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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

I would prefer just one 6K or 8K monitor personally at a size of say 55" with a wide ratio. Simpler setup. No post in the middle. Something like this but bigger with higher resolution, and maybe a bit more height vertically (this one is a bit too wide for its height in my opinion): https://www.samsung.com/ca/monitors/gaming/super-ultra-wide-...

I think that dual 4K is the old way, single 6K/8K ultra wides are the future.

That said I am rocking the dual 4Ks on the Mac Mini M1 and it works great: https://twitter.com/BenHouston3D/status/1384693982249340935

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I use a 55" 4K Samsung TV as a monitor. It cold boots quickly and has no latency or subsampling issues in the right mode. I can recommend it as a more cost effective alternative to multiple monitors.

The amount of available screen space at 1:1 is refreshing (not as crazy as imagined though), but it makes me realize how grainy "normal" monitors are. In some years 8K TVs might be cheap enough for an upgrade, but on that time scale I can see VR being a serious contender as well (it's really good already).

How far back do you sit from this monitor? Do you use resolution scaling?

The last time I tried a large format display, I couldn't move back far enough to make it work but I really loved working in 4k without scaling.

I'd be curious about that too, once I sat in front of a 30" monitor and really hated it due to proximity (60-80cm) and size. A single 27" @4k is the sweet spot for me.

I use a 4k 43" Dell monitor without scaling. I just measured and my "eyeball to glass" distance is 30 inches. Works great and gives me the real estate of about 4 smaller screens.

Currently around 70cm due to the size of my desk, but I'd like to eventually move back to something around 120 eventually, as that's what provides maximal comfort.

I have the exact same setup as you (samsung 55) and my monitor is 76 cm from the front of my desk.

Are you saying it's a 55" display?

I have the same setup, no resolution scaling on macOS. And also, like the parent you replied to, sit about 70 cm (28 inches) from my display.

It's so big that I actually don't sit in the middle but to the left of the display. I use the right of the display as a second monitor.

As an aside, I have the Philips Momentum (model 436M6VBPAB) which is sold as a monitor but can double as a TV. It has HDR, which is very nice in a light office. I suspect it is no longer produced in any significant quantities. The price has been going up.

One thing about TV's is that they are grainy up close. Being a 55" you probably don't sit very close to it, but how does it overall feel e.g. in font quality? And I also wonder if it's good for your eyes to focus on something that's constantly far away. I would think a mixture of the two (normal distance to a PC monitor with frequent breaks) would be preferred.

> how does it overall feel e.g. in font quality?

> they are grainy up close

Hmm, maybe it's its "TV-ness", but the individual pixels look pretty sharp to me at a close look (no quantum dots or weird pentile arrangement, that should definitely be looked out for), but I have no other low DPI display to compare it to. My reasoning was always "it's just an LCD panel, why would it be different" and so far I feel proven right.

> I also wonder if it's good for your eyes to focus on something that's constantly far away

My appeal-to-nature-argument would be that the natural human mix would probably have been much heavier towards looking into the distance than it is now (see the massive rise of near-sightedness in cities), so it can only be better than what we're currently doing.

It's best for your eyes to change focal distance. Staring off into infinity, staring at 75cm, and staring at 30cm are all bad for you. Find something else to look at every so often.

There are few differences between a 4K 42" screen and 4 1080P 21" screens: the smaller screens can be angled, they have bezels, and are probably more expensive in aggregate.

I use a 55" Curved Samsung 4K TV. The DPI is similar to a 24" 1080p in a 2x2 configuration. The curve provides a similar effect to turning 2 monitors toward the viewer. I don't use the height very often, as I have progressive lenses and have to really look up to see the top. But I can lean back for watching a full screen video quite comfortably. IMHO it's fantastic. For those that can still see a difference in Hi-DPI an 8K 55" would be for them. I really don't need it though and this thing costs about $600 at Wallmart.

A year ago I was looking to get a big screen for my iMac Pro. I looked at many monitors in the 40" range, then on a whim I put my 55" LG OLED TV on my desk 30" from my face and hooked it up. Wow, it is better and easier on the eyes than any monitor I have had. I had planned to use it beside the iMac screen, but now I just mirror to the TV and have the iMac under my desk. I have used dual monitors for decades but I like one big one better.

