MacBook Pro owner saves $700 on display repair by strapping an old M1 MacBook to a broken M4 Pro with rubber bands

A broken MacBook Pro display is one of the most expensive repairs Apple offers, and some users prefer to keep the bottom half of the laptop and hook it up to an external monitor rather than pay for a fix. One Reddit user took this approach to a creative extreme.

Redditor "Content_Virus9971" owns an M4 Pro MacBook Pro with a damaged screen. Apple's official repair for the display would cost $700. To avoid that expense, he decided to turn an old M1 MacBook Pro into a live monitor for the headless M4 Pro machine.

The two laptops were physically strapped together using rubber bands. The M4 Pro's keyboard deck sits on top, while the M1 MacBook Pro is attached below, with its screen facing upward to serve as a display. The connection between the two Macs is established via a Thunderbolt LAN cable linking their USB-C ports, ensuring near-zero latency for video transmission.

To stream the M4 Pro's screen to the M1 MacBook Pro's display, the Redditor used Moonlight — a low-latency remote display streaming tool that works over a local network. The combination of hardware and software allows the M1's operational screen to act as a real-time monitor for the more powerful machine.

The result is a fully functional setup where the M1 MacBook Pro, which was previously gathering dust, now serves as a dedicated external monitor for the M4 Pro MacBook Pro. The user saved $700 on display repair costs, and the rubber band construction keeps both chassis securely attached while allowing access to the M4 Pro's keyboard and trackpad.