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> If you write code and you're not on 4k, you don't know what you're missing. I really don't. Would anyone care to share their experience? Currently, I'm think

• mlyle 7y ago
  They're probably suggesting to get a bigger monitor at the same time. You can have somewhat higher DPI and smoother text, and more real estate. If you're used to 24" 1080P, going to 32" 4K gets you 1.5x the DPI and 1.77x the screen area. For what's now a $300 monitor, that is a pretty significant improvement overall. The DPI means my characters go from 9x18 pixels to 13x27, which is a big difference in text rendering fidelity and just feels a little nicer. And the additional screen real estate speaks for itself.
  • quikorder 7y ago
    Would you mind linking the $300 monitor you're talking about?
    • sjm-lbm 7y ago
      Not OP, but I've been using an older version of this monitor for about two years now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K3P7ZBS/ref=psdc_1292115011_t1_B079H5Z4S8 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K3P7ZBS/ref=psdc_1292115011_t1_... There's quite a few choices at that price point, though.
    • phonon 7y ago
      https://smile.amazon.com/LG-32UK50T-W-Class-FreeSync-Monitor/dp/B07K3P7ZBS/ https://smile.amazon.com/LG-32UK50T-W-Class-FreeSync-Monitor...
      • bsenftner 7y ago
        Speaking as a guy with six 4K monitors on my desk, get Samsung over LG. My two LG monitors are a bit soft, whereas the Samsungs are sharp as diamonds.
        • bsenftner 7y ago
          For later reader: I've figured out I need to use the Display Port, not the HDMI port, to get true crisp 4K. Now the LGs are sharp too. :)
        • thequux 7y ago
          My LG is a little over 4 years old (an LG 27MU67, sadly no longer produced), and the only complaint I have with it is that the capacitive buttons are difficult to use by feel. If I could get another monitor that's exactly the same, I'd do it in an instant.
          • aiphex 7y ago
            I have a similar LG 27UD68. The game changer for me was taking off the anti glare coating. It's amazing the relief from eye strain that I got once it came off.
        • TheOperator 7y ago
          >6 4k monitors How are you driving those by the way? 6x 4k support is an uncommon feature.
          • bsenftner 7y ago
            Two separate Nvidia cards, not SLA'ed.
    • qes 7y ago
      There's several, just search. $300 is about the cheapest you'll find a 32" 4k though, don't expect much and it'll certainly be a TN panel with a slower refresh.
      • mlyle 7y ago
        Yah, you'd probably be better served to spend $350-$450. Some of the $300 ones are VA, though, which is OK.
    • CPLX 7y ago
      I've bought a million of the Dell P series 4k monitors for my office in various sizes, they range from 200-500 bucks or so depending on the size. Even less used or floor model. I have a few dozen and they've pretty much been bulletproof.
    • heelix 7y ago
      https://www.microcenter.com/product/614968/lg-32qk500-c-32-qhd-75hz-hdmi-dp-freesync-led-monitor https://www.microcenter.com/product/614968/lg-32qk500-c-32-q... I've been using this one. (Typing on it right now) Has a display port I wire my mac into when coding for work and run a Linux box on it when I'm playing. It is a nice panel, for what I paid. 32" @ 2650x1440 IPS. I've got it next to an older 30" 16:10 (2650x1600) and it is comparable. I do wish I could get my hands on cheap 16:10 monitors. My old 24" dell is vertical, which really makes for a nice way to view the web.
  • jhoechtl 7y ago
    I am still traped into the mess Linux wayland has brought and all I see is a blurry algamation of nlurry fonts surrounded by blurry images. The Linux desktop is dead.
    • maxmouchet 7y ago
      Which distro./desktop environment are you using? I'm running a dual screen setup (laptop + 4k screen over DP) with fractional scaling on the laptop screen (150%). This works pretty well in Fedora 31, no blurred text. AFAIK different scaling parameters on different screens are not supported by Xorg, so I'm pretty happy with Wayland.
      • jhoechtl 7y ago
        Kde Plasma Wayland with fractional scaling set to 125%. My workhorse applications are Libreoffice, Firefox and Thunderbird. Each and every of these applications is blurry as hell. My eyes hurt. True that the multi-monitor experience with mixed scaling factors per display under Wayland is better, that's why I am still suffering of that stockholm syndrom. Gnome does better, I acknowledge that, but their opinionated UI decisions make me feel like a retard.
        • Vogtinator 7y ago
          That's because those applications use XWayland, which means Wayland scaling has no effect and it scales the pixmaps instead. Try export GDK_BACKEND=wayland.
    • horsawlarway 7y ago
      Not at all my experience. Honestly, wayland has been an incredibly sharp improvement over x for me. Arch running Gnome on Wayland just freaking works. Input is miles better. Output is miles better. I run two 4k displays and the internal display is 1920x1080. Even dragging windows between the external and internal monitor, with different scaling factors works SO much better.