I run it at 3840 x 2160 and use a trackball to get around. I like it a lot. LCD TV screens do not work well extremely close up but an OLED is fine even at 12" away. Text in the corner of an LCD TV is dim and poorly defined but on an OLED it is just like it would be on a 55" sheet of paper.

Of course I was concerned that the OLED screen would burn in, but it was an older TV so I took a chance.

Most days the computer and TV are on for about 12 hours. I have run them like this for 14 months now. There is no burn in at all. The overall brightness is slowly declining, but it has been doing that since I got it in 2016. (LG OLED55B6P)

> One thing about TV's is that they are grainy up close.

Most TV's have a "gaming" setting that doesn't try to "improve" the video feed and just passes it through.

Mind linking to the exact model you use?

I do the same thing in my "living room" setup. I have the entertainment center with the television. Then a small desk in front of that.

I can slide the desk out of the way when I want things back to normal in my living room.

I've always wondered if a far-sighted person wouldn't be better off with a huge monitor at a distance.

How do you think you would feel about 65" vs 55"? I've been using dual 39" 4k monitors (no longer available on the market), and when I replace them I want to go to a single 55" or 65". The current area in square inches is almost identical to a single 55", so at 65" I think I need to lower the screen in order to have full visibility.

>I think that dual 4K is the old way, single 6K/8K ultra wides are the future.

In the near future 16:9 8ks are going to be standard (too bad it won't be 16:10) but right now you can get a decent triple 4k monitor setup for half of what an 8k monitor costs.

IMO ultra-wide is great for productivity in a situational sense but it sucks for gaming and media consumption. Also getting proper support for ultra-wide to be standard is probably going to take another decade.

I think there's something to be said for each monitor being a separate entity. I think some people will still prefer multiple monitors over ultra-wide even when support for ultra-wide is a solved problem.

My personal setup now is a 28" 4k@60hz, a 32" 1440P@240hz as a primary and a 24" 1440p@144hz. I have my work computer, my desktop, a mac-mini, a switch, and a PS4 running off of them so having separate monitors is ideal for me.

Ultra-wides and super-ultrawides are cool, but IMO they aren't as practical yet.

I’ve been playing games on an ultrawide since 2015 so I’m going to have to disagree hard with you. In the beginning ultrawide support was hit or miss but at this point I’d safely say 90-95% of games support ultrawide. There are also of plenty gaming specific ultrawide monitor options. I still have a second 16:9 monitor on the side because I do agree with your point of monitors being a separate entity. There are programs from dividing the space of monitors but if you’re used to multiple monitors I don’t think switching to a single monitor of any size will be a good replacement. I think it’s also worth throwing in that watching movies on my ultrawide is my favorite place to do it as the 21:9 aspect ratio means that movies stretch to the entire screen. It’s definitely an amazing experience.

>In the beginning ultrawide support was hit or miss but at this point I’d safely say 90-95% of games support ultrawide.

There's support, and then there's that support being so flawless that its the same quality of experience you would get with a standard aspect ratio. Each of us has our own standard of what's good enough. Its working out for you but the people I game with that were using ultra-wide monitors switched back due to the number of issues they were having, as recently as last year. I did some research myself when I was upgrading my monitor and some of the games I played would have had issues so or me personally it wasn't good enough.

Another thing to consider is a lot of game content is designed with standard aspect ratios in mind, so whether expanding the viewpoint makes it better is going to be a personal standard. It will be interesting to see if UW monitors do become a standard in a couple of decades whether game developers start specifically making content that utilizes the extra space to offer something that isn't possible with existing games.

That’s a fair point because there are definitely certain developers, blizzard is can think of, where most games don’t support UW and they don’t seem to have an interest in it. Even still, in the games where there are issues it’s easy enough to switch to 16:9 and not miss out on anything by having the UW. I’m not sure what issues they were having that caused them to switch back from having one but I can’t imagine ever going away from one as the advantages of them are just so great. If you don’t mind me asking, what games do you specifically play and what issues did you read about?

