8 ms·

Ask HN: New Monitor: Ultrawide or 4K?

53 points by p_o_t_a_t_o 7y ago

Monitors that are both cost a lot, so which would you prioritise?

muzani 7y ago
I picked a 4K. It works just fine for everything. Easy to read, more than two "regular" monitors worth of screen space. The only downside was that games couldn't max out on it, even with good specs and Gsync. That might be where ultrawide does better.
ponyous 7y ago
I picked 34" Ultrawide. It works just fine for everything. Easy to read, almost two "regular" monitors worth of screen space. Gaming on 3440x1440 is hard to max out (but easier than 4k), but you barely notice the difference between 3440x1440 and 2560x1080 in most games. I actually quite like the aspect ratio - it means I can have 2 windows in normal proportions (IDE for example) and another one on the side (terminal for example) 1 thing to note; I thought 34" Ultrawide will be bigger screen than it turned out to be.
- matt_the_bass 7y ago
  Me too. I use a windows manager and generally work with 3 windows across. Middle window is 50%, each side is 25%. This gives me a “full size” main window (like browser, 2 column ide, etc). One side is “monitoring” for things like cmd, git bash, slack, etc. other side is “reference” For things like PDFs, spec sheets, etc. this works great for me. One full size window gives me 4 large ide columns. I also often use 25%/75% for “monitoring”/“ide”. Occasionally I use 50%/50% for comparisons. I like it a lot. Sometimes I wish it was 200px taller but not often. Some of my colleagues have 42” 4ks. They are also great but I find my head needs to move up and down. With my 34” ultra wide, only my eyes move up ab down. I think 1 large monitor is way better than 2 monitors nearly all the time. True for either 4K or Ultra wise. Also get one that is curved.
  - steev 7y ago
    Do you have any thoughts on a 32" 4k? I am struggling to decide if I should go with an ultrawide or just a standard 32"
    - matt_the_bass 7y ago
      I’ve only used 42 4K. And 34 ultra wide. But I feel like 32 4K would be too small
buboard 7y ago
My pet peeve with ultrawide is the wobbling. I suggest one that has two legs (are there any?)
- matt_the_bass 7y ago
  Invest in a good vesa mount
  - buboard 7y ago
    i just place some toy to support the ends. I wish manufacturers cared for wobbling more. Those tiny vibrations under heavy eye fixation for hours a day are tiring.
jryan49 7y ago
I love my new 34 inch 1440p ultrawide. I used to have two monitors. The ultrawide experience is just so good.
felipebrnd 7y ago
Ultrawide experience has been great, I use it at my home office and 2 screens at the company office and the ultrawide offers much more readability and productivity.
AzzieElbab 7y ago
Depends on your eyes. Mine(I wear glasses) prefer 4k for text/code. Will try 4k curved at some point to avoid unnecessary neck movements
darkteflon 7y ago
I’m on a 40” 4k, have been for a couple of years. It’s generally fantastic and a huge leap up from either a 32” 4k panel Or two 27” 1440p panels. No comparison. However, I do often find myself thinking that I would give up some of the vertical real estate for extra space on either side; you can run a three (even) column setup but it feels just that little bit too tight. If you’ve an IDE up covering 2/3 of the horizontal space and 1/3 of the screen as a browser or terminal, there’s no room for anything else. My next monitor will be ultrawide.
nkrisc 7y ago
I've had a 34" curved ultrawide (3440x1440) for about a month now, and I love it. For gaming, it's great because my GTX 1080 has no issues with it with the games I play. For design work, having all that extra horizontal real estate is great to tuck away palettes and other extras. And for coding I can have an IDE in 2/3s of the screen and a browser for stupid CSS questions in the other 1/3, and still have that browser at a width that doesn't trigger mobile media queries.
- unwiredben 7y ago
  Yes! I've got the Dell Ultrasharp 38 on my desk and it's been wonderful. It runs at 3840 x 1600 and gives me lots of room for text editor, terminals, and web browser, filling my line of sight while I'm working.
  - ProZsolt 7y ago
    this monitor with double pixel density (7680x3200) would be my dream monitor
turbo_fart_box 7y ago
Had both. Now have a 32in 4k. Go with the 4k but 32in. 28 is too small and over 32 is too bog
LeonM 7y ago
I'm on a 42" 4K at work (software developement). In my experience 42" is too big to be ergonomic. Width is not the issue but height is: it takes too much strain on your eyes to look up to the top of the screen. If I were to buy a new work monitor I would probably go for ultiwide.
yodi 7y ago
I have made long research and comparison about this. My budget was $1200 usd. My need basically browsing, sending email, write docs and coding. Nothing fancy and i have small working room. Finally, i bought 38inch curve ultrawide (was huge 25% discount). I found it amazing and been using it for 1 year now. I have 34inch flat screen at office, but i prefer 38inch. I tried more than 40 inch screen at office but i got neck problem for that.
