Over on the world of finance where I spend the majority of my time, one laptop and maybe an external screen running at the wrong resolution is commonplace. The development team shares the same standard workstation setup as the non-technical adviser sitting across the room, which to me seems wrong. I much prefer having the extra screen real estate so I purchased a 27" Dell to sit next to the 24" rotated vertically. At home I have a single 40" 4k monitor which is excellent for coding as well. So, in my case, I'd say yes, it is much better to have a few screens, unless you have one really big one.