I rock a 38" dell ultrawide. It's not HiDPI but it works fantastic for me. It's just about big enough to make me not miss dual screens, and it's awesome for games.

Do you have periodic weirdness on the thunderbolt monitor? Every so often, my m1 mini wakes or boots so that there’s a vertical misalignment by a pixel or two about halfway across. It’s like the desktop was cut in half and taped back together slightly crooked.

YES -- it's not just me! At first I thought my monitors were somehow broken (which is unfortunate as I paid a bit extra for name brand LG). I suspected something, as each monitor is plugged into an M1 computer (one's a Mac mini M1 and the other a MacBook Air m1). Both exhibit the visual problem you describe on a random basis.

pairing this with another comment by myself (about multi-monitor support beyond only one external monitor). I wonder if this is the main reason that Apple didn't support more than one external. Does the issue exhibit itself even more when additional monitors are connected? To be clear it never occurs with my main MacBook Air screen (only the external).

Just as a data point, I have an MBP M1 and an LG external monitor and this has never happened to me in almost 6 months usage.

I didn't mention this but it didn't happen initially, only after a couple months did the random screen errors happen. And power cycling, disconnecting/reconnecting/changing cables, etc to the monitor changes nothing.

I haev this problem! For me it's a strip about 2 inches wide, down the middle, one pixel higher than the rest of the image. I am using an LG 5k monitor, and I have been unsure if it's a problem with the monitor or the machine. I'd love to know what kind of monitor you are using; this gives me hope that it might be an apple bug that will get fixed eventually.

I have an LG 5k, too! And it only happens on that monitor - my LG 4k over HDMI is fine.

It's because the 5K monitor is actually two monitors taped together ("multi-stream transport").

It is two streams but it actually isn’t MST. It’s two independent HBR2 links; MST would have been two streams over one HBR2 link, which doesn’t have the bandwidth for 5k.

I also have this problem--also an LG 5K. Disconnecting and reconnecting seems to fix it for now.

No idea if it's the monitor of the laptop, but it's the exact same problem and hopefully hardware doesn't glitch in such a consistent way and it can be fixed in software.

I don't have an M1 machine, but I have had periodic weirdness on external monitors (of every flavor) when waking from sleep on all the Mac laptops I've owned over the last 10 years.

that is ... bad luck. Or I have really good luck (having used mac's for over 20 years). This situation is a first for me (and in my case happens during normal usage, ie not upon waking) - though given Apple's recent track record screams buggy software

I have this happen on my Windows PC every now and again. It’s on the monitor that’s hooked up via DisplayPort.

I have run into poor quality DisplayPort cables in the past. I now only buy ones I know are brand name.

I have zero weirdness at all. It just works perfectly all the time.

Neither monitor supports Thunderbolt. But I run off of a USB-C to Display Port cable and one is using the HDMI port. Both run at 60Hz as it is HDMI 2.

I run from display port to usb-c adapter -- I wonder if it is my adapter which is a simple Cable Matters adapter (which gets somewhat warm). Be nice if you shared what adapter you're using for comparison.

I have an Acer Predator that has this issue (Whether using my Mac or PC attached.) Power cycling the monitor makes it go away. Basically the left side of the screen is shifted one pixel higher than the right side of the screen, making a vertical line down the middle where the shift changes.

in my case power cycling does not change anything, could be a separate issue for you. In my case it is also retaining a "ghost" of previous pages I've had open. It does eventually go away (and most of the time is not there).

8k is 4x the resolution of 4k at a 16:9 aspect ratio. It would require supporting 4x 4k displays.

Example: https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/articles/07toBDd6lpyucCyM0xWrcQv...

1000x this. For several years I've been eyeing the 49" ultrawides as a replacement for my current 34" ultrawide. It would definitely be a big upgrade, but I keep thinking that something high DPI must be around the corner in that format. The years just keep rolling by and it seems like display tech barely advances.

I purchased the Dell 49” ultra wide to replace a Thunderbolt Display and 27” 4K. It is effectively the same resolution as I was using. It is nice not having the break and being able to better center windows. Split window views are much easier to work with when being able to see the entire line of code.

