Ask HN: What do you think about the new curved ultrawide (21:9) monitors? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you think about the new curved ultrawide (21:9) monitors?

15 points_gjav21 comments

A friend of mine recently said his ultrawide monitor was as big an improvement to him as SSDs were ~5 years ago, which really got my attention.

In theory it makes sense. Instead of sitting multiple monitors side-by-side with the screen space divided by bezels, you combine the screen space into one monitor. Then you curve it so all the screen space is a more consistent distance from your face. It seems like an obvious way to improve things.

Possible problems I can think of:

-Fullscreen now occupies your entire workspace instead of being segmented to a single screen

-Your monitor's aspect ratio no longer matches the aspect ratio of most online videos (16:9), causing pillarboxing

-All your screen space is contiguous, so you can't let the limits of the screens manage your programs' window size for you anymore. You need to manage it manually, shaping and sizing the various windows to fit in the way you want them to. This could get annoying if you have to repeat this step often

-The ultrawide 3440x1440 has 400 fewer horizontal pixels than most dual monitor setups. I'm not sure, but this might be a limiting factor with certain combinations of IDE/terminal/vim/etc. Two-column ultrawide might not fit those as easily as 2x 1920x1080, and three-column ultrawide might be infeasible.

My current setup is a MBP on a stand connected to a 27" 16:9, so that's what I'm accustomed to. Currently considering this:

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-U3415W-UltraSharp-34-inch-Curved/dp/B00R420VAG/

But there are also popular offerings in this category from Samsung, LG, Acer, etc.

If you've made the switch, or tried to, I'd love to hear what you think about these new ultrawides. Specifically what impact it had on your productivity as a developer, how you make use of the available screen space, and how much difficulty you had getting used to it (as compared to a typical 2-monitor, or laptop stand + 1 monitor setup).

Back in the 90s when Flatron TVs appeared, there was a joke around here - first the TVs were convex, now the are flat, at this rate tomorrow they'd make them concave.

It was a joke, kinda like infinite blades on a shaving razor.

Decades later, here i am in a store staring at a concave TV. A joke in the flesh. It's kinda peculiar.

Never tried one, however, so that's all i can think about them for now.

There are jokes (monster cables, 5 blade razors); then there is just lack of knowledge.

5 blades are not a joke. I'm ok with 4, but I do suffer when I'm forced to use 3- or 2-blade razors. I keep thinking 5 is not worth the extra price, but the idea itself is not necessarily stupid.

All multi-blade razors are a joke. Multi-blade razors were designed because patents were running out on safety razors.

They do a far worse job of shaving facial hair than a safety razor that's just as easy to use, they irritate one's skin far more, and they are absurdly expensive.

That's like, your opinion, man :)

Awfully confident about that?

I have a MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro and recently one of my monitors died (LED Cinema Display logic board most likely).

Apple had just announced the discontinuation of their Thunderbolt Display which is considered by many to be obsolete due to its non-retina 2560 x 1440 resolution.

So, I considered the exact monitor featured in this Ask HN as well as several other ultrawide/4K monitors and low-end monitors [0, 1], but eventually I went with the discontinued and "overpriced" Thunderbolt display because it has a Thunderbolt port and USB 3 ports.

That is, the ability to connect peripheral devices to my computer actually ranks pretty high on my list of must-haves for a monitor.

I'm not thrilled at the dearth of choices for monitors with built-in cameras, mics, and high-throughput I/O, and I wish manufacturers other than Apple had offerings that matched high-resolution with high-throughput.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CX26VNC [1] https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-U28E590D-28-Inch-LED-Lit-Moni...

EDIT: Readabilty

I have worked with numerous 2 screen setups, a single 29 inch U2913WM plus laptop screen setup and my current 40 inch 4k tv setup.

Honestly, I really like the 4k tv the most when I have a window manager that can make good use of that much area. Without the window management the extra space becomes a hindrance.

The larger screen that you are looking at is bigger than the 29 inch that I used to work with. That said, I did really like working with the larger single screen over 2. I felt more focused on what I was looking at and the it was still manageable with simple left and right pane controls.

All that said I wouldn't consider either of these as big of a jump as SSDs. I find the additional screen space is a nice to have feature but a SSD eliminates the pauses in my workflow. To me being able to hammer out a bit of code quickly without interruption is worth way more than the extra screen space.