villgax 7y ago
Go wide or go home
righteous 7y ago
I just picked up the lg 5k2k 34 inch ultra wide. I’m very happy with it. Before this, I ran two 3440x1440 displays but got tired of how pixelated everything looked. If you’re ok windows or Linux, dell makes an 8k 32” display that you might enjoy. It’s fallen to just a couple thousand dollars now on amazon. Sadly incompatible with the Mac.
aswinkarthik93 7y ago
I am still at 24" 1080p and i like it the most for gaming and working. Overall works best for me.
timmaxw 7y ago
I went for a 4k 28" monitor because it has the same DPI as my 1080p 14" laptop screen, which is convenient when using them together.
p1esk 7y ago
I thought about monitors quite a bit over the years: 1. Don't be cheap. You look at the damn thing 1/3 of your waking time. Monitor is like a mattress - buy the best for what you want to do on it (be it text, or gaming, or colors, etc). No compromises. 2. Refresh rate is just as important as resolution. I can feel my eyes physically hurting as I'm looking at text while I'm scrolling it up or down on a 60Hz monitor. 3. Go with dual monitors instead of a single ultrawide. For me it's just easier to organize files on two smaller screens than on one large one. And I can have steeper "curvature". 4. 27" is the ideal size for me. Tried 32" it was too large vertically to look up and down. Tried 25" it's a bit too small to fit multiple windows. 5. The ideal setup would be two 27" 5k @ 120Hz, unfortunately they don't exists yet.
- phonon 7y ago
  > 2. Refresh rate is just as important as resolution. I can feel my eyes physically hurting as I'm looking at text while I'm scrolling it up or down on a 60Hz monitor. LCDs don't actually "refresh" at 60Hz like CRTs do. (The screen is not "flickering" in a LCD.) Not sure what you are actually reacting to. A faster refresh rate with a panel type that has lower persistence make look smoother when scrolling perhaps.
  - p1esk 7y ago
    I’m referring to how often the content is refreshed on a screen.
  - munmaek 7y ago
    > make look smoother when scrolling All motion/rendering looks smoother. When I used a 240Hz monitor for the first time, I literally dragged windows back and forth for a while because the motion looked so good. Going back to 60Hz now is like nails on chalkboard, particularly for gaming.
pornel 7y ago
• 1440p (typical for ultrawide) for is a sweet spot for gaming. It's the highest resolution that works well with current generation of GPUs. In 4K gaming is hard, because most 4K monitors don't support high or variable refresh rates, so if the GPU isn't strong enough to consistently hit 60fps at 4K, it'll have to drop all the way to choppy 30hz. • 4K for text. It really makes a huge difference. If you work with code, and don't care about color reproduction and black levels, then there are very cheap 4K monitors.
- mcv 7y ago
  > "4K for text." Absolutely. I just bought a 4K laptop (also OLED) and I can't believe how incredibly readable very small text is. It's almost unreal how good this looks.
  - AndreFvchs 7y ago
    Please share the model, thanks.
    - Trias11 7y ago
      MSI GT76 TITAN (128GB RAM) with 17.3" 4K/UHD and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 / 8GB Screen is at 3840x2160 I use it to render high res panoramic images. But I know - it not exactly everyone's go to laptop...
    - mcv 7y ago
      It's a Thinkpad X1 Extreme, with 4K OLED. The primary downside of the screen is that it's rather shiny and reflective in the wrong light. That apparently comes with non-matte screens. In the right light, it's the best screen I've ever seen.
- ryanmccullagh 7y ago
  I wasn't able to find the specs, but do you know if the MacBook Pro is a 4K monitor? Reason I ask is, I notice how amazing the text is on this laptop.
nik736 7y ago
For a long time I was using a 27" 4k screen. I recently upgraded to a 32" 4k screen and tried ultra wides before buying. For me, nothing beats a single 32" 4k screen. Sadly there are no 32" 5k screens, otherwise I would have bought one.
SomeHacker44 7y ago
I use a 27" 4k at work and a 38" ultrawide (3840x1600) at home. The 38" is too big frankly; maybe some of the mentioned 34" are better. I do like having Rider and Unity open in full size windows with room for terminal windows and other stuff on the ultrawide but for longer use I prefer the higher DPI of the 4k.
ta0xdeadbeef 7y ago
How is 4k on Ubuntu these days?
benologist 7y ago
I find my 32" 4K scales poorly in macOS, basically I can have everything tiny or everything massive and the scaling options make no sense there's only 720p, 1080p, 1600x900 or 4K.... there is no option between 1920x1080 and 3840x2160. In Ubuntu it is more flexible but I think the sweet spot is going to be a 6K for scaling the UI at 3K but those might be a year or two away from existing and affordable. At below 30" 5K would be fine, I have a 25" 2.5K monitor that is very comfortable to use.