> I would prefer just one 6K or 8K monitor personally

Sure but the Air and MBP already support 6k external displays.

They don’t support 2x4K.

I do agree. But what I am trying to say is that we should be pushing for 6K and 8K ultra wide monitors rather than the old hack of 2 monitors to one computer.

There are times I actually prefer 2 separate monitors. Allowing one monitor to quickly go full screen while continuing to use the other monitor is quite useful in my workflows.

Virtual desktops are also more useful with two separate displays, or at least lend themselves to different use cases.

Out of curiosity, when did you last use a single monitor instead of your current dual monitor setup?

I’ve been using an ultrawide since 2015 but have almost always had a second side monitor with it. The period where I didn’t have a second monitor was short as having a separate monitor has always come in handy. All of the extra space on an ultrawide is great but when you’re doing something that takes the whole screen, it still leaves you in the same position you would be with a single 16:9 display.

Not the GP, and I really don't agree with their position, but I did switch from two monitors to a single UW last year.

TBF my old setup was a decade old so it was merely a 24" (1920x1200) and a 19" (1280x1024 in portrait).

Though my new display has a much larger logical size, the inability to put something fullscreen on one of the monitors (whether the small one or the large one, depending on the content) is definitely one of the drawbacks I had a hard time getting used to, not only can it be inconvenient, it actually wastes space as I can't get rid of window decorations, which putting e.g. a video player or browser window in fullscreen allowed.

it's not a hack though. i prefer 2x4k. i hate the curve (no straight lines) and UW is too wide to be comfortable (eye and neck angle). 2x4k, one straight on and one angled is ideal. i spent 2 weeks and spent $8000 on monitors to test this out. 34UW at normal desk distance is perfect, however 2x4k is better overall. I actually use 3, as I use the macbook screen as the 3rd.

that said, i have no issue with your choice. for some applications (eg video editing is the default choice for ads of UW monitors) it is really better.

i do have issue with you denigrating 2 monitors. it is not at all "an old hack".

I much prefer two monitors. I run each one as separate desktops, which means I can have "left screen apps" and "right screen apps" and cycle them independently. It also means I can switch desktops on my left screen while my apps on my right screen stay where they are.

Also, with two screens, I can adjust the angle between them to be more or less severe.

Yeah, I even actually kind of like the "post" between monitors that the GP mentioned (as long as the bezels are thin :) - it help as a kind of mental division between types of work.

Also, 2 monitors means more choice in layout; for example, my 2nd monitor is in portrait orientation.

Only if I can have a nice tiling WM.

I work on mac all day and on my 1440p widescreen I am constantly trying to put stuff so I can use everything I want to at the same time. `[Code|App|Docs]` is so common we ought to be able to split a wide screen 3 ways the way we do a normal 2.

Try out Rectangle.app. It saved my bacon mentally and can tile windows how you want. Just not automatically like a full tiling window manager.

https://rectangleapp.com/

+1 on Rectangle recommendation. Learn a few hot-keys (or rely on the menubar dropdown) and you can very easily get any layout of windows you want.

I was using Spectacle before, but I think the project died, and Rectangle is what I use now.

Rectangle was mentioned, but I'm currently using Amethyst: https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst It was recommended to me here on HN, and it's been very, very nice.

Here's an old picture of how I use 2 4k monitors at home https://i.imgur.com/Wwr6G42.jpg (I've upgraded my desk and keyboard since)

I'd strongly consider getting a 6k monitor, or maybe a 5k2k ultrawide if I didn't already have two my two Dell 27inch 4ks.

> No post in the middle.

I personally prefer the visual break as I find it useful for creating fixed 'work areas': terminals/xterms, browser, mail, etc.

With a single screen, you can add any virtual (stripe of pixels) or physical divider (piece of tape) that you like. With two screens, there's no way to remove the gap.

I'd prefer two distinct monitors. I use one more expensive colour-calibrated one, and then a standard one for work where colour isn't as critical. A large colour-calibrated screen would be prohibitively expensive.

How do you deal with full screen video, games, etc on a single monitor?

Something like this... but a lot cheaper please. Like <500€ please.

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