Dell UltraSharp 52 Thunderbolt Hub Monitor
dell.com
dell.com
What I do recommend (having bought one) is the Kuycon G32p, 32 inches @ 6K. Incredible quality and unbelievable value for money (https://clickclack.io/products/in-stock-kuycon-g32p-6k-32-in...).
This screen reminds of when I did tech support in high school and I helped a guy who bragged about his computer monitor, it was a TV running at 720p (if not lower) and a massive screen. The windows start bar was hilariously large (as were all UI elements), I had to just smile and nod until I got out of there.
Sure, your screen may be bigger but it's blurry and everything is scaled way too large.
The HiDPI/Retina bullshit is just bullshit. I've been running a 4K 43" 4:3 display at 100% scaling since 2018. It is neither blurry nor scaled too large. It can, however, comfortably fit 10 A4 pages simultaneously. Or 4 terminals + a browser + a PDF reader.
10 A4 pages do not fill a 4:3 or 3:4 aspect ratio box. They don't fill a 16:9 box either but it's more plausible, the wastage is different.
I thought samdixon was referencing the Apple Pro Display XDR? If so, Apple has fewer pixels.
Apple Pro XDR: 6016 x 3384
Kuycon G32P: 6144 x 3456
Dell monitor is twice the surface area with 3/4 the pixels … or in reverse: Apple display is half the size with 30% more pixels.
(edit: corrected dell pixel %)
I think what people are trying to communicate, but struggling to, is that high pixel count on a huge display can be deceptive.
I think grandparent was trying to say “comparing a low-poi display to a high-ppi display is not a direct comparison.”
(It does seem like the resolution differs: 6016×3384 vs 6144×3456.)
It's not to say it's a bad option, but it's definitely not $400 out the door.
Yes I realize the Pro Display XDR has those same specs. 16:10 or 3:2 120Hz or 144Hz would be ideal to me.
This is 128 ppi, which would be considered "retina" at a viewing distance of 70cm (27in).
Are you really sitting 2 feet from a 52" monitor? I'd have to cutout a curve in the front of my desk to sit that close
If by “retina” we mean “pleasantly sharp”, not by me. I’m never buying less than the 218 ppi of my Apple Studio Display unless I absolutely have to. I’m totally spoiled.
Retina probably means 60 ppd.
Sometimes this is refreshing. (display joke there, heh)
this is a big monitor.
Many UIs don't scale particularly well with very high resolution. So you get UI elements with super-fine text or icons.
Some linux console fonts are almost unreadable with just 4k, though recent releases seem to be addressing this.
also old games.
for comparison, I think this is basically the dell 43" monitor with pixels on each side (16:9 -> 21:9)
the height of the panel is similar, the width is higher (plus curvature)
It's odd that we don't get to see a lot of high quality OEM monitors.
I'm in Norway, and I wonder if I see different prices than people from elsewhere in the world? Here it says $1.7K, and I can get the LG UltraFine 6K 32" for $2K, with the benefit of being bought from a Norwegian retailer (think guarantees and shopping security).
To be clear; I have never tried either of these monitors, so I can't tell if either is any good. :D
If you can no longer read them because they are too pixelated, you need a higher screen resolution.
All of that cost less than this one monitor.
If I had to do it all over again I would have 2 8030C and no subwoofer.
I’ve been debating getting genelecs for a few years now but the price jump from something like JBLs or Yamahas is so huge that I can’t justify it. At least not on my current budget.
I'm sending almost nothing to the sub, and I'm guessing the 8030s would provide most of what I'm using the 7040 for without the inconvenience.
I'm in a small room and going for accuracy, so don't need much bass.
I frankly don't understand the point of such monitors. If they are placed reasonably near, they don't fit human FOV well, and the periphery is seen distorted. If they are far enough away, the pixel pitch goes well past the angular resolution of the eye.
Let's say I have an ide open, I will likely not look at the directory structure often, but I want an easy way to switch files - fantastic for having it available just by glancing over
Now you run tests, start the application etc. It also doesn't need to be in your view, all the time - but isn't it convenient to be able to just look where you know it's?
It's suboptimal for competitive gaming however, exactly for the reason you said. Scenic gaming on the other hand is improved by it, because the larger screen is more innersive
There is a way of using Stage Manager as though it was Spaces, with minimal animations, but it takes a lot of getting used to and it's still not great.
Scenic gaming seems pretty niche outside of dedicated flight/driving sim setups? And regular gaming often kind of sucks on ultrawides - way too few games have decent options to pull the HUD into the center region of the display
Same with monitors.