    • tinus_hn 7y ago
  • jacobolus 7y ago
    Personally I think 24" 4k displays (along the lines of https://amzn.com/B00PC9HFNY https://amzn.com/B00PC9HFNY or https://amzn.com/B01LPNKFK0/ https://amzn.com/B01LPNKFK0/) look a lot better than 32" 4K displays. YMMV. Though if you have the space (a very deep empty desk) to put your display like 6 feet away from your face, then the 32" might be a decent way to reduce eye strain.
    • Matthias247 7y ago
      They will do for sure since you can run them with 200% scaling. That scaling factor gives you the cleanest fonts. Fractional scaling is not as good. I’m using a 27" screen with 4K which is ok. But I would definitely upgrade to 5k to get 200% scaling once display standards properly support it (Thunderbolt 3 will not be a permanent solution) and screens are affordable
      • hinkley 7y ago
        I also went with a good 27" instead of a cheap 32", but mine is 200% scaling. I figure this will become a secondary monitor I can use for a very long time. I'll buy a 32" with no bezel when I can get it with a Thunderbolt 4 port, and my desk will be right about maxed out.
      • samatman 7y ago
        I'm wondering what you mean by "Thunderbolt 3 will not be a permanent solution". I had gotten the vague impression that Thunderbolt 3 is in line to be adopted more-or-less whole-cloth as USB4. Is that not accurate?
        • Matthias247 7y ago
          Thunderbolt is much more than an just a display link. You can think of it as something as PCI Express, plus some USB and displayport compatibility. It can technically support everything, but might require custom drivers. I don't expect it to become a mainstream solution for "just pushing down some pixels from A to B" due to its additional complexity and cost. I haven't followed USB4 too much. I expect it to again have multiple "levels" like USB had before. And whether some or all of those will be high definition video capable it to be seen. For USB-C video was just a mere alternate mode which switched the meaning of the wires inside the cables to displayport. Doing video over the PCI Express subsystem of thunderbolt is a different story.
  • loeg 7y ago
    I'm already using a 30" monitor; there aren't a lot of 4k monitors >30" that aren't full TVs (50-60"). Going to 4k at 30" just increases my DPI with no increase in area, and I'm already not using tiny fonts; more DPI isn't what I want. I'd really like 4k at 40" or so: that still bumps me from 100 DPI to 110 DPI, but I get a lot more usable screen real estate. Unfortunately, the market for monitors over 30" is tiny / costly.
• darkr 7y ago
  At work my primary monitor is 4K @32”. At home my primary monitor is 2650x1600 @30”. Though the 4K monitor is sharper, specifically for the task of writing code, I actually prefer my home monitor.
• TomVDB 7y ago
  For my aging eyes, 4K 32” is the sweet spot. They’re cheap too (you can get one for $380.) I don’t use the full screen for editing (it’s too wide for that), but the edit window is in the middle and stuff that happens in the background (compiling etc.) sits in the virtual background, showing up in the border around the wait window. So I see immediately when things have stopped scrolling. After using this configuration at work, I upgraded all my home setups as well.
  • exhilaration 7y ago
    Can you give us a link to this monitor? I'd rather get one based on an HN recommendation.
    • lotyrin 7y ago
      https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-U32J590-32-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B07CS3JGPC/ https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-U32J590-32-Inch-LED-Lit-Monit... The controller for this one isn't the best and is picky about inputs (I can't get the original Apple HDMI adaptor to work well even at 30hz, so use DisplayPort instead), but it does well enough for the price. I use 1:1 pixel ratio and a tiling manager to manage the screen 720p subdivisions (3x3 = 9 of these) and will have editors or documentation arranged vertically in 2-3 of these subdivisions, terminals in individual subdivisions, and screen shares or video in 2x2 spaces (1440p) depending on what I'm up to. I have configured hotkeys which place windows in predefined positions in the grid and gotten pretty quick with the muscle memory of them. I aggressively organize windows into spaces, and use the Apple track pad + gestures to move spaces, this acts as a stack of second monitors that I don't have to move my head to see (but can change attention to with similar speed). 32" at arms length seems to be just right in terms of not feeling like I have to turn my head to change my area of attention, and the pixel density isn't too hard on my eyes without any scaling, but both of these are just on the edge (I wish I had slightly larger UI elements, and slightly less FOV occupied) but with these being at direct odds with each other, this device (and a more expensive one with the same resolution and dimensions I purchased for home use before this one at this price point was released) occupies a sweet spot (for me personally).
    • 7y ago
• joshstrange 7y ago
  Can't speak to 4K but I recently switched to 3 2K monitors (2 vertical on either side of a horizontal monitor). And I quite like the vertical monitors (My setup resembles a tie-fighter) even though I had resisted trying them for over a decade now. I still have 1 1080p screen attached (just for NVR viewing) and if I drag my IDEA (code editor) window from a vertical monitor to my 1080 then it takes up over 3/4ths of the width. Just to restate that a different way: I gave up less than 1/4th of my screen width but got ~3x the height (just for the 2 vertical screens). My current setup looks like this with 1 & 3 being vertical, 2 being horizontal, and 4 being my old 1080p horizontal. | | | 4 | | | | 1 || 2 || 3 | | | | | I have my 2 vertical monitors divided into 3rds (top, middle, bottom) and have keyboard shortcuts to move windows between each region (coupled with a shortcut to move/resize all windows to their predefined default locations). My code is always on monitor 3 taking up the bottom 2/3rds (I find that using the whole height requires too much head/eye movement). I like to use the top 3rd of both vertical monitors for things like chat/reference.
