Lee Hutchinson
The newly announced 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have HDMI ports, but they have a limitation that could be frustrating for many users over the long term, according to Apple’s specs page for both machines and as noted by Paul Haddad on Twitter.
The page says the HDMI port has “support for one display with up to 4K resolution at 60 Hz.” That means users with 4K displays at 120 Hz (or less likely, 8K displays at 60 Hz) won’t be able to tap the full capability of those displays through this port. It implies limited throughput associated with an HDMI 2.0 port instead of the most recent HDMI 2.1 standard, though there are other possible explanations for the limitation besides the port itself, and we don’t yet know which best describes the situation.
There aren’t many monitors and TVs that do 4K at 120 frames per second, and those that do are expensive. But they do exist, and they’re only going to get more common. In fact, it seems a safe bet that after a few years, 4K@120 Hz may become the industry standard.
So while this is an edge-case problem for only certain users with ultra-high-end displays right now, that won’t always be the case. The limitation could become frustrating for a much broader range of users sometime in the lifetime of a new MacBook Pro purchased today.
Of course, 4K@120 Hz is still achievable via the Thunderbolt port, and there are Thunderbolt-to-HDMI and Thunderbolt-to-DisplayPort adapters that will help users sidestep the issue. And the new MacBook Pro itself has a variable refresh rate screen that often refreshes at 120 Hz.
So if you want to connect the new MacBook Pro to a high-end display, no one’s stopping you. It just might cost more money to achieve, and the HDMI port might feel vestigial and useless to a lot of people in four or five years.
Before this week’s update to the MacBook Pro line, Apple went several years without offering HDMI ports on MacBook Pro computers at all, instead using only Thunderbolt. This redesign also saw Apple reintroduce the SD card slot, which was omitted in the last major MacBook Pro redesign in 2016.
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