Either you stack huge piles of papers and work through the piles (with everything in the way all the time) or you spread them out in front of you.
How do you do it? I always give up in frustration. 100% would keep the genelecs :)
- Apps always launch on the monitor your mouse cursor is on
- Switching the focused window to the other monitor is Win+Shift+Arrow Keys
So if I clicked to open an app, it’s on the monitor I’m already looking at. If I used a keyboard shortcut, win+shift+arrow is super easy and simple.
The fact that it’s a stupid simple rule means I can get way better at just doing things by muscle memory… I don’t have to worry about being outsmarted by the window manager.
...but you can set up rules to force a given program to always launch at a specified position and dimension.
For reference I have 3 monitors (2x 4k, 1x 1080p) and am currently using Debian / Wayland and Ubuntu / X11.
Does windows has anything similar?
But, I still have occasional problems with my monitors not waking up when I return to my desk. With 3, I've never had all 3 fail to wake, and a simple disable in the monitor settings, then choose "revert" usually brings them back.
This way you only have to drag them to the monitor you want them on once on startup. Which on os x at least is not very often.
However, there's no selections -- there's only a description of hundreds of cookies they store (e.g. 73 in Marketing section), but there's nothing to select, it's only text.
I don't know if I'd put it on my desk, I got somewhat used to my setup - I had 2x4K 27" 144Hz monitors with very thin bezels (LG or Asus?) that I then traded in when I got a ProDisplay XDR. I do wish for higher refresh, and maybe more screen size.
Being on the leading edge of tech costs money.
That said, your mixmatched PPIs would drive me nuts.
I'm using baby pin reciever plates on 4080 extrusion with m6 thumbscrews into drop in t nuts. There is only one c stand. The extrusion is actually two parts in a cross. The speakers are on the horizontal extrusion mounted on magic arms. My momitors are angled slightly upward and the bottom is a few inches lower than standard desk height.
It's like the most popular form of innovation nowadays is just marginally nicer products with a massive premium on them - and I don't get how this is sustainable. Or maybe there's just way more people with massive amounts of disposable income than I realize...
There's no breakthrough of like "here's an amazing product, and by the way, it's for everyone".
This whole culture of scarcity, scalping, hoarding, FOMO, premium, it's so played out I'm literally done with it. This is paired with terrible customer support that takes customers for granted.
Very few companies seem to value their customers, and don't want to squeeze them. Tech, cars, consoles... You name it.
So this is my current stance: I'm out of the market for the foreseeable future, unless something breaks and I need to replace it. Even the "nice to have" stuff is down to almost zero.
I don't feel FOMO. I'm thinking more "why did it take this long?"
And that’s fine for me: that different people want different setups. I’d never want a multi-monitor setup if I can avoid it, where others say it makes them more productive and whatnot.
You should strive to sit with your head balanced on top of your neck, with your arms relaxed at your side and elbows at 90 degrees. wrist rest. good seating position. no donut cushion. etc
tilting your head back to look at a monitor above or to the side will use muscles to hold your body in place and misalign your spine/etc. leads to fatigue/stress/long-term issues
Part of it is also my fault as I thought a monitor would work with any computer.
2. That aside, what are you all using for window management on these large screens? I'm currently using Rectangle on Mac, but I was wondering if there's a better way.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/1221mz2/dell_s3221qs_... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/n8ei34/dell_s3221qs_f...
I’ve been using a single large monitor for a while and it’s been great with window managers. The biggest downside is when playing games full-screen.
That said, I've always stuck for Dell's upper-range Ultrasharp (U prefix in models) monitors, being slightly wary of their cheaper series which the S in your S3221QS implies.
+1 to only buy Ultrasharp if buying from Dell. The others can be junk.
The model appears to have been released 16 years ago.
I haven't yet found a monitor that makes sense to replace them with either.
Ya, I've tried at least one of the newer versions and they were great too. 16:10 or almost anything else than 16:9 please
Every monitor on every desk at work (around 3000 desks) is a Dell U3821DW - no broadscale systemic complaints that I've ever heard of.
I'm currently using my 4K 27" Dell P2715Q that I bought for $400 back in December 2017, and I've carried (physically) with me from office to office from Michigan to the Bay Area - thing runs for 10+ hours a day (minus weekend) for 8 years running. Eventually it's going to have to give in- and when it does - definitely going to buy another Dell (probably the U2725QE 27" 4K)
I will never, ever buy Dell hardware again. They’re dead to me. And when the IT department at a previous job reported to me, and a Dell rep cold called me to offer us a business plan, I politely explained why I’d rather gargle broken glass than risk my reputation on a vendor who doesn’t understand what a warranty means. That felt pretty good.
