Study: Two Monitors or One Ultrawide

How about two vertical monitors? I use a laptop and normally also have connected two 27″ monitors, both vertically oriented, above it. There are certain code tasks that really benefit from the increased height of vertical orientation; as an example, last week I was doing some substantial rebasing, and the increased vertical height in a four-way diff was invaluable. Most of the time I find I’m actually using at most one of the external displays, but it’s definitely still common to get practical value out of both of them. Referring to web pages or other documents on vertical screens is also normally better—mostly normally because they’re half the DPI of my laptop display.

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(The slight off-centring of the laptop in this diagram is also curiously realistic; early on, a couple of years ago, I had it centred; but a few weeks ago I looked closely at where it had ended up, and found that I consistently placed the laptop definitely right of centre, and favour the right-hand monitor to the left.)

A few others in the company use one or more vertical screens too. Those of us who do, certainly like the increased vertical space.

Quality of window management is also going to be an important factor: of the two main OSes: Windows is good at simple window-per-screen and two-tiled-windows-per-screen arrangements; macOS is fairly weak, being more inclined to manually accomplishing it. (I’m on Windows for now, but I’m planning on trying Arch Linux, which I previously used, on my Surface Book, as it’s now probably good enough to work with. With Sway (i3 clone for Wayland), its handling of such a screen arrangement will be superb.)

I am a minority opinion here. I don’t like turning my head and I like just having everything I need for a 2 hour sprint visible at once on the screen.

At home I use a MacBook with a 22” retina I bought at the Apple store, the external monitor place directly above the laptop. I rarely do video or photo editing, but I spend a lot of time writing books and also programming. This is plenty of space for me. This is not a matter of money: 6 months after I bought this monitor for my home use, I started working at a large financial services company; I could choose any monitor(s) I wanted and I chose exactly what I have at home.

I don’t multi-task, especially in my home office. I like having just what I need for my current task visible.

I bought a System76 Oryx Pro last fall with a 16” 4K display and I find the screen size so adequate to my development needs (I use that laptop just for machine learning, it has a 1070 GPU) that I don’t even bother hooking it up to an external monitor.

I have spent so many years working on remote servers in a few SSH shell windows. This might affect the setup I chose for all-local development and writing.

EDIT: corrected second sentence

Notably missing from this study is any note of the display resolution. The market is flooded with a glut of 22-26" monitors that have the same low resolution as the smaller ones they are supposedly designed to replace.

This is all also really dependent on the applications you run. I'm personally stuck running a CRM and remote control programs that open new windows for everything. 1 large high-resolution display + heavy use of macOS workspace seems like the best way to deal with it, though my colleagues all prefer 2 displays. Anecdotal observation indicates that none of us can easily find the window we were just looking at once we move away from it, so I think the window manager needs work too.

To summarize the 43 comments so far: different people have different preferences, so a one-size-fits-all policy will make lots of people unhappy. Offer people a choice and if possible, allow them to try out several configurations to see what works best for them.

I've been using 6 x 1920x1200 displays for several years - 5 x 24" plus the laptop's own 15" panel [1] in a corner configuration with 3 in portrait orientation (perfect for reading documents and web pages).

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I'm so used to being able to distribute 'tasks' and workflow to specific monitors that I struggle terribly, to the point of giving up in frustration, when having to use a single display for anything other than casual or single application use.

I use a combination of head movement and rotating the chair depending on task.

The outstanding benefit is to have multiple applications and documents open and readable simultaneously, just as I would with multiple physical reference books.

An added benefit is having the same 'book' (document) open at different 'pages' on different monitors - and not need to flick back and forward between 'pages' or tabs.

This is using GNU/Linux Xorg server with 4 X sessions.

[1] Dell XPS with ExpressCard -> PCIe ViDock extender containing an Nvidia NVS420 driving 4 monitors, the laptop panel, and an HDMI connection, all 1920x1200.