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  In the display settings hold the Option key while you click Scaled to see additional resolutions.
- righteous 7y ago
  You can probably solve this using a tool like switchresx to create a custom scaled hidpi resolution that’s more to your liking. For example, I created a custom resolution for my 5k2k display to appear as 3440x1440. It’s beautiful.
- stephenr 7y ago
  Which Mac and what version of macOS are you using?
- OldSchool 7y ago
  If you're not using a discrete GPU, that addition very possible will open up some more HiDPI resolutions for you. With a modest RX-460 (recognized in 10.13+) I get a variety of formats starting from a 2560x1440 layout over 3840x2160 pixels, and incrementally more spacious, all still over 3840x2160 on the wire, all with excellent HiDPI rendering. My intel graphics iGPU delivers just the limitations you described.
zamubafoo 7y ago
I had a Dell 4K USB-C 32" 2019 model and then got an Alienware Ultrawide 34" 2018 (1440p) when a friend was moving and didn't have space for it. Unless you need the smaller resolution for gaming performance, I'd go 4K everytime. You probably won't get anything above 60Hz refresh rate for a reasonable price. But, if all you are doing is programming, consuming content, and browsing the internet, it is more than sufficient. If you do any color specific work, you can get some pretty good panels in the 4K display range.
hashberry 7y ago
The priority depends on your usage of vertical space vs horizontal space. Ultrawide is great for spreadsheets, music/video/timeline editing, etc. For coding, ultrawide is nice for splitting your IDE into 3-4 sections, however there is more vertical scrolling vs 4K.
jpeloquin 7y ago
If you spend a lot of time reading and writing, a 4K monitor with a diagonal ≤ 28" is a good pick. The switch from ~ 100 ppi to ~ 160 ppi feels like a vision correction akin to new glasses or contacts. With the aim of filling both central and peripheral vision with screen space, I use 3 × 28" 4K monitors on a triple VESA mount (EasyMountLCD EZM 002-0020). Having sufficient screen space for /everything/ related to my current task feels like it reduces pressure on my short-term memory.
KingMachiavelli 7y ago
Depends on your use case and operating systems. Are either/both of the monitors high DPI? Do you want thinks to look 'sharper' or do you want more screen real estate. It also depends on which operating system you are using. Scaling on Linux is pretty terrible so I wanted a monitor that had ~100dpi so that no special scaling would be required. I also wanted the screen real estate of 4 ~22" monitors, so a 43" 4k monitor was perfect for my use case.
ebiester 7y ago
I think it's very personal. I prefer ultrawide because my eyes are a little older at this point and 34 inches has the best compromise for me. 42 inches would have me moving my head around too much. (that said, I have a smaller 15 inch laptop monitor on the side that I use for status windows, and that does have me swivel my head.) For younger people, I might suggest the 4k. However, I'd go into a best buy and spend some time looking at them and imagining your daily activities.
- Matthias247 7y ago
  Get the 4k, set scaling to 200%, and be amazed on how much easier things are to read on it. That will come with a loss in screen estate, but I rarely need it. For applications where you want more text you can still decrease the font size and have far more readable text than on a screen with lower resolution.
cweagans 7y ago
I really like the new super ultrawides (32:9 instead of 21:9). I picked up one of these earlier this year and have not been disappointed: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monitor https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monito...
Matthias247 7y ago
High DPI. It makes text so more easy to read. For me personally I also wouldn't have too much use for ultrawide, since I run most apps in fullscreen mode and don't like turning my head while working. High quality 4k/27" are most likely the sweet spot right now and works good with 175-200% scaling (on MacOS I use 200% and decrease font sizes in some apps - on Windows 175% works ok). 5k/27" would be the ideal thing, but there are barely models available, and the requirements for Thunderbolt 3 makes them less interoperable. I'm waiting for higher resolution screens to show up with new Displayport and HDMI revisions and would upgrade then.
diweirich 7y ago
I have a 4k monitor and a 2k monitor. If I could go back and do it over, I'd just get a 2k ultra-wide. The 4k monitor has caused me a lot of headaches trying to get hardware / software to support it with dual displays.
karmakaze 7y ago
Wide and tall, 43" 4k
equalunique 7y ago
Whatever route you go, make sure the monitor you get is a curved one.
ijustwanttovote 7y ago
I made the mistake of getting an ultrawide that is not curved. Been getting some neck and trap issues from it. Doesn't matter which one, but just make sure it's curved if you get an ultrawide.
faissaloo 7y ago
I don't see why you wouldn't just get a 1080p monitor