I went through this like 100 ways when it happened. I bought the monitor from Dell. They shipped it from their hands straight to mine. And when it broke, they refused to make good on it.
Also: https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000331897/apple-m-p...
So, I'm not getting another Dell until I'd be sure this issue won't happen again :)
The free version of BetterDisplay is sufficient, I really don't use any of its other features.
The flickering seems to be gamma related, and is triggered by Nightshift or Flux for me.
[1] https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay#readme
[2] https://www.hammerspoon.org/
[3] https://github.com/wlonkly/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.hammer...
I went from a 40" to a 52", and I'm just moving my head waaay too much and my shoulders hurt. It is curved, but very little imo, it's almost like it's flat. I'm going to try it for a week before making the call on whether to return it.
I feel like this needs a workflow where you do work in the middle and use the fringes for other applications that you rarely look at. Otherwise you're moving your head waaay too much and squinting a bunch.
5120x3200 in 30” would be awesome.
I have a 34 inch now, and feel like I could use more space - but it's nice to know there's an upper bound. Do you feel like there's still room to go beyond 40, or is that the sweet spot?
The center display is always actually centered. The short edge of a high-PPI 27” screen is wide enough for actual normal width browser or IDE usage, but now you get much more vertical real estate on that window.
Not nearly as much neck movement as an ultra wide and since the entire array is pretty square, the neck movement is way more balanced.
The only thing I want now is double pixel density.
That being said, having this in combination with PowerToys FancyZones has been fantastic. At any given time, I'm usually running 1-4 main working windows plus Signal, Outlook, and an RSS reader. This gives me more than enough real estate to keep them all available at a moment's notice. I have roughly 40% of the screen real estate dedicated to Signal, Outlook, and my RSS client, with the interior 60% being hotkey-mapped to divide in different proportions. Compared to my old setup (one ultrawide plus two verticals) it's been awesome.
I also have a mild take that large screens make screen real estate cheap so less thought goes into user interface design. There's plenty of room just stick the widget anywhere!
My gut feeling is that the difference would be around 30-40%. Information density of the UI of OS X 10.6 and contemporary software was much higher than today's tabletized "bouncy castle" style UI.
As a personal pet peeve example, developers love to cram a search bar (or browser tabs) into the top of the window. It's more dense but it's also harder to use and drag the window.
Can't picture a 52" being usable as a PC monitor, really.
Meaning to avoid staying in the same position for too long.
Kinda like this: [ | | ]
I am on mac and I use an app called Magnet to manage the windows. I will only change this setup for a larger monitor.
It is almost. 4200R means the circular radius is 4.2 meters for the curve. That’s too big a radius for using as a desk monitor that large imho.
I do enjoy it, with Fancyzones, I can set up Unreal Engine Editor, Rider, discord/teams and a small corner window for searching and/or youtube watching on the side. At first I thought the pixel count was going to be too low but from my position it 'feels' retina at 125% windows scaling. Yes you can do the same with multiple monitors but I don't get the fatigue of turning my physical head, it's the perfect size to sit in middle and use your eyes to adjust/focus if that makes sense..
120hz and fast motion helps a lot. DCS World looks amazing on this, it feels like it's your full fov when playing games. Granted this isn't an OLED panel, I wouldn't play anything competitive on here but EU V and/or RTS games are very nice at 6k/52.
This replaced my dual 4K 120hz monitors. Recommend if you're not gaming.
For the full breadth of a 52" monitor to be comfortably viewable for detail work, I'd have to be farther back enough that the difference between 4K and 6K wouldn't be meaningful. It's kind of like how 8k resolution can provide meaningful value in a head-mounted display two inches from your eyeballs, but 8k on a 65" living room TV seven feet away from your couch viewing position is pointless because even those with 20/10 vision can't resolve the additional detail at that distance.
For detail work I find my best ergo seating position is up close with my legs tucked well-under the desk and my stomach almost touching the edge of the curved desk inset. This allows my forearms to be supported comfortably on the desk. I also have my desk surface a little lower than most and my Aeron chair a little higher, putting the top of my legs almost touching the underside of the desktop.
For my desktop I am looking forward to getting a 3:2 monitor like the Benq RD280U
- My eyes are getting older, and I need a better visual connection to my work.
- We spend much of our lives in front of these devices. Optimizing this just makes sense.
- It is more than just a monitor with some features. It's a well-rounded kit with good software support.