2 separate monitors is almost always going to win vs 1 ultra wide monitor.

1. You can orient them independently.

2. You can position them in ways that are more suitable to your environment. For example if you wanted a small gap in the middle to fit an eye level web cam, you can do that.

3. If you put them flush together, 2x 24" inch monitors has roughly the same head movement requirements as a single 48" monitor.

4. 2 monitors gives you the option to do a GPU pass through VM which is extremely useful in some cases (running native Linux but wanting native Windows performance for certain apps without dual booting).

5. It's usually easier to manage multiple applications using native window snapping tools. It's also easier to ignore a 2nd monitor vs the 2nd half of a single monitor.

> So, why do we spend money to display several things at once?

Because there's a higher cost to switching windows than just switching where you're looking.

This isn't just a developer / office worker debate, the aviation industry has done it too. Having dedicated displays is almost always better than having to cycle through windows until you find the one you want.

They only had 3 participants. You can’t make any claims or generalizations from these results since they will likely be caused by individual differences of the participants. There may also be ordering effects.

Everybody has different preferences and needs, I don't think there is a golden standard, but here is my setup.

4x27" (not retina, sadly I don't have the budget for this).

They are all horizontal, with 3 at the bottom and 1 at the top.

    A
   BCD

- C is my main monitor, I use i3, and my current focused app is always fullscreen, code editor, terminal, kicad, firefox (like right now). Nothing really new here.

- B is my "put it all" monitor, on it I have multiple i3 workspaces, with IRC, Slack, riot.im, twitter, chatty, discord, toggl time tracking, spotify, music player, keepass XC and a few other utilities. All apps on monitor B have notifications muted and I cycled them (the social ones), like once every hour or two hours. I hardly every look at B except when scanning social things and changing music. When working B is just black.

- D this is my secondary working monitor. Browser with dev tools, 3d preview, datasheets, documentation... all this goes there.

- A this is the persistent monitor. If I'm monitoring (eg trying to find a performance bottleneck in an app), I'll have a grafana or whatever graphs on it. Or a log tail, trying to find a visual pattern in the logs (sometimes it happens). Anything that has to persist through the day or even the week. If I don't use it (like 60% of the time), I put some ambient images on it, like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4CQHzLAi8o

Wait until you get to your 40's or 50's and your eyes lose the ability to adjust their focus distance. This will change everything.

First, you should get two pairs of glasses, progressives for general use and single vision lenses tuned to the specific distance to the monitors you use.

Since I use a ThinkPad for much of my work, my computer glasses are adjusted to a focus distance of about 20".

This means that all my monitors, in whatever configuration, also need to be about 20" from my eyes. And it means that large monitors are unusable unless they are curved, because the distance to my eyes changes too much from center to edge. I tried a 32" flat monitor at a company I was visiting a few years ago and it was hard to keep everything in focus.

My vision does correct well, so as long as I can keep the focus distance constant, small high-DPI monitors work best.

The sweet spot for me is the high-DPI monitor on my ThinkPad combined with one or two 24" 4K UHD external monitors. One external monitor is centered above the ThinkPad display in landscape orientation, the other is to the side in portrait orientation. The external monitors are also 20" from my eyes.

If I only have one external monitor, I like to have it on a mounting arm so I can use it in either of those orientations as needed.

Each monitor is positioned so the screen is centered relative to my eyes (i.e. I'm not viewing it at a slant).

By sticking with small monitors and adjusting them to all be at the same distance, I can easily see everything on all two or three of them.

Whatever you do about monitors, take care of your eyes! Don't do what I see too many people do, where they avoided getting glasses long after they should have and squint and crane their necks to try to read the text. Or even worse, they only get a pair of progressives, so when they try to read the screen they have to tilt their heads back and aim their eyes down through the close-up part of the glasses.

Getting proper prescription computer glasses - and getting the prescription renewed every couple of years in my 40's (when your vision changes most rapidly) - was one of the best things I ever did for myself.

