Does somebody here use an OLED display for coding? Was it worth it? How is your colourscheme or general system setup for it? Any burn-ins?
That said, my understanding from credible technology reviewers (e.g., [1]) is that OLED displays are quite good considering they are still "first generation" in this space.
I suspect that most programmers would be happy with an OLED display, but it won't seem notably superior for programming than a high-quality LCD such as a Dell Ultrasharp or Professional series desktop display (e.g., UP3017 [2]) or the LCDs used on a Surface, Dell XPS, or Apple Macbook. In other words, I think OLED is nice, but it is not yet a deciding factor. Second generation OLED displays may create a bit more distance between OLED and LCD. For the time being, for programming, my personal preference favors usable real estate (large desktop displays) before color accuracy and pixel density.
Given all three (real estate, color accuracy, and pixel density), I would be thrilled. But if I had to pick one before the others, as a programmer, I want real estate.
[1] https://youtu.be/Dtjllca-AaQ?t=2m23s
[2] This is a 2560x1600 30-inch display which, thanks to the cult of widescreen, enjoys an annoying price premium versus the more commonplace 2560x1440 27-inch form factor. Again, as a programmer, screen height is useful since it allows you to fit more lines of code in view. (Width is also useful for displaying source of multiple files side-by-side, but that utility is probably a bit lower than the utility of height.) This is why 3:2 displays as seen on Surface Book are great for programming.
At work I have 2 Asus PA328Qs. It's hit-and-miss plugging them in over MiniDP into my rMBP. They are slow to power up, and I once set the DisplayPort version to 1.1 instead of 1.2 via the menus. The buttons on the back aren't super responsive, and the OSD software seems very undercooked. It took me a good 10 minutes to get the DisplayPort version back to 1.2 because it kept saying "no input" and would turn off. There's a tiny joystick to navigate the menus and the way to toggle between menus isn't obvious (click the joystick to the right when it looks like you can only move up and down, which completely changes the menu options). Overall this monitor is incredibly frustrating for me, and when I get home and plug into the Benq, I'm saddened that $WORK spent a similar amount on the inferior Asus. It's actually massively lowered my opinion of Asus in general, and raised my opinion of Benq, which I had previously thought of as a kind of budget brand, comparable to maybe AOC. I'm now looking for a gaming monitor, and while Asus has some compelling g-sync options, Benq is used in actual e-sports competitions and gets great reviews for that use-case.
TL;DR try a monitor in a store first and try to make sure it doesn't annoy you before making a significant investment in one. I also looked at OLED laptops (mostly the Alienware 13 r3) and ended up getting a used XPS 15 9550 with a maxed out CPU and the 4K IGZO display.
Edit: make sure you understand the issues with OLED burn-in and fading before buying. Especially a laptop. That's why I didn't ultimately get one.
Many external monitors can be rotated 90 degrees into portrait orientation.
I'm using one of those old SyncMaster monitors from Samsung for displaying Code.
Make sure your IDE can hide unnecessary parts of it, like directory view or something, otherwise it gets a bit crunched.
If your environment is limited to a single monitor, 3:2 is very nice and 16:10 is also quite good.
If you code in low or no light environments then I would certainly rank OLED as an important factor. If however your work occurs in brightly lit spaces (outside / horrid offices) then you will be wanting a white screen anyway and it makes no difference.
Of course, always consider having multiple monitors and raising the size of the text - this is often much better at reducing strain than the extra play an OLED will give with light levels.
- I am not a doctor and am in no way qualified to give the above advice. I have programmed for roughly a week on an OLED that wasn't mine
Any reasonably priced OLED screens for a desktop?
As for e-ink, this is the dream. I want to sit out on the lawn working and as far as I can tell e-ink is the way towards this.
For coding OLED is my favorite because in my OPINION it reduces eyestrain. In my experience the two biggest factors in eyestrain are: too small of a font for your eyesight, and too bright of a screen.
With a normal LED-IPS display you can turn down the brightness to approx 25-35%, but even then the screen remains pretty bright and below that the colors and contrast seem to wash out slightly.
With OLED because each pixel is lit as opposed to the entire display, working in a night mode means you're really looking at a very lightly lit screen even on a full page of white colored code.
Plus the white code really pops out because the background is much much darker than other technologies. On other display types the software asks for black but really gets a shade of grey, this is due to unavoidable light leaking. On an OLED it asks for black and gets actual black.
That all being said, OLED is great for coding, IPS might be better for color reproduction (e.g. photo editing) and wide angle viewing, and neither IPS or OLED is great for gaming currently (due to poor response times, etc).
PS - Obviously this post is only about display technology. In the real world other factors may come into play like relative price, resolution, orientation rotation, reliability, and so on.
For instance, Anandtech [1] reports 6h11m for web browsing on the LCD X1 Yoga, which drops to 3h39m on the OLED variation.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/10697/the-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-y...
I am so upset to see all constructors forgetting devs/ops/office who favore quality, specs and have decent money: 16:10 monitors are dying, monitors panels optimized for text and long days of watching the screen are non-existing (vs optimized for video or image), mouse and keyboards are cheap or for gamers.