- I previously used multiple 4K monitors and external KVMs. The built-in KVM and management software that works with the display makes multi-system use as easy as it could possibly be.
- The resolution has _more than_ overcome the issues I had with font rendering on lower resolutions while trying to have more visual workspace.
- The thunderbolt hub has vastly reduced multi-system USB/wiring/speed clutter and confusion.
Yes, it was expensive. Yes, I'm very happy with it. Within this week, it has drastically improved my sense of comfort and utility, and I got rid of all the other monitors.
Ok, for the gripes:
- The curvature is a bit minor compared to what I'm used to. Given the spatial density I want, the optimal distance is less than 30" from the display, and with my aging eyes at this distance, looking from center to edge changes my focal depth by more than a small amount. That said, the off-axis views are quite good. Essentially, looking at this display from a longer distance wastes much of the effective ocular resolution.
- The software is great, but if you want something more tactile, reaching to the sole multi-purpose menu stick is not that great. It wouldn't have hurt for them to provide a USB-connected desktop switch. I hope they still do. This monitor runs its own "OS" of sorts, and can be extended with new functionality should they choose to.
- Finding the improved dynamic range took a bit of learning. The way it works feels better (less of a special case) for me, but I had to go adjust the settings to tap into higher resolution per color plane.
If anybody has any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them.
Some other specs: refresh rate, 120Hz; brightness, 400 cd/m².
I would love a large-ish ultra-wide with > 160ppi. One day, maybe, that being said, by that time those things will exist and be reasonably priced, my eyes might not be able to appreciate the difference.
The only real monitor upgrade I'm willing to entertain is a ~50" 8k curved screen (basically a curved TV-sized screen), which has not been made yet AFAIK. I'm not into "ultrawide", for me it has to be "ultrawide" and "ultratall". I want all that screen real estate in high PPI.
I tried test-driving a 50" 4k TV for a week and the flatness of it was not what I wanted, it has to be a curved screen for workstation use.
Your dream is probably a ~50in 8K TV (with RGB pattern if you are on macOS), but curved. I don't know if that will ever exist.
Personally, I found that with a bigger 16:9, I would not use the top and bottom of the screen. When I "downgraded" to a 40in ultra-wide, there was not much difference in the space I was using.
What planet are those people on? That's Gucci bag territory. They can take their res and shove it, that's almost NINE GRAND (granted, Canadian pesos) for a freakin display! Who is this for, just Pixar employees?
There’s huge monitors from other companies that come with mounts that handle more weight than that. Granted, it’s not some art deco CNC monstrosity.
I think the sibling comment nailed it: this is just a status symbol.
And looking at Amazon.de listings, it's definitely possible to buy a cheap arm that's good for 7.5 kg. A "suptek Monitor Mount" is good for 10 kg according to the listing: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0833NQ8CR
We're not just talking about Apple's stand-alone display, but even their laptops are high-ppi. 13" M4 Apple Air:
> 13.6-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology;2 2560-by-1664 native resolution at 224 pixels per inch
https://www.eizo.com/products/flexscan/ev2730q/
... available on Amazon last time I checked ... they also make a square 2048x2048 monitor for ATC:
https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/atc/sq2826/
... although I think it costs $5k or so ...
Note the 40", and probably this one too. support MST which makes the display appear as two monitors to the OS and is great in terms of window management without going too fancy with custom software.
Maybe I should look into the 40" 5K monitors, thanks!
This monitor really does everything. It's crisp enough to read text on all day, unlike many gaming monitors. But the 120Hz is decent for gaming whereas most 5K+ monitors are only 60hz.
I used to use two 27” 1440p monitors, which together are about the same size as the Samsung 49”, and also the same resolution, but the edges were further enough away from my head that they were annoying to use. Not to mention the bezels in the middle. While this dell wouldn’t have the bezels, the edges would still be too far away.
The only drawback of my giant R1000 monitor is that I can’t easily use my laptop’s camera. So I don’t; I use an iPad for video conferencing, it sits happily below this monitor.
My only regret is not getting the 57” 2x4k variant!
Personally I’ve found that a single monitor is enough 90% of the time while coding. It’s when I need to do something nitty gritty that I need a second monitor.
That being said working with only a laptop is painful and extremely uncomfortable for the posture. I don’t think I can get anything real done without a monitor keyboard and mouse. Going down to an 11 inch iPad sounds impossible.
I think it's called Displaylink. yet to try it with this particular benq but I know it can be done. The total output pixels are limited though so I doubt what the limitation of the Air is. but 2 24 inch 1080p should be doable.