Imo. it comes down to the window manager, with regards to productivity.

One ultra wide (I got the Dell 38") has the added benefit of making it possible to have the primary app in the center, with less important stuff occupying the far ends of the screen.

Any change in the way I work is going to screw me up if it's not incrementally added. You don't just add a 2nd monitor, you significantly change your workflow. Maybe you add the 2nd monitor and don't use it at first. Then as you get work done, you drill on experiments to mine for improvements.

Some people are also more open to exploration than others. It amazes me when I show a gray beard (getting there myself actually) a new trick using keyboard shortcuts which have been shipping in that system for many years. I get that way myself at times, but I'm trying to get better at actively searching for improvements on my workflow, especially using tools which ship with the box I'm using.

If something like a 2nd monitor greatly improves your performance, then I imagine you would be able to improve just actively trying things. Otherwise it would be like adding a 2nd gearshift for a pro stock car racer. WTF am I supposed to do with that? It's going to take me a while to add it to my workflow.

> Naturally, when working with two monitors, you have to turn your head more often. [...] Therefore, while working on 2 monitors may require massages or physical exercises to reduce neck strain, one monitor is lean and mean.

My personal experience is the opposite. With just one screen I tend to sit still in one position for long periods at a time and feel really uncomfortable after a couple hours. With my current 3 monitor setup I not only turn my head frequently but even sit differently depending on which screen currently has main focus and which one is e.g. just showing debug info or logs.

> Three people were selected for the study: the first person received a 24” monitor, the second participant – a 25” monitor with a 21:9 aspect ratio, and the third participant – two 24” monitors. The study lasted for three weeks.

This study is seriously flawed in another way. I'm assuming that the 24" is 16:9 which has a height of 11.8" The 'larger' 25" ultrawide has a height of 9.8"--I would hate working on that for the same reason I don't like 16:9 laptops--the height of 16:10 or 3:2 are so much more useful.

For me, I've always felt that CMD+tab was faster and easier than turning my head. My eyes can only look at one thing at a time anyway.

> Three people were selected for the study: the first person received a 24” monitor, the second participant – a 25” monitor with a 21: 9 aspect ratio, and the third participant – two 24” monitors.

The "ultrawide" monitor in this test is 1" bigger than one of the 24" monitors.

How the heck does this get counted as some kind of valid "ultrawide" comparison? Doesn't seem legit at all. :(

One benefit of having a single monitor (ultrawide or not) is that when you end up working on the go on your single-screen laptop, you don't lose much productivity in terms of environment adjustment. It also helps focusing on a single task.

With that said… I did buy an ultrawide monitor in the end (which allows 2, or even 3 apps to co-exist side-by-side). But I still kept my old monitor as a secondary one (mostly for iTerm, Spotify, and live sport).

So to answer the question: two monitors or one ultrawide, I would say, why not both?

Lots of comments around the study...i will give my monitor thoughts as I think they're vastly different than most.

My theory is that I'd like to achieve productivity no matter where I'm at. This means I don't use more than the laptop's monitor. I've gotten really good at using workspaces to keep tasks separated and use 3 full screen "desktops" in Mac for my standard Dev flow. I never move my head to trigger a change in flow, just a quick swipe. Also every window on a desktop must be visible in some form if multiple programs are in 1 desktop.

I've never had a complaint about my performance although I don't think it would matter much if I had a different but efficient flow.

I do have some colleagues who have tried this but they don't follow rigid organization and so they can't find their windows well.

1. Sample size of three people (one per monitor arrangement).

2. A 25" 21:9 ultrawide is not comparable with 2x 24" 16:10 screens. You'd need something like a 44" ultrawide to get the same screen width (omitting bezels)

For years I ran 2 1080 27's - one portrait, one landscape - off of my MacBook Pro. Last year I decided to try a 28 inch 4K at work, which led to purchasing a 30 inch 4k at home. I also purchased a laptop stand so I can put the laptop off to the side and stow Slack or Spotify over there.

