7 ms·

A 2560x1440 monitor running at its 1:1 native resolution. The screen real estate improvement over 1080p is substantial. You get so much more vertical space and

by nickjj 5y ago

A 2560x1440 monitor running at its 1:1 native resolution. The screen real estate improvement over 1080p is substantial. You get so much more vertical space and you can easily fit 4 side by side code windows at 80 chars. At 24" or 25" the PPI is also quite nice for reading text. I wrote up a very big monitor selection guide at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-for-software-development https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-monitor-fo..., I try to keep it up to date by supplying alternatives to the ones I've purchased. Some of the monitors I recommended were $330 when I bought them but are now $500-700, although sometimes they come back in stock at $350ish. I made the switch around 5-6 years ago and still think it was one of the biggest upgrades for general quality of life improvements when using a computer. The only reason I haven't gone 4k is because using one at 100% scaling at 27" or less isn't really feasible due to how small the text is and using a 36" one to be able to comfortably view it at 100% scaling feels too big for using it in a normal desk environment. Personally I'd rather have the flexibility of 2x 24-25" 2560x1440 monitors, plus 120hz / 144hz 2560x1440 monitors are very abundant if you're into games (although you can make a strong case that 120hz+ is very noticeable and useful for general usage too).

trabant00 5y ago
Wait till you get a 32 inch 4k one. I am shocked a lot of IT professionals still use 1080p when the above can be found for as low as 250 usd with discounts
- bsenftner 5y ago
  I have four 4K screens, and it is heaven. I got spoiled early in my career by a Unix system that had a greyscale newspaper layout monitor in the early 90's. That monitor could crispy display an unfolded two page newspaper layout with space on the left and right for tool/editing interfaces. For a while, 4K monitors were landing right near US $300, so I got 4 over a period of months. Simply being able to array references around my work, with space to spare for communication and music interfaces. It is lovely to hit stride and before I know it the day is over, and a ton of work accomplished.
  - miller_joe 5y ago
    Do you recall the name of that monitor from the 90s? Sounds interesting
    - pySSK 5y ago
      Just in case you didn’t know, you can rotate any monitor 90 degrees and get the same layout.
    - bsenftner 5y ago
      It was a Sony News Workstation, with an IBM branded grey scale monitor displaying 16 grey levels at 150 pixels an inch. Total display was about 1900x3600, a bit larger than an opened two-page newspaper spread. It was a CRT monitor, requiring two feet behind the screen for the back of the monitor and quite thick cabling. It was a Unix workstation, used to author R&D CD ROMs, back when the CD ROM itself was R&D.
- yangikan 5y ago
  Which ones?
  - d3nj4l 5y ago
    Here's a 27" 4K at $300: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PGL2WVS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PGL2WVS I have the slightly better version of this. The only major difference is the stand AFAIK - but if you have multiple monitors you might as well get a good VESA mount to arrange them while keeping your desk clear.
smoldesu 5y ago
Amen to that. I recently bought a cheap Westinghouse display off Newegg that was 1440p@144hz, and it makes for an incredible primary display. I'm not exactly sold on "retina" pixel density, but having the extra screen real-estate is pretty lovely for productivity purposes. I'll definitely be considering a 4k display over the next few months, if I can get the kind of GPU to drive it reliably.
em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
Yeah...I tried using a 4k display, and I found the pixels too small. And programs ran slower because they had to render so many pixels. And using scaling didn't play well when moving windows between my other two regular monitors.
clarkdave 5y ago
I've tried a lot of different monitor setups for productivity - ranging from three 24" 4k displays to a single 49" ultrawide, and ultimately have found the best setup for me is dual 27" 4ks, each running at a "scaled" 2560x1440. MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable. Another option if you're not a fan of 27" displays is a pair of 24/25" 4k screens which can be run at a scaled 2304x1296 resolution. This still provides a decent amount of space without text being too tiny. Alas, 4k monitors <27" are increasingly rare these days.
- tzs 5y ago
  > ranging from three 24" 4k displays An option that I think might be interesting is 3 displays side by side, but with the center display in portrait mode rather than landscape mode giving overall an inverted T shape to your combined display space.
  - daggersandscars 5y ago
    When I am using 24" displays, I put one in landscape directly in front of me and one in portrait off to one side. Upper/lower half of the portrait monitor works well for terminals / email / chat. Entire portrait for reading documentation. Full-screen landscape for everything else. I find this works well for the "adjustable height desk" systems one puts on top of a regular desk. They usually aren't wide enough to have two monitors with one directly in front of the user. The portrait monitor, if the cables are long enough, stays on the fixed-height desk. I'm unable to use two monitors side-by-side anymore. Working for hours with my head always turned to one side gives me headaches. --- Edited to add note on desk-placed "adjustable height" systems.
- peteri 5y ago
  Totally agree with this, I have mine(2x27" 4K) running in the same scaled way and I really miss it when I go back to the office with a crappy three screen 1080p setup.
  - 5y ago
AQuantized 5y ago
I have a 4k 32" monitor that I use at 1:1. Maybe not for everyone, but I find myself unwilling to work on smaller screens now. Only problem is it can be find to hard 144hz refresh rates in this size/resolution range, but the smoothness isn't worth the sacrifice in screen real estate.
washadjeffmad 5y ago
