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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

I guess it is just me, but I cannot stand working on small screens on the desktop. I will accept a small screen on a laptop because it is inconvenient carrying around something larger, but on a desktop, there is no reason to compromise.

I use a 48" OLED with my MacBook Air M3 and for me that is a near ultimate web development experience both on desktop and when travelling: https://bsky.app/profile/benhouston3d.bsky.social/post/3l7li...

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I tried couple of monitor sizes and anything above 27-28 inches came across as downright inconvenient for work at least for me. Also, 4K was not great at all. 2K was.

It was opposite of how I want my TV.

I love the screen real-estate resolution for coding, it really is a lower cognitive load.

I can have the terminal window open with lots of output, the ChatGPT window for AI, the source code with a ton of lines on the screen. And then on the other side have the browser window open with the console/debugger below. No need to swap in-and-out windows at all, just shift my gaze.

Yeah, 27” was about the sweet spot for me. We now have 32” monitors at work, and I find them a _little_ uncomfortable to use. Depends on your field of view, I suppose.

What's the actual resolution of this? The idea of using something with such low pixel density seems really painful to me.

It is 4K. I wish it was higher. But practically, I cannot find an affordable 6K OLED monitor. And 8K is both unaffordable as well as not supported by my MacBook Air:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/macbook-air/apd8cdd74f....

I do set my MacBook resolution to maximum and it works well.

So you value just the physical size of things, not being able to display more 'stuff'? For example, a 27" 5k (5120 x 2880) display will give you more space/resolution for stuff than a 4k 48" display.

I can't imagine how pleasent that would be, the display being so physically large with pixels the side of boulders. As long as it works for you, I guess! I'm with you in spirit though - I ditched dual monitors for an ultrawide and its now the only way I can work.

I do wish it was higher resolution for sure, but that isn't feasible this year. I would have to squint at a 27" 5K monitor to read the fonts if I put this much on screen at once.

Having to turn your head to see a full 16:9 screen doesn’t sound great either.

I'm not sure I could do this - I think it would do horrible things to my neck! But I am curious:

Do you run that at 3840x2160 without high-dpi support? How do you find text clarity?

Looking at pixelated text all day on a low-resolution monitor doesn't seem very ultimate to me.

The pixel density would kill me. Now if it was an 8k monitor…

And if MacBook's supported 8K monitors (they max out at 6K 60Hz, where as 4K does 144Hz.) That would be my next upgrade once they are affordable. But I think they won't be affordable until 8K TVs are common as that will drive the volume.

Many of them can do 8K 60Hz over HDMI: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236

Edit: You need an M2/M3 Pro or above.

DELL has a 32" 8K monitor if you’re interested. Personally I’ve gotten bitten by both the pixel density and the high refresh rate bugs. So now I want a 27" 5K 120hz monitor, or none at all :P

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