For me, the higher resolution on a single wide screen makes me far more efficient. I can tile 4 windows or 2 side by side and, as others have indicated, not be turning my head constantly. Plus, when using the dual 27s I still naturally tended to push lesser used apps over to the monitor not directly in front of me, so the single ultrawide and laptop stand was not much of an adjustment workflow-wise, but was a huge boost in productivity for me.

YMMV of course, but I've seen a lot of benefit going the ultrawide route.

I love my 43" 4K monitor not because he just wide, he also does give me much more verical space. I don't sit in the center, I sit about 1/3 on the left side.

Ha, I do almost all my work on a 14' laptop. Plugging it into a spare monitor is just too much of a hassle, and I've grown used to the screen economy. The way I get around such a small screen size is to have multiple workspaces open on i3 -- one for the code editor, one for docs, one for messaging, and a bunch of other ones shelved around. Flipping between workspaces is pretty painless since it's just a keyboard shortcut but I wonder how much time I lose by getting distracted when I have too many workspaces open.

I used a 4k 40" monitor for a few years and now I'm back to the 27" 1440p Apple thunderbolt display that I had before. I have another 27" like that I could use but don't. The 40" gave me rsi and I spent a lot of time moving windows around (split the screen in three columns mostly) as working on the two edges strained my neck. Using an additional monitor with either the 40" or 27" also strained my neck and having chats be always there (since the second monitor was not much use for anything else) was distracting. The point is, bigger and more are not always better. One 27" is perfect with side by side windows and switching apps with quicksilver on a mac. I'm switching to Linux now and hope to find a similar app or hotkey setup where I can open or switch to a specific app with one hotkey or key combo. I may consider a 30" curved or so in the future but even that seems like it might strain the neck too much.

There seemed to be an assumption that someone on a single monitor would tend to use the whole screen for a particular program. So this might be specific to a particular, undefined, windowing environment.

Here I am, finding multiple monitors distracting.... I splurge on one monitor with the best display I can get, preferably high res and 16:10 aspect ratio for more vertical space.

I find the simplicity of my setup soothing in a way, and lets me focus on one thing that is dead straight in front of my eyes and not get distracted by peripheral vision.

May be I'm the odd one in this regard.

I'd also consider the new gen super ultrawides like the Philips 499P9H. 49", 5120x1440. I think that's the way to go

> Naturally, when working with two monitors, you have to turn your head more often. When working with two monitors,

I’ve also noticed I move my eyes a lot more with bigger screens. Notably working on a dell 34” ultrawide. Whereas small screens - even down to the MacBook 12” - with efficient use of alt-tab and Alfred can be very productive. You don’t loose time looking for something. However when you workflow needs two side-by-side panes but no more, 27” is a bliss.

In my experience in web development, coding usually needs 2 browser windows with 10-20 tabs, 5-6 terminal windows, DB GUI, text editors with 2-3 related projects open, logs views, OS task monitor, and a couple of misc. apps. Might as well work on a small screen with less eye browsing but efficient use of keyboard shortcuts if context switching is that high.

I've come to love single monitors. It is like a task mode for me where I'm only looking at one thing at a time. I use multiple desktops to quickly change between applications or views. It really removes a lot of the urge of distraction for me.

Nice to see some quantification and hints of where the point of diminishing returns is reached. Counting tab/window switching time and neck moves seems like a decent start, tho seems moving the neck or chair is quicker.

It's been obvious since the CRT days that the biggest possible monitor was best. Anything smaller was like trying to navigate through a porthole instead of the broad seascape visible from the bridge.

The ultimate in some SciFi scenes, a large curved desk-monitor surround, though past the point of diminishing returns for most tasks, still seems cool for very complex tasks, or large CAD work...