I've been looking for a good 4:3 or 3:2 display for several years and recently found the following 16:18 announcement from LG: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/lgs-1618-ultra-tall-monitor-means-less-scrolling/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/lgs-1618-ultra-tall-... It will probably be obscenely overpriced, but I'll probably get a few for work for people who don't like their curved ultrawides. The 39" 4K I've been using since 2014 has spent many a year in pillarbox attempting to preserve my neck and eyes, but it's still ultimately too large. I'd love to replace it with some smaller high res non-widescreen panels.
capableweb 5y ago
You're mentioning "Panel Lotto" in your blog post in relation to reviews being for IPS panels but then sending customers TN panels instead of IPS panels. I don't think that is what is commonly referred to as "Panel Lotto" (I'd call that straight up fraud and I'm sure most courts would be on your side). "Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixels on arrival. Some policies don't allow customers to return those displays even if it has a dead pixel, as it wouldn't count as a defect. That's why it's a "lotto", it's pure chance if you'll receive a perfect display or not, and if you do you have no recourse. I'm not sure how it works out in practice, I've never received any display with dead-pixels on arrival.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  > Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixels on arrival. Like the Nintendo 3DS back than? Where you couldn't figure out, which screen(s) you would get pre-purchasing or Lenovo with their display panel and keyboard lotto?
- nickjj 5y ago
  It's called a lotto because what you get could be left to chance. This was a pretty common to have happen in the past and some tech news sites covered it too. I'm not sure if it's still happening a lot nowadays but it was certainly a real thing 10 years ago. Current day monitor manufacturers still do very questionable things like rating a 4k monitor at 120hz in its primary tagline / description / on the box but there's fine print that says "only when running at 1080p". It's taking advantage of folks who don't know a lot or do a bunch of research beforehand in order to sell more units. To a lesser degree the "lotto" idea happens with CPUs too in terms of overclockability potential. Certain serial numbers performed better, it became a lotto unless you went out of your way to purchase specific ones. This feels a lot less wrong than the panel lotto aspect tho. You are right in that it feels criminal, it's not even the same product.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    I've come across models being swapped out (where only a letter is difference but the panel changed) in the wild before, or misleading marketing. But since you can overcome that by doing research, its no longer a "lotto", like overclockability with CPUs or the possibility of getting dead-pixel on arrival.
pmarreck 5y ago
3440x1440 for me. I own 3. Amazing for gaming AND working.
whalesalad 5y ago
I run an HP Z27 4K display at 2560x1440 and feel it’s perfect.
jyxent 5y ago
I'm using a 43" 4K TV as a monitor now, and I really like it. It does take some getting use to at first, but with a tiling window manager I can split it up how I like and have the benefit of being able to use the whole screen at once for games and movies. Higher pixel density would be nice, because I still need subpixel text rendering to make the text look nice. But with 8K TVs coming out and getting cheaper, that would make a good combination of workspace size and decent enough pixel density.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  >but with a tiling window manager I can split it up how I like and have the benefit of being able to use the whole screen at once for games and movies Power Toys? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/
Cr0s 5y ago
I read your monitor selection guide and one thing that stood out to me was the distance you need to have from you monitor. Completely overlooked that one when I made my first upgrade to a larger monitor and it definitely lowered my use of that monitor. Sometimes i found myself using my second, older monitor more since the distance was more comfortable.
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  Which sizes were used there? I prefer 24” by a wide margin. Whatever resolution I have to accept at that size I will. I find myself moving my head around and moving my eyes around the screen too much with 27”+.
  - Cr0s 5y ago
    I cannot remember of the top of my head what the size was, but the problem was that it was around an arms length away from me and I had to move my head/eyes too much when using it. After that, checking how much space i have for my desktop became something I was much more conscious about. Before that it was just: this new monitor me like, me buy.
teleforce 5y ago
I've made the switch to the 2560x1440 monitors (27") about the same time as you and totally agreed about your observation. For TV and video I think Full HD at 1080p is the cut-off but for text reading and editing 2560x1440 is really a game changer. Everytime you go back to 1080p even for smaller 13" screen it's a very annoyingly noticeable with the jagged lines around the texts and is a bummer.
bergheim 5y ago
> The only reason I haven't gone 4k is because using one at 100% scaling at 27" or less isn't really feasible due to how small the text is People keep saying this but I don't.. see.. it. Everything scales great on my setup. I could make one letter cover the entire screen if I wanted to - the DPI is not really relevant in that sense. You still have to set size up to your liking. And I do not have great eyesight (contacts/glasses). Admittedly, DPI does play a part when you have multiple monitors with different resolutions. I have solved that by wrapping my launcher with a script that detects the screen, reads the DPI and scales accordingly. Which, to be fair, is not something you should expect people to do :p My desktop uses an LG-27GL850 and an LG-27GN950. One is 1440p, the other is 4k. Both are 144hz. I first bought the 1440p, which is great, then I bought the 4k one. I wanted to keep the 1440p one for gaming, but as it turns out, I don't game, so I regret not getting two 4ks. I did extensive research before getting these, and after a year with them side by side, I can for sure see the difference when I read text. The fonts (and everything) just pop more. I would be completely fine with 1440p, that looks great as well, but since I am at my computer for the better part of my life, a few extra dollars was (and still is) worth it for me. PS: 144hz was almost weird at first - the cursor and scrolling is so instant. Highly recommended.