53 points by p_o_t_a_t_o 7y ago

Monitors that are both cost a lot, so which would you prioritise?

I picked a 4K. It works just fine for everything. Easy to read, more than two "regular" monitors worth of screen space. The only downside was that games couldn't max out on it, even with good specs and Gsync. That might be where ultrawide does better.

ponyous 7y ago

I picked 34" Ultrawide. It works just fine for everything. Easy to read, almost two "regular" monitors worth of screen space. Gaming on 3440x1440 is hard to max out (but easier than 4k), but you barely notice the difference between 3440x1440 and 2560x1080 in most games. I actually quite like the aspect ratio - it means I can have 2 windows in normal proportions (IDE for example) and another one on the side (terminal for example) 1 thing to note; I thought 34" Ultrawide will be bigger screen than it turned out to be.

matt_the_bass 7y ago
Me too. I use a windows manager and generally work with 3 windows across. Middle window is 50%, each side is 25%. This gives me a “full size” main window (like browser, 2 column ide, etc). One side is “monitoring” for things like cmd, git bash, slack, etc. other side is “reference” For things like PDFs, spec sheets, etc. this works great for me. One full size window gives me 4 large ide columns. I also often use 25%/75% for “monitoring”/“ide”. Occasionally I use 50%/50% for comparisons. I like it a lot. Sometimes I wish it was 200px taller but not often. Some of my colleagues have 42” 4ks. They are also great but I find my head needs to move up and down. With my 34” ultra wide, only my eyes move up ab down. I think 1 large monitor is way better than 2 monitors nearly all the time. True for either 4K or Ultra wise. Also get one that is curved.
- steev 7y ago
  Do you have any thoughts on a 32" 4k? I am struggling to decide if I should go with an ultrawide or just a standard 32"
  - matt_the_bass 7y ago
    I’ve only used 42 4K. And 34 ultra wide. But I feel like 32 4K would be too small

buboard 7y ago

My pet peeve with ultrawide is the wobbling. I suggest one that has two legs (are there any?)

matt_the_bass 7y ago
Invest in a good vesa mount
- buboard 7y ago
  i just place some toy to support the ends. I wish manufacturers cared for wobbling more. Those tiny vibrations under heavy eye fixation for hours a day are tiring.

jryan49 7y ago

I love my new 34 inch 1440p ultrawide. I used to have two monitors. The ultrawide experience is just so good.

felipebrnd 7y ago

Ultrawide experience has been great, I use it at my home office and 2 screens at the company office and the ultrawide offers much more readability and productivity.