I've used one 30-inch monitor for the past decade. if I try to use more than one monitor, I get vertigo when the mouse crosses from one monitor to the other and is in the least bit out of alignment. And I am someone who did a lot of code development on an ADM 3 monitor in the late 1970s to early 1980s, but I am very prone to motion sickness.

I cannot stand laptops in general. It's amazing how much functionality can be packed into them but the first thing I do with a laptop is plug it into a full-size keyboard, tracball, and monitor.

While two monitors with a standard window setup might be more productive, tools like Bettersnaptool or Magnet, which allow you to position your various open programs evenly on one display, will absolutely be more productive than multiple monitors.

My setup (tried and testing over the years), is one 27” high resolution display and Better Snap Tool. My laptop is in clamshell when connected, and BST allows me to use keyboard shortcuts to position my working windows. I have everything in one display.

I really like this video about the best way to setup two monitors - it compares price, ergonomics, productivity, aesthetics and desk space usage for all the various ways to setup two monitors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1N3jlgqcQ4

I don't have fancy monitor arms though, so for now my two monitors are just placed right beside each other on my desk.

Went from two 27” thunderbolt displays that were side by side, to two Dell 38” stacked on top of each other. With the bottom monitor closer to the desk and the chair a bit higher, my eyes are at the top center of the bottom monitor and I’ve noticed my head doesn’t go back and fourth and my eyes can cover the vertical space pretty easily.

Looking forward to some high dpi 38” monitors over the next few years.

When I have two monitors side by side I tend to use one monitor exclusively for a significant portion of the time.

But when working on web applications, I do prefer to have the browser on one monitor and the editor/terminals on the left, and I do believe the latter improves my productivity. I haven't tried this with a split widescreen yet.

I switched from 2x24" to 1x34" uwqhd and it's so much better

my setup would not work without bettertouchtool and the floating web view (https://docs.bettertouchtool.net/docs/floating_html_menu.htm...) that allows you to show a fully customizable view with custom controls triggering btt actions

* I can sit and look in a symmetrical centered way. previously one screen was always "main" and I would naturally keep my head rotated more often left than right causing neck pain

* the btt view allows me to have all kinds of flexible layout, see https://i.imgur.com/wHyS3HP.png for my webview setup. every color is a different kind of layout, dark purple was intended to be most often used and thus easier to reach (webview opens with mouse in the middle). But I have noticed that i rarely use the 60% middle width one so might change that

* if i read something i can put it center view, roughly 60% width

* widescreen allows for 4 windows with somewhat normal ratios in each corner. do that on a normal screen and they are way too narrow for e.g. browsers, editors with sidebars etc.

* curved screens are super nice

* i exclusively use a single iterm2 hotkey window, single screen means all is in one place and it just fits more. with two screens i would have to designate one for the hotkey overlay. 2x4 terminal sessions seems like a great fit for most things

things i wish were differently:

* its not yet possible to get real high dpi on widescreen. 2x4k screens are nicer here

* btt will only allow modification of window dimensions of the currently focussed window, not the under the mouse location when pressing the webview shortcut (middle mouse for me)

Does anyone know why linux is so bad with multiple monitors using multiple GPUs? I only have NVidia cards but I can only ever get 1 GPU and the intel integrated graphics to work simultaneously. Is this a limitation with drivers, X11/wayland, the desktop environment? Any hints would be appreciated!

The arguments against two monitor setups or focusing on two different things seems to be completely opinion based. Of course if you're checking your emails then you might want those front and center.

But for me, I work in auditing and I'm constantly looking at two documents at once, comparing documentation I have against my workpapers. And when working out at a client site I cannot stand using one screen, having to switch between documents every 5 seconds, constantly trying to fit two documents side by side on my screen.

My opinion is that two monitors are better than one, but any variation of that is simply personal preference. Side note, I also think that working with ultrawide curved screens distort the image on the screen too much.

I've gone through a number of monitor setups, and at home I settled on a single 27" at 1440p. That lets me maximize applications like GIMP for maximum use of space, or have two 1280x1440 windows maximized side by side for comparisons or multitasking. If I need a dedicated space for something, I'll open a new virtual desktop.

