to the Mini DisplayPort.
Unpacking
Here are some pictures I took while unpacking one of my Plugable adapters:
As you can see, Plugable includes a bunch of adapters with the standard USB-to-DVI adapter. With these adapters you can also use the adapter for USB-to-VGA and USB-to-HDMI.
Here is what the adapter looks when hooked up:
As you can see, the adapter is fairly compact and has a green light that illuminates. It draws all of its power from the USB line, so no additional power cable necessary. Sweet!
Installation
Installation was super easy. You just install a driver and plug in the adapter. My MacBook Pro automatically recognized the additional display. The only potential gotcha I noticed is that you download the driver from DisplayLink, not Plugable. This is because Plugable's adapter wraps DisplayLink's DL-195 chip. You can download the Mac drivers here:
http://www.displaylink.com/support/mac_downloads.php
I'm using the 1.6 beta 4 version of the drivers and everything is working smoothly.
That's all for now. You can read more about the Plugable adapter on Plugable's website. I'll post an update after I've spent some more time using my dual display setup.