AzzieElbab 7y ago

Depends on your eyes. Mine(I wear glasses) prefer 4k for text/code. Will try 4k curved at some point to avoid unnecessary neck movements

darkteflon 7y ago

I’m on a 40” 4k, have been for a couple of years. It’s generally fantastic and a huge leap up from either a 32” 4k panel Or two 27” 1440p panels. No comparison. However, I do often find myself thinking that I would give up some of the vertical real estate for extra space on either side; you can run a three (even) column setup but it feels just that little bit too tight. If you’ve an IDE up covering 2/3 of the horizontal space and 1/3 of the screen as a browser or terminal, there’s no room for anything else. My next monitor will be ultrawide.

nkrisc 7y ago

I've had a 34" curved ultrawide (3440x1440) for about a month now, and I love it. For gaming, it's great because my GTX 1080 has no issues with it with the games I play. For design work, having all that extra horizontal real estate is great to tuck away palettes and other extras. And for coding I can have an IDE in 2/3s of the screen and a browser for stupid CSS questions in the other 1/3, and still have that browser at a width that doesn't trigger mobile media queries.

unwiredben 7y ago
Yes! I've got the Dell Ultrasharp 38 on my desk and it's been wonderful. It runs at 3840 x 1600 and gives me lots of room for text editor, terminals, and web browser, filling my line of sight while I'm working.
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  this monitor with double pixel density (7680x3200) would be my dream monitor

turbo_fart_box 7y ago

Had both. Now have a 32in 4k. Go with the 4k but 32in. 28 is too small and over 32 is too bog

LeonM 7y ago

I'm on a 42" 4K at work (software developement). In my experience 42" is too big to be ergonomic. Width is not the issue but height is: it takes too much strain on your eyes to look up to the top of the screen. If I were to buy a new work monitor I would probably go for ultiwide.

yodi 7y ago

I have made long research and comparison about this. My budget was $1200 usd. My need basically browsing, sending email, write docs and coding. Nothing fancy and i have small working room. Finally, i bought 38inch curve ultrawide (was huge 25% discount). I found it amazing and been using it for 1 year now. I have 34inch flat screen at office, but i prefer 38inch. I tried more than 40 inch screen at office but i got neck problem for that.

villgax 7y ago

Go wide or go home

righteous 7y ago

I just picked up the lg 5k2k 34 inch ultra wide. I’m very happy with it. Before this, I ran two 3440x1440 displays but got tired of how pixelated everything looked. If you’re ok windows or Linux, dell makes an 8k 32” display that you might enjoy. It’s fallen to just a couple thousand dollars now on amazon. Sadly incompatible with the Mac.

aswinkarthik93 7y ago

I am still at 24" 1080p and i like it the most for gaming and working. Overall works best for me.

timmaxw 7y ago

I went for a 4k 28" monitor because it has the same DPI as my 1080p 14" laptop screen, which is convenient when using them together.

p1esk 7y ago

I thought about monitors quite a bit over the years: 1. Don't be cheap. You look at the damn thing 1/3 of your waking time. Monitor is like a mattress - buy the best for what you want to do on it (be it text, or gaming, or colors, etc). No compromises. 2. Refresh rate is just as important as resolution. I can feel my eyes physically hurting as I'm looking at text while I'm scrolling it up or down on a 60Hz monitor. 3. Go with dual monitors instead of a single ultrawide. For me it's just easier to organize files on two smaller screens than on one large one. And I can have steeper "curvature". 4. 27" is the ideal size for me. Tried 32" it was too large vertically to look up and down. Tried 25" it's a bit too small to fit multiple windows. 5. The ideal setup would be two 27" 5k @ 120Hz, unfortunately they don't exists yet.