At work I did use three 1080p monitors for a while (I do a lot of data analysis and comparisons), but I realized that I hardly ever used the third monitor, two displays of that size seem to work best for me. I think I would be okay with a single ultrawide monitor of similar or higher total resolution.

I think the most important thing is to let people find the setup that works best for them.

I used to run 2x 24" monitors in portrait mode (2400x1920) which was pretty nice.

I upgraded to 27" monitors, but portrait mode (2880x2560) involved too much head tilting so I ultimately went landscape (5120x1440), which was both too short vertically and too wide horizontally.

So I'm currently using a single 30" (2560 x 1600) in landscape mode. It's ok. There's simplicity in having a single monitor.

The next (and possibly final) upgrade will likely be to a ~32" 4K or 5K monitor. If I had a 2nd monitor, I'd probably just want it to mirror the first one at 3x zoom centered on the cursor - my eyes are losing resolution about as fast as monitors are gaining it.

On my little experience, dual monitors is better that a single ultrawide. I had a ultra wide on my personal computer and two 16:9 monitor on my workstation. Same OS, same desktop setup, doing the same stuff. The total area and resolution is nearly the same . I know how explain, but I feel that I have more organized the open applications using two monitors that a single ultra wide monitor. However using the ultrawide to watch cinema movies (without black bands.. Netflix I'm watching you!) or playing games that support correctly ultra wide resolution it's a pleasure.

Linus Tech Tips just had a video on 49" 1440p Ultrawide monitors with glowing praise, which has me considering purchasing one to try it out.

I currently have a 32" 4k and its the perfect resolution and vertical height for me, but could use more width.

Side by side monitors is out for me as I don't like having a bezel in the middle of my view, and vertical monitors are also out for me as viewing angles are terrible- and just moving your head side to side can cause brightness/color saturation to vary wildly - seems as viewing angles are designed for landscape orientation.

I recently replaced my main 4k 28” monitor with a 2k 13” portable display, which is the same size/density as my laptop. Many people are surprised this is my main setup, but I can view all the windows I need active at once (using i3) and retain the exact setup whether I’m home or mobile.

One major factor for me was glare. There’s no way for me to position the 28” panel without a giant reflection unless I darken the entire room. With the smaller panels I can easily position both for zero reflection.

Now the 4k sits to the side for charts/monitoring, attached to a NUC.

> with two monitors, you have to turn your head more often. [This causes] neck strain.

Citation needed! Isn't a bit of movement healthy? It's not like you are playing pong across monitors for hours.

Am I the only one who has two 27" monitors, but doesn't have to turn his head to look at them?

Mine are set up so that one is in front of me as normal. The other is tilted between the bottom of the first monitor and the front of my keyboard.

Pros: I don't have to turn my head side to side or upwards to see all of my screen real estate. I found that holding those positions too often bothers my neck and eyes, but looking down doesn't bother me at all.

Cons: You lose a lot of desk space. Cleaning underneath the bottom monitor can be a pain.

I appear to be in the minority. I use 3 24" monitors at work because it's the most I can fit on my desk, but at home I bought a 6-monitor stand and have a 2x3 grid of 22-24" displays.

It's perfect for project work - one display for the site I'm building, one for my IDE, one for 2 terminals split vertically, two displays for documentation/research, and one for messaging/music/misc other stuff.

I wouldn't ever go back to fewer displays, and only wish I had bought the 8-monitor stand instead.

Single reasonably sized screen. Anything to the sides is just at an uncomfortable angle so I’d be dragging it to the center screen anyway if I were to work with it. I don’t have screens with read only information I need to monitor like say a trader, game developer or Ops person.

I have lots of colleagues with multiple screens that use them to spread out their slacks and mail clients and whatnot. I have no idea why you’d deliberately put a distraction at the periphery of your vision!

