Problems connecting MacBook Air M1 to Dell monitor

Tech Support
1

I have connected my MacBook Air (M1, 8GB) to a Dell P2219H monitor via HDMI. However it does not hold a connection to the monitor, it takes a while to commect, displays on the monitor for a while but then sporadically ‘loses’ the connection and reverts to display on the MacBook.

It seems to be getting worse and now I cannot often get it to display on the monitor. Unplugging HDMI at both ands and reconnecting seems to help (or maybe would have reconnected anyway.

I am using a USB-C to HDMI Dongle (QGeeM, from Amazon, lots of sales and decent reviews for what it is worth). A Google search suggests issues with Macs and Dell monitors but also HDMI issues generally and I don’t know how to trouble shoot further.

Any ideas how to improve this sort of connection - how tempramental are HDMI dongles - might it be worth changing to a different make of HDMI dongle? Or a different type of dongle? Or can individual ones just be faulty? (I’ve not got a spare here to test, and I don’t want to buy a similar one if that is not the issue).

All ideas welcome.

2

Hi - I had this exact problem. It went away when I got a thunderbolt dock! So I suppose that is a very expensive HDMI to USBC dongle… It is an old Belkin Thunderbolt 2 dock, so itself plugs into my M1 using a thunderbolt 2 to USBC dongle.

I bought an HDMI to USBC dongle from Amazon to try and remove the dock from the chain, but it didn’t work - got a whole load of fuzzy rainbow lines. I have ordered another to try that too.

3

Does that Dell not have USB-C? I’ve been connecting my M1 MBP to a new Dell 27” (sorry model # not on me) with no issues using Usb-c.

4

I’ve been using Dell monitors with Macs for several years. I’ve never had a problem with HDMI but switched to a UBC-C to DisplayPort cable when I was troubleshooting what turned out to be another Big Sur problem.

A 3 ft cable from Amazon was around $20. Might be something to try.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J6DWK6I/

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5

I don’t think so, no

6

Is Display Port more ‘robust’ than HDMI in terms of preserving connection after handshake?

7

I have no idea. I never had a display problem with our Dell PCs which used DisplayPort. And I don’t recall ever having a problem using a Dell monitor with a Mac. Even with dual monitor MacBooks that I set up using HDMI on one and DisplayPort on the other.

I’ve been retired since 2018 so I’m not up to date, but I suspect the problem is on the Mac side. The Dell monitor on my mini started blacking out occasionally after I upgraded to Big Sur. It stopped after I formatted the SSD and did a clean install.

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Thanks - I’'ll give the Display port cable a go .

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