by nickjj 5y ago

trabant00 5y ago

Wait till you get a 32 inch 4k one. I am shocked a lot of IT professionals still use 1080p when the above can be found for as low as 250 usd with discounts

bsenftner 5y ago
I have four 4K screens, and it is heaven. I got spoiled early in my career by a Unix system that had a greyscale newspaper layout monitor in the early 90's. That monitor could crispy display an unfolded two page newspaper layout with space on the left and right for tool/editing interfaces. For a while, 4K monitors were landing right near US $300, so I got 4 over a period of months. Simply being able to array references around my work, with space to spare for communication and music interfaces. It is lovely to hit stride and before I know it the day is over, and a ton of work accomplished.
- miller_joe 5y ago
  Do you recall the name of that monitor from the 90s? Sounds interesting
  - pySSK 5y ago
    Just in case you didn’t know, you can rotate any monitor 90 degrees and get the same layout.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    It was a Sony News Workstation, with an IBM branded grey scale monitor displaying 16 grey levels at 150 pixels an inch. Total display was about 1900x3600, a bit larger than an opened two-page newspaper spread. It was a CRT monitor, requiring two feet behind the screen for the back of the monitor and quite thick cabling. It was a Unix workstation, used to author R&D CD ROMs, back when the CD ROM itself was R&D.
yangikan 5y ago
Which ones?
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  Here's a 27" 4K at $300: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PGL2WVS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PGL2WVS I have the slightly better version of this. The only major difference is the stand AFAIK - but if you have multiple monitors you might as well get a good VESA mount to arrange them while keeping your desk clear.