It also depends on the type of work. If you work on data analytics projects, you probably will need more screen space to fit: code, console / logs, plots, data frame. If you work on web / mobile development, you probably will need less screen space to fit: code, web browser / mobile simulator.

The problem with two monitor setup is that nothing can be at the center, things are always on either left or right side. Ultrawide is great but I hope there can be something wider than 21:9.

Current setup at the office is a 28-4k dead-centre with laptop stand beside it. I use the side display for Slack and Spotify specifically to not look at.

At home I had a 28-4k but replaced it and my TV with a 43-4k. I mostly use the middle area so a single ultrawide with laptop below it would suit me fine if it wasn't my TV. The PiP is handy for using multiple machines.

Edit: when I was doing production engineering, I used two 28s, one vertical on the side with the laptop on the other side.

My setup for the past 2 years has been a 34” 3440x1440 Dell Curved Widescreen on max height with my 15” Macbook in front.

Combined with MacOS Spaces it’s perfect productivity wise. Extra screens would just be Screen sprawl. Learned something new today ;-)

IDE on the Macbook, browser on the right, 4 terminals on the left. Slack, Messages, Email, Calendar and others are all on a different Spaces screen for minimum distraction.

> Three people were selected for the study

N=3 ??? I'll pass.

I live-stream code sessions with OpenBroadcasterStudio. I use one monitor for my work and the other to monitor the stream. On the work monitor, I split the window evenly between editor and output (web browser with browser tools), and find the OS shortcuts for arranging the windows to align to the edges and split the screen really helpful for efficient use of the screen space.

I use 3x 24" monitors, all side by side horizontal with a minimal bezel and love it. I generally have email open on my right monitor, web open on the left, and productivity center. Works well for me considering it's my "office" computer, not my development computer. Dev has 2x 24" horizontal, with a VM on the right and Windows on the left.

At home I've been using one 1080p 23" monitor and one 32" 4k . the 1080p is in vertical position on my left side, i keep chats there and do work and browse the web on the 4k..

At work up until 2-3 weeks ago at work I had 2 x 1080p monitors, and going from home to work felt crippling.

So i would recommend to anyone doing any type of work to get at least one 4k 30+" monitor!

Other angle is the role of text. I have now a 32 4k, before iMac + 32 tv HD.

As pixels, the 32 4k is MUCh better, BUT, for reading and see things, I actually downscale to almost Full HD (can't see UI artifacts and despite OSX is better than windows, a lot of things not look good with increased text fonts).

The need of multiple monitors, for me, is to dial the text..

It depends on what you do!

I tend to use 1 monitor most of the time, but when I am remoting onto a machine, or running terminal sessions, I tend to switch on another monitor and put the remote session on that, this gives you a nice mental separation. I have seen people wasting plenty of time moving stuff to another screen when a simple alt+tab is faster!

Any suggestions for good monitors to use in a vertical orientation? I notice that the LG monitor they sell at Apple stores (the smaller one) cannot be rotated on its stock stand. Maybe one can achieve this with a VESA mount + arm?

But that's an expensive monitor. Any suggestions for others? High DPI would be nice, I'm so used to it.

I use a 27 inch 1080p and a bigger 4k monitor and I can't get the scaling right. I'm considering selling one or the other and getting a new one so that both share a DPI.

I wish Wayland was more stable so I could use it bug free and get some of that fractional scaling working

If I was Ozymandias being alone with the world I might consider some of these setups but I prefer just having a crappy little screen because I figure the user's setup probably looks more like mine than anything really good.

Or it could be that I'm a resolute primitive.

For programming? Two monitors. Because no ultrawide has decent vertical resolution. Consumer 4K is 3840 x 2160, and 5K monitors are 5120 × 2880.

Every ultrawide monitor I've seen doesn't have that same vertical resolution. They have resolutions like: 3440 x 1440

“Two monitors or one window manager” is a study I’d like to hear.

