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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

I don't mind curved screens, but what I do mind is that so many wide / curved screens have such low vertical resolution. 1440px is just so little space.

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It's a cost thing, ultrawide has always been expensive relative to how much extra area you get, and pushing the resolution up compounds that. 5120x2160 (extended 4K) panels do exist but they cost a fortune.

But why is it a cost thing? I got a 55 inch 8k tv for less than 1000 usd years ago, including sales tax and overhead from a physical store. It’s the best monitor I’ve used.

Today, many years later, monitors are still way worse and more expensive! Also you can basically not buy the tv’s anymore either.

The panel factories existed, and the panels were cheap, years ago. They’re just not used anymore (or so it seems).

Dell UltraSharp 40 Curved Thunderbolt™ Hub Monitor - U4025QW

Worth every penny.

I have a U4025QW and there's a glitch I'm typing here for google to pick up.

If my macbook (any macbook, perhaps any computer?) is plugged into the U4025QW and the power goes out, the U4025QW won't get the signal from the laptop and will remain blank. There's two ways to 'fix' this:

The first is to unplug the monitor for a long time, perhaps 2 to 4 hours. Sometimes I'll plug it back in at hour 2 and it wasn't long enough and I'll have to start over.

The second, and this works reliably, is to unplug the U4025QW, and then also unplug the monitor side of the HDMI cable, and then plug it back in with no signal, and then reinsert the HDMI cable. This gets the U4025QW to receive the signal after as long as the above operation takes, a minute or so.

I have had two U4025QW units. The first one was overheating and losing the signal as above on its own. I stopped having overheating issues when I stopped using an undersized UPS. I ran it straight into the wall.

But if there's a power outage (i live in an area with monthly power outages), the signal loss operation is how I restore functionality to the U4025QW.

I finally got one of those 300 dollar UPS units for the U4025QW and it's been very stable since then.

A multi variable episode that took me a very long time to reduce. U4025QW is a great monitor but dont give it bad power and it needs a little love after a power blip.

I’m in the market for new monitors (or maybe only one in this case!)

A question if you don’t mind - Do you find 4K resolution to be sufficient on a 40” screen?

Also just eager to hear any others reasons why you like it

I have the same monitor and think the resolution is fine. I run at 125% scaling, which is close to 2560x1440 at 27”, 100% which is the density I moved from.

I have one as well. Indeed worth every penny, although to be fair that's quite a lot of pennies.

Yes indeed. Brilliant monitor.

And not in OLED, only in VA panels, unfortunately.

I can't justify going high end on a monitor without it being OLED.

LG has a 5120x2160 OLED already, but it's 45" so the pixel density isn't great. It's also stupid expensive, about double the cost of a regular 4K OLED for 30% more width. They have 39" and 34" variants on their roadmap though.

True, that is an option I forgot about. I generally don't see it any better than a standard 16:9 OLED given the price and limited (in comparison to 32:9) width though.

> the pixel density isn't great.

I got one of the 49" 32:9 OLED and it has 1140 vertical. I'm making due with it and had to tweak settings like crazy to make it tolerable... I'd love a proper 2160 option for the ratio. I came from a 28" 4K TN panel, so it's been a major change of tradeoffs.

It's hard to justify the higher price on the smaller 45", it makes it a hard sell over a standard 16:9 ratio 4K OLED (although I wonder if that would have been the better choice over what I got).

IPS ultrawides also exist, the U4025QW I have is one.

I just recently picked up a 32 inch curved 1440p screen and it's awful, for that size I should have realized I needed a 4k. Text is horribly pixelated and when looking dead on it feels like the aspect ratio is closer to 4:3 or something. Coming from an ultra wide 1440p I'm really disappointed.

My holy grail of computer monitors is an 8k 55" curved screen. Not a shorty, but a full 55" or 65" 16:9 (or similar) screen with 7680 x 4320 resolution, but curved.

I currently have three 4k 32" screens in portrait arranged in a sort of curved configuration. I love it, except for the bezels. It's something like this: https://i.sstatic.net/YocaE.jpg

I was almost ready to purchase a flat 8k 55" TV for my workstation, but decided to try a flat 4k 55" TV I already had, and the flatness just ruined it for me. I need a slight curve when using such a large surface area only a few feet from my eyes. I guess I'll have to stick with my three 4k monitors for now.

You might like a larger one in landscape in the middle, keeping the two 32" in portrait either side. Angled inwards.

I did not check the physical geometry so the side screens are taller than the center but whatever. 43" flat center, 32" either side. Felt strongly like a mistake when first set up but has grown on me.

No, I wouldn't like that. I want one massive curved high-resolution screen with no bezels.

For a 34 incher, 1440px is perfect, and so is a 34 incher. A higher resolution renders text too small to read, and a larger monitor has one moving their head around instead of just their eyes.

Of course, they are not ideal for the graphical work that the author implies, but they can't be beat for productivity work imho.

> A higher resolution renders text too small to read

This is a misunderstanding of what higher resolution is for. Higher resolution allows text at exactly the same size to be much sharper and crisper. I have a 34” curved 1440p, and it’s like using a monitor from the pre-HD era in terms of sharpness. Other people in this thread have observed the same thing. The idea that it’s “perfect” is unfathomable to me.

it's not a misunderstanding, it's reality. yes in theory you can render text in dimensions you want, but in practice we have like 20 different UI systems running at the same time and each have their own quirks and limitations and the end result is unless you're using 96dpi or it's exact multiples. either som ui elements will be looking ridiculously out of proportion compared to something else, another element or image will look like a blurry fudge, and the end result always looks horrible.

Are you thinking of Windows perhaps? Mac and Linux can both handle this well. Even on X11 (which is old and limited in many ways), on 4K monitors global scaling of 200% works really well. But Windows has legacy apps that are bitmap-scaled, which apparently leads to blurriness (I’ve never seen this myself, only read about it. I’m allergic to Windows.)

> global scaling of 200% works really well

I've already said that.

I haven't seen this on Windows in quite a while.

People differ. For me, 4k is perfect for an 31.5 incher I have, and I make fonts as small as possible (6.5px fonts in my editor I use all day right now). I appreciate huge expanses of quite readable (for me) text I get.

> A higher resolution renders text too small to read

Have you missed the last decade of High DPI displays and scaling?

> 1440px is just so little space.

1440px tall on a common 13 tall ultrawide is 107 PPI.

In my mind > 100 PPI is pretty much perfect for most tasks. Or are you talking about physical size?

Try using a 27” 4K monitor, which has a PPI of around 163. It’s difficult to go back to considering 100 PPI “perfect”.

100ppi is like minimum bar to entry. It’s barely better than 24” 1080p from 20 years ago.

100 ppi is horrible for coding.

That's my day job. I'm a big fan of big font sizes with code so I've never found it much of an issue. Even on a 4K monitor, if I use small text sizes, I strain my eyes.

I found the LG 38GL950G-B to be a good compromise with a resolution of 3840x1600 that I purchased back in 2020.

Easy solution: Reorient the monitor in portrait mode. /s

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