smoldesu 5y ago

Amen to that. I recently bought a cheap Westinghouse display off Newegg that was 1440p@144hz, and it makes for an incredible primary display. I'm not exactly sold on "retina" pixel density, but having the extra screen real-estate is pretty lovely for productivity purposes. I'll definitely be considering a 4k display over the next few months, if I can get the kind of GPU to drive it reliably.

em3rgent0rdr 5y ago

Yeah...I tried using a 4k display, and I found the pixels too small. And programs ran slower because they had to render so many pixels. And using scaling didn't play well when moving windows between my other two regular monitors.

clarkdave 5y ago

I've tried a lot of different monitor setups for productivity - ranging from three 24" 4k displays to a single 49" ultrawide, and ultimately have found the best setup for me is dual 27" 4ks, each running at a "scaled" 2560x1440. MacOS in particular does an excellent job of rendering 2560x1440 to a 4K screen, and the increased DPI over a regular 1440p 27" screen is very noticeable. Another option if you're not a fan of 27" displays is a pair of 24/25" 4k screens which can be run at a scaled 2304x1296 resolution. This still provides a decent amount of space without text being too tiny. Alas, 4k monitors <27" are increasingly rare these days.

tzs 5y ago
> ranging from three 24" 4k displays An option that I think might be interesting is 3 displays side by side, but with the center display in portrait mode rather than landscape mode giving overall an inverted T shape to your combined display space.
- daggersandscars 5y ago
  When I am using 24" displays, I put one in landscape directly in front of me and one in portrait off to one side. Upper/lower half of the portrait monitor works well for terminals / email / chat. Entire portrait for reading documentation. Full-screen landscape for everything else. I find this works well for the "adjustable height desk" systems one puts on top of a regular desk. They usually aren't wide enough to have two monitors with one directly in front of the user. The portrait monitor, if the cables are long enough, stays on the fixed-height desk. I'm unable to use two monitors side-by-side anymore. Working for hours with my head always turned to one side gives me headaches. --- Edited to add note on desk-placed "adjustable height" systems.
peteri 5y ago
Totally agree with this, I have mine(2x27" 4K) running in the same scaled way and I really miss it when I go back to the office with a crappy three screen 1080p setup.
- 5y ago

AQuantized 5y ago

I have a 4k 32" monitor that I use at 1:1. Maybe not for everyone, but I find myself unwilling to work on smaller screens now. Only problem is it can be find to hard 144hz refresh rates in this size/resolution range, but the smoothness isn't worth the sacrifice in screen real estate.

washadjeffmad 5y ago

I've been looking for a good 4:3 or 3:2 display for several years and recently found the following 16:18 announcement from LG: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/lgs-1618-ultra-tall-monitor-means-less-scrolling/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/lgs-1618-ultra-tall-... It will probably be obscenely overpriced, but I'll probably get a few for work for people who don't like their curved ultrawides. The 39" 4K I've been using since 2014 has spent many a year in pillarbox attempting to preserve my neck and eyes, but it's still ultimately too large. I'd love to replace it with some smaller high res non-widescreen panels.

capableweb 5y ago

You're mentioning "Panel Lotto" in your blog post in relation to reviews being for IPS panels but then sending customers TN panels instead of IPS panels. I don't think that is what is commonly referred to as "Panel Lotto" (I'd call that straight up fraud and I'm sure most courts would be on your side). "Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixels on arrival. Some policies don't allow customers to return those displays even if it has a dead pixel, as it wouldn't count as a defect. That's why it's a "lotto", it's pure chance if you'll receive a perfect display or not, and if you do you have no recourse. I'm not sure how it works out in practice, I've never received any display with dead-pixels on arrival.