Is it better to constantly move your head from physical monitor to monitor, or switch space/virtual desktop?

Of course this requires a WM that can switch to another space instantly, so macOS is ruled out.

Not sure I believe in the detrimental health effects of having two monitors as described in the article. I also don't see how having an ultra wide monitor reduces left and right panning of the monitor with your neck and eyes...

> Therefore, while working on 2 monitors may require massages or physical exercises to reduce neck strain, one monitor is lean and mean.

Isn’t it better for the neck muscle that it keeps moving instead of being static?

I use an ultrawide with a common-sized 1080p off to one side. Work gets done in two or three columns in the ultrawide. The smaller side monitor is for music, api docs, Slack and other background tasks.

This was a "study" of three people?

This would better be named an experiment.

For what it's worth I was using 3 monitors and it gave me a SEVERE neck problem that only resolved itself when I got rid of the setup and went back to just one.

This study seems very low value, to me.

There are so many variables effecting these decisions.

1. Work activity I would never record music, with only one monitor, because I use many programs, which are synced, and have LOTS of buttons and faders and valuable information, in -real time-. That makes the time spent adjusting settings, while replaying the same parts, using plugins while recording an instrument alone etc., a very dissatisfying experience.

Gathering information on the other hand, for me is easily accomplished with one screen. I then just snapshot every interesting/relevant peace of information with key combos, and look through it in bulk, afterwards.

Browsing the web, while chatting with friends, watching some youtube videos and listening to music, is for me doable on a single screen, since I use a tiling manager, but I still prefer the second screen available in this "idling" scenario.

I also have a monitor vertically oriented, to get more text without scrolling down, on ex. email, hacker news, and other text based applications and websites.

2. Health of user; I have trouble sitting in one position for longer amounts of time. Airplanes are a hazzle, so are boats and busses. Anyhow, this forces me to move a lot and change position, which in turn could just as easily be combined with moving my head, and still be beneficial to me, health vice (and I have not seen studies showing static sitting posture and head placement, to be lean and healthy).

3. Type of work If you work with computer administration of live data of any kind, a vertical monitor to watch alerts, changes, numbers and data - will in my experience, be more informational than a horizontal monitor feeding the same information. I understand this is also due to Graphical representation of given data, but still, It seems easier to similar information in columns.

4. User capacity Not all users can take advantage of their WM. Not all users can take advantage of the extra space, with two monitors. If the user do not adapt to the given setup, they will off course be better off, keep working as they have done and are used to. It is like giving someone a keyboard driven tiling window manager.. Some will thrive, learning the combos and adding their own. Others will rip out their hair in frustration, claiming tiling wm's are dumb, inefficient and just not giving any advantage in regard to work tempo.

5. Proparbly lots of other similar arguments going the same way.

I therefor conclude; there IS NO best monitor-size or amount of monitors. It depends on the work, the user, and the userspace.

Anyone find the source? NEC study?

This didn't seem right: > Yet, the performance when working with a 30-inch monitor dropped compared to the 26-inch “champion”.

I'm not surprised. Operating one monitor requires the user to know and use the window manager features correctly if he wants efficiency.

Two monitors, because tasks can have more tgan one part and organizing a workflow in physical space helps me implement it.

For up to 43" has felt more productive. 50" was just too big. (I use 4k tvs).

It's definitely nicer than two 27" for me.

I know of no hd-dpi wide screens. They's need to be about 7680 pixels across and at least 2140 down

Two Ultrawides. I use two 34" monitors and think it is a great environment for programming.

In my last job I used arch and awesome. One monitor and 9 desktops. Liked that very much

I wonder how common is it to turn your chair instead of your neck to go between monitors

Am I misreading or was there only one participant per group?

`Three people were selected for the study` Pass.

Three subjects does not a study make.

I prefer a tiny laptop screen.

One utrawide should be curved.

What is wrong with tabbing?

n=3 (3 people were studied)