phonon 7y ago
> 2. Refresh rate is just as important as resolution. I can feel my eyes physically hurting as I'm looking at text while I'm scrolling it up or down on a 60Hz monitor. LCDs don't actually "refresh" at 60Hz like CRTs do. (The screen is not "flickering" in a LCD.) Not sure what you are actually reacting to. A faster refresh rate with a panel type that has lower persistence make look smoother when scrolling perhaps.
- p1esk 7y ago
  I’m referring to how often the content is refreshed on a screen.
- munmaek 7y ago
  > make look smoother when scrolling All motion/rendering looks smoother. When I used a 240Hz monitor for the first time, I literally dragged windows back and forth for a while because the motion looked so good. Going back to 60Hz now is like nails on chalkboard, particularly for gaming.

pornel 7y ago

• 1440p (typical for ultrawide) for is a sweet spot for gaming. It's the highest resolution that works well with current generation of GPUs. In 4K gaming is hard, because most 4K monitors don't support high or variable refresh rates, so if the GPU isn't strong enough to consistently hit 60fps at 4K, it'll have to drop all the way to choppy 30hz. • 4K for text. It really makes a huge difference. If you work with code, and don't care about color reproduction and black levels, then there are very cheap 4K monitors.

mcv 7y ago
> "4K for text." Absolutely. I just bought a 4K laptop (also OLED) and I can't believe how incredibly readable very small text is. It's almost unreal how good this looks.
- AndreFvchs 7y ago
  Please share the model, thanks.
  - Trias11 7y ago
    MSI GT76 TITAN (128GB RAM) with 17.3" 4K/UHD and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 / 8GB Screen is at 3840x2160 I use it to render high res panoramic images. But I know - it not exactly everyone's go to laptop...
  - mcv 7y ago
    It's a Thinkpad X1 Extreme, with 4K OLED. The primary downside of the screen is that it's rather shiny and reflective in the wrong light. That apparently comes with non-matte screens. In the right light, it's the best screen I've ever seen.
ryanmccullagh 7y ago
I wasn't able to find the specs, but do you know if the MacBook Pro is a 4K monitor? Reason I ask is, I notice how amazing the text is on this laptop.

nik736 7y ago

For a long time I was using a 27" 4k screen. I recently upgraded to a 32" 4k screen and tried ultra wides before buying. For me, nothing beats a single 32" 4k screen. Sadly there are no 32" 5k screens, otherwise I would have bought one.

SomeHacker44 7y ago

I use a 27" 4k at work and a 38" ultrawide (3840x1600) at home. The 38" is too big frankly; maybe some of the mentioned 34" are better. I do like having Rider and Unity open in full size windows with room for terminal windows and other stuff on the ultrawide but for longer use I prefer the higher DPI of the 4k.

ta0xdeadbeef 7y ago

How is 4k on Ubuntu these days?

benologist 7y ago

I find my 32" 4K scales poorly in macOS, basically I can have everything tiny or everything massive and the scaling options make no sense there's only 720p, 1080p, 1600x900 or 4K.... there is no option between 1920x1080 and 3840x2160. In Ubuntu it is more flexible but I think the sweet spot is going to be a 6K for scaling the UI at 3K but those might be a year or two away from existing and affordable. At below 30" 5K would be fine, I have a 25" 2.5K monitor that is very comfortable to use.