MonaroVXR 5y ago
> Panel Lotto" (as I know it at least) refers to the company's policy regarding returning a panel that had dead pixels on arrival. Like the Nintendo 3DS back than? Where you couldn't figure out, which screen(s) you would get pre-purchasing or Lenovo with their display panel and keyboard lotto?
nickjj 5y ago
It's called a lotto because what you get could be left to chance. This was a pretty common to have happen in the past and some tech news sites covered it too. I'm not sure if it's still happening a lot nowadays but it was certainly a real thing 10 years ago. Current day monitor manufacturers still do very questionable things like rating a 4k monitor at 120hz in its primary tagline / description / on the box but there's fine print that says "only when running at 1080p". It's taking advantage of folks who don't know a lot or do a bunch of research beforehand in order to sell more units. To a lesser degree the "lotto" idea happens with CPUs too in terms of overclockability potential. Certain serial numbers performed better, it became a lotto unless you went out of your way to purchase specific ones. This feels a lot less wrong than the panel lotto aspect tho. You are right in that it feels criminal, it's not even the same product.
- capableweb 5y ago
  I've come across models being swapped out (where only a letter is difference but the panel changed) in the wild before, or misleading marketing. But since you can overcome that by doing research, its no longer a "lotto", like overclockability with CPUs or the possibility of getting dead-pixel on arrival.

pmarreck 5y ago

3440x1440 for me. I own 3. Amazing for gaming AND working.

whalesalad 5y ago

I run an HP Z27 4K display at 2560x1440 and feel it’s perfect.

jyxent 5y ago

I'm using a 43" 4K TV as a monitor now, and I really like it. It does take some getting use to at first, but with a tiling window manager I can split it up how I like and have the benefit of being able to use the whole screen at once for games and movies. Higher pixel density would be nice, because I still need subpixel text rendering to make the text look nice. But with 8K TVs coming out and getting cheaper, that would make a good combination of workspace size and decent enough pixel density.

geoduck14 5y ago
>but with a tiling window manager I can split it up how I like and have the benefit of being able to use the whole screen at once for games and movies Power Toys? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/

Cr0s 5y ago

I read your monitor selection guide and one thing that stood out to me was the distance you need to have from you monitor. Completely overlooked that one when I made my first upgrade to a larger monitor and it definitely lowered my use of that monitor. Sometimes i found myself using my second, older monitor more since the distance was more comfortable.

BuckRogers 5y ago
Which sizes were used there? I prefer 24” by a wide margin. Whatever resolution I have to accept at that size I will. I find myself moving my head around and moving my eyes around the screen too much with 27”+.
- Cr0s 5y ago
  I cannot remember of the top of my head what the size was, but the problem was that it was around an arms length away from me and I had to move my head/eyes too much when using it. After that, checking how much space i have for my desktop became something I was much more conscious about. Before that it was just: this new monitor me like, me buy.

teleforce 5y ago

I've made the switch to the 2560x1440 monitors (27") about the same time as you and totally agreed about your observation. For TV and video I think Full HD at 1080p is the cut-off but for text reading and editing 2560x1440 is really a game changer. Everytime you go back to 1080p even for smaller 13" screen it's a very annoyingly noticeable with the jagged lines around the texts and is a bummer.

bergheim 5y ago

> The only reason I haven't gone 4k is because using one at 100% scaling at 27" or less isn't really feasible due to how small the text is People keep saying this but I don't.. see.. it. Everything scales great on my setup. I could make one letter cover the entire screen if I wanted to - the DPI is not really relevant in that sense. You still have to set size up to your liking. And I do not have great eyesight (contacts/glasses). Admittedly, DPI does play a part when you have multiple monitors with different resolutions. I have solved that by wrapping my launcher with a script that detects the screen, reads the DPI and scales accordingly. Which, to be fair, is not something you should expect people to do :p My desktop uses an LG-27GL850 and an LG-27GN950. One is 1440p, the other is 4k. Both are 144hz. I first bought the 1440p, which is great, then I bought the 4k one. I wanted to keep the 1440p one for gaming, but as it turns out, I don't game, so I regret not getting two 4ks. I did extensive research before getting these, and after a year with them side by side, I can for sure see the difference when I read text. The fonts (and everything) just pop more. I would be completely fine with 1440p, that looks great as well, but since I am at my computer for the better part of my life, a few extra dollars was (and still is) worth it for me. PS: 144hz was almost weird at first - the cursor and scrolling is so instant. Highly recommended.