This might give you some answers about workspace management issues: http://lifehacker.com/how-using-an-ultrawide-monitor-boosted...

My coworker has one of these. He likes it because he can have many columns in Sublime. The only downside I've noticed is that he has notification blindness because if he's looking at the left side of the screen, he doesn't see the notification in the top right.

That's likely a feature, not a bug :)

I looked at the Samsung 34" model quite carefully about a month ago, but bought three U28E590D 28" 4K screens instead. I'm not done with this but will be driving them with an MBP when Apple finally gets the Skylake upgrade done, and a Surface Pro. I spend 99% of the time writing code in Idea. It has to be directly in front of me, and I very frequently glance at other windows to either side.

I decided against the 34" because I could not really figure out how to make the wide screen work out for me:

- One of those is not enough screen to put the browsers and terminal windows on either side of the IDE

- Two screens always gives me a neckache because of turning from the screen in front to either left or right but not the other...

- Putting a 34" in the center of three screens moves the edges of the side screens really far out, which I think would be odd for my field of vision, force me to turn my neck too far, and cost unnecessary desk space - I have this problem already to some degree with the three smaller screens

- I don't really feel like I have time to hassle with unexpected problems that pop up because of using a non-standard resolution, I want mainstream and simple so I can focus on my stuff; I think this is relevant both to driving the display, eg. at the OS, graphics card, drivers level, and also at the application level because it is unlikely that any UI will be designed with the wide screen in mind

- I like to run full screen, so I don't have to futz with border dragging etc.

In the end, I decided that 34" is actually not enough - I'd want a screen like this in the 50-60" range, but pixels above eye level also cause neckache, so this would be a resolution of something like 10000x2160. I'd also want better window manager support for getting the right window placements without having to that myself every time. I saw a backlit projector-driven screen like that in a research lab 15 years ago - perhaps we can actually buy one in another 10-15 years?

I also did think that the 34" might be really great if I either spent all of time in a single full screen application without the side windows, or if I went back to coding in vim and arranged everything into a smaller area - which I don't want to do, but lots of folks prefer that.

I am with you, 10k x 2160 (or really 6k x 2k would be fine).

2 screens is hard because of not centering well... but 3 giant screens is overkill.. so for now at least, stuck with 2 giants, and I just mostly ignore 1 of them (emails and chats, not my main stuff)

I use a dual monitor setup: a Samsung 34" curved monitor along and an Apple Thunderbolt Display. I fill the curved display with my IDE (Visual Studio) and display my graphics/computer vision outputs on the Thunderbolt Display. The wide monitor allows me to display 2 code files pages side by side with a large font. I really like the combination.

Samsung JU6700, 40" 4k, curved is what I use. It's something like $900 so same price range with more pixels. Use hyperdock or similar for docking. Ultrawide seems like it would result in lots of head twisting and neck pain. I went from a quad stand to one monitor and it has worked out. Instead of four cables and two GPU's it's just one cable and one GPU. I really don't know who ultrawide is supposed to appeal to. Perhaps video or audio editing? Curved is a must if you want to sit close enough to the screen to use it as a monitor. It also distorts reflections so they are not as distracting.

I use a 32" 4k monitor about 3-4 feet back on my desk. I run it at native resolution and it fills my field of view without requiring I move my head nearly at all.

Compared to what you're considering, I'd be really worried about how squatty it is - for about the same price, you'll only get 2/3 the height of a 4k screen, which is way less useful for coding.

I like the idea, but my next monitor setup will be either dual 4K ~24" or a single 5K 27". It's time to make the move to high DPI on the desktop.

(on Mac this is simply "Retina", on Windows it's a high DPI screen of the right size and resolution to run 200% DPI scaling)

I'm curious if anyone uses a curved ultrawide in portrait mode instead of landscape. I've got a 27in 16:9 in portrait mode right now, and it seems like a curved display might work better so long as the viewing angles still work.

That sounds like a neckbreaker

I have a 34" curved LG ultrawide monitor at work and quite like it. Only annoyance is the LG ultrawide splitting software acts up after logging back in sometimes.

40" 4K is superior. 50" 4K if you have a big enough desk.

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