  • wwright 7y ago
    I’m not sure what you’re describing; 1080p and 2K are the same thing. Do you mean 1440p?
    • wh1t3n01s3 7y ago
      It could be: -1920x1200 (WUXGA) -2560x1440 (WQHD) -2560x1600 (WQCGA)
    • amarshall 7y ago
      I rather wish we would rid ourselves of ambiguous terms and instead just state a specific resolution. 2K and 1440p and 4K could each mean any of numerous different resolutions.
• yboris 7y ago
  I'm using a 55" 4K TV for my coding at home. It's wonderful that I always have enough space to put all my windows (using Win 10). The other benefit is that I can sit farther away from the screen (I make the font larger to compensate). Feels like it's better for the eyes not to have to focus up-close.
  • PretzelFisch 7y ago
    With the tv I could never get crisp font rendering in windows. Are you using windows or mac?
    • yboris 7y ago
      I'm on Windows. The TV is a low-end $400 TCL, but it's good enough for me. The text isn't as crisp as it would be with a smaller screen size, but I don't mind. And if I make the font larger, it's smoother (more pixels per character).
• zachmu 7y ago
  I code on a 27" 4K monitor at 60 Hz. All the text is just so sharp and crisp and clear. I no longer get any noticeable eye fatigue after a day's work.
  • dmos62 7y ago
    It's actually impacted your eye fatigue? That's interesting.
    • ProZsolt 7y ago
      Not OP, but have the same conclusion.
• bsenftner 7y ago
  Back in the early 90's I had a "Sony News" newspaper layout monitor with hardware that displayed a full 2-page newspaper spread at 16 grey-levels. I got addicted and mourned the loss of viewing giant amounts of source code and terminal/app windows. When 4K came out, my dream returned. I'm currently working with four 4K monitors, no scaling, that is also Input Director linked to a second system with two more unscaled 4K monitors, but those are portrait (tall). I'm in heaven, again.
• Kim_Bruning 7y ago
  Simple rule of thumb: * More pixels -> more characters on screen. * More characters on screen -> easier to glance between different parts of your code , open manuals, etc. A 4K screen has 3840x2160 pixels. You could see that as either fitting 4 regular 1080p screens in a rectangular pattern, or just over 3 regular screens in vertical orientation (which is what you were considering). Of course, if your current HD screen is only barely comfortable to you (likely), you will end up needing to buy a screen with larger dimensions (findable) to actually be able to utilize the screen to that extent. Alternately, you could still go for that higher pixel density; in which case you end up with more readable characters. This does alleviate eye-strain! Given enough pixels at your disposal (and a large enough screen), you can have the luxury of determining your own favorite trade-off between pixel density and amount-of-code-on-screen. You can do so on the fly, as tasks/whims/fatigue demand. This is why -at least for now- I'd say you can never have enough pixels. I'm sure there's a point of diminishing returns somewhere, but I think we have a long way to go before we reach it.
  • WoahNoun 7y ago
    This assumes that your eyesight is good enough to view that much text density at once. In my experience, I just end up zooming in a lot and upping the font size. Now, an ultrawide. That was truly a game changer in productivity for me.
    • tomnipotent 7y ago
      > Now, an ultrawide. That was truly a game changer in productivity for me. Ditto. At one point I had 2x34'' Ultrawide side-by-side, but recently replaced with a single 49'' UW w/QHD.
      • BoorishBears 7y ago
        For coding I've found the best ultrawide resolution is 3840 x 1600, the extra vertical space is much more impactful than adding more horizontal space (a 38" ultrawide can already do 3 columns very comfortably, adding more doesn't help in my experience)
• bhauer 7y ago
  It has been several years since I wrote "4K is for Programmers" [1], and in time since we've migrated to 4K 60 Hz LG panels using DisplayPort. But the upsides of a large 4K for programming remain the same today. [1] https://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is-for-programmers https://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is-for-programmers
• cm2187 7y ago
  43in 4k monitor (Philips BDM4350UC). Not a particularly high dpi but LOTS of screen real estate, and not very expensive. You can have two documents open side by side plus stackoverflow and the rendering of your website. But it requires 60Hz, because otherwise moving the mouse over such a large surface feels laggy and uncomfortable.
• alias_neo 7y ago
  If your eye sight is good (no aides needed) it's a much more pleasant experience, the sharpness of coding at 4K, at a like-for-like scale. What's less pleasant is how unsharp all of the icons and images in apps that haven't provided high density images look.