ProZsolt 7y ago
In the display settings hold the Option key while you click Scaled to see additional resolutions.
righteous 7y ago
You can probably solve this using a tool like switchresx to create a custom scaled hidpi resolution that’s more to your liking. For example, I created a custom resolution for my 5k2k display to appear as 3440x1440. It’s beautiful.
stephenr 7y ago
Which Mac and what version of macOS are you using?
OldSchool 7y ago
If you're not using a discrete GPU, that addition very possible will open up some more HiDPI resolutions for you. With a modest RX-460 (recognized in 10.13+) I get a variety of formats starting from a 2560x1440 layout over 3840x2160 pixels, and incrementally more spacious, all still over 3840x2160 on the wire, all with excellent HiDPI rendering. My intel graphics iGPU delivers just the limitations you described.

zamubafoo 7y ago

I had a Dell 4K USB-C 32" 2019 model and then got an Alienware Ultrawide 34" 2018 (1440p) when a friend was moving and didn't have space for it. Unless you need the smaller resolution for gaming performance, I'd go 4K everytime. You probably won't get anything above 60Hz refresh rate for a reasonable price. But, if all you are doing is programming, consuming content, and browsing the internet, it is more than sufficient. If you do any color specific work, you can get some pretty good panels in the 4K display range.

hashberry 7y ago

The priority depends on your usage of vertical space vs horizontal space. Ultrawide is great for spreadsheets, music/video/timeline editing, etc. For coding, ultrawide is nice for splitting your IDE into 3-4 sections, however there is more vertical scrolling vs 4K.

jpeloquin 7y ago

If you spend a lot of time reading and writing, a 4K monitor with a diagonal ≤ 28" is a good pick. The switch from ~ 100 ppi to ~ 160 ppi feels like a vision correction akin to new glasses or contacts. With the aim of filling both central and peripheral vision with screen space, I use 3 × 28" 4K monitors on a triple VESA mount (EasyMountLCD EZM 002-0020). Having sufficient screen space for /everything/ related to my current task feels like it reduces pressure on my short-term memory.

KingMachiavelli 7y ago

Depends on your use case and operating systems. Are either/both of the monitors high DPI? Do you want thinks to look 'sharper' or do you want more screen real estate. It also depends on which operating system you are using. Scaling on Linux is pretty terrible so I wanted a monitor that had ~100dpi so that no special scaling would be required. I also wanted the screen real estate of 4 ~22" monitors, so a 43" 4k monitor was perfect for my use case.

ebiester 7y ago

I think it's very personal. I prefer ultrawide because my eyes are a little older at this point and 34 inches has the best compromise for me. 42 inches would have me moving my head around too much. (that said, I have a smaller 15 inch laptop monitor on the side that I use for status windows, and that does have me swivel my head.) For younger people, I might suggest the 4k. However, I'd go into a best buy and spend some time looking at them and imagining your daily activities.

Matthias247 7y ago
Get the 4k, set scaling to 200%, and be amazed on how much easier things are to read on it. That will come with a loss in screen estate, but I rarely need it. For applications where you want more text you can still decrease the font size and have far more readable text than on a screen with lower resolution.

cweagans 7y ago

I really like the new super ultrawides (32:9 instead of 21:9). I picked up one of these earlier this year and have not been disappointed: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monitor https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monito...

Matthias247 7y ago

High DPI. It makes text so more easy to read. For me personally I also wouldn't have too much use for ultrawide, since I run most apps in fullscreen mode and don't like turning my head while working. High quality 4k/27" are most likely the sweet spot right now and works good with 175-200% scaling (on MacOS I use 200% and decrease font sizes in some apps - on Windows 175% works ok). 5k/27" would be the ideal thing, but there are barely models available, and the requirements for Thunderbolt 3 makes them less interoperable. I'm waiting for higher resolution screens to show up with new Displayport and HDMI revisions and would upgrade then.

diweirich 7y ago

I have a 4k monitor and a 2k monitor. If I could go back and do it over, I'd just get a 2k ultra-wide. The 4k monitor has caused me a lot of headaches trying to get hardware / software to support it with dual displays.

karmakaze 7y ago

Wide and tall, 43" 4k

equalunique 7y ago

Whatever route you go, make sure the monitor you get is a curved one.

ijustwanttovote 7y ago

I made the mistake of getting an ultrawide that is not curved. Been getting some neck and trap issues from it. Doesn't matter which one, but just make sure it's curved if you get an ultrawide.

faissaloo 7y ago

I don't see why you wouldn't just get a 1080p monitor