I keep a browser, an IDE, and a terminal pretty much side by side on the bottom one. I keep slack, email, and a clock on the top monitor. I also place pullout tabs from my IDEs on the top one.
Thing is, no matter the cost range, I generally have to replace the KVM hub about once a year. I've just come to accept that as a part replacement cost. <shrug> This thing has its own KVM hub internally. Maybe I'm just rough on my KVM, but if someone puts significant wear and tear on this monitor, I'd imagine that part would wear out, which seems like a potential money sink if you have to keep calling the warranty folks.
For me, it's too much of a risk, but YMMV.
Will definitely buy again.
Past 2880p on most desk monitor viewing distances or past 1080p on most TV viewing distances, you hit steeply diminishing returns. Please, please let's use our processing power and signal bandwidth for color and refresh rate, not resolution.
This is also why I think every console game should have a 720p handheld 'performance' and 1080p living room 'performance' mode. We don't need 1080p on handhelds or 2160p in the living room. Unless you're using relatively enormous screens for either purpose.
No damn it, it's not!
Everyone I know can immediately see a clear difference between 120 ppi and 200 ppi, but I've yet to encounter anyone who can reliably tell 120hz from 200hz. We have monitors that render lego-sized pixels at 500+ hz now, it's enough.
Gamers have been gaslit to believe they have the reflexes of spider-man and are a lost cause, but their preferences have been listened to by monitor makers for 30 years. Enough already!
Millions of office workers are working all day reading text on screens optimized for playing games at low resolutions. It's just sad.
Steve Jobs showed a decade ago that 4x resolution could be sold at great profit for normal prices. Text on screens can be as crisp as on paper.
Sadly it only became the standard on phones, not on productivity desktop monitors. It so easily could be, and it should be.
The issue for me is that even if your experience was true for all gamers in the world, that would still be a tiny minority compared to all people in the world who use monitors to read text, day in and day out.
A low-res monitor cannot show a high-res image, but a high-res monitor can show a low-res picture, so both sides can get what they want here.
I run 8k/60 but my screen can also do 4k/120. If it could also do 1440 at 240hz or 1080 at 480hz wouldn't bother me, but that the industry spends all effort on making 1080/480 and basically NO effort on 8k does.
The industry should throw everything below say 200ppi on the scrap-heap of history where it belongs. It would harm nobody and benefit everybody.
If you can’t resolve that kind of DPI at that distance you need to get an appointment because you require glasses. The low end of normal vision stops differentiating around 175 dpi at 50cm. The difference is very noticeable (and disturbing) on contrasted detailed features like text without subpixel rendering (or when the subpixel rendering does not match the physical structure of the display).
I never understood the draw of these huge monitors until I had to do CAD for work and now I understand. Giant monitor + SpaceMouse is a gamechanger. My current monitor is 36” and I could easily use more width.
They were high enough density and tall enough for coding applications, but as first versions they had some rough edges (text rendering not great by default).
Instead they just disappeared from the market :(
I think Aliexpress has no brand panels, but at $600 it is a non trivial gamble.
Just don't be an idiot like I was. I connected my monitor to my dock with both DisplayPort and some random USB-C cable. Worked fine initially. One day, cleaning my office, I swapped out that USB-C cable with a higher-quality one. Took me a bit to realize that the consequent Wayland post-resume resolution flakiness came from a race condition enumerating the real-DP and USB-C-alt-mode "separate" monitors that my machine thought I now had.
It's not often that downgrading a USB cable fixes a problem.
What used to be nice is now a case of constantly shuffling windows, not made easy by MacOSs janky window handling.
I've been looking for a second 43" to replace the 27"s but the high price and sub-par quality of the 43 is making me wait.
I am also finding it difficult to find monitor arms that will carry such large and heavy screens. The 43 is already at the limit of the one reasonably priced arm I found and a definite struggle to mount.
Now I use a 38" ultrawide, which is roughly the same width (in pixels and in inches) but doesn't require my head to move up/down as much.
I could imagine using a 52" ultrawide if it were placed further away from me (i.e. deeper desk). The extra pixels would make it effectively a retina display.
It's akin to a 55" TV - basically the same width, but only 70% of the height.
I got an open box lenovo 24 inch QHD monitor for years and it just works solid across windows, mac and various docking stations. I could imagine upgrading to a 27 or 30 inch but beyond that is just too much IMO.
Maybe taller, more square could be of more use than wider.
I only have a 27" monitor and sit about 2.5 feet away from it and I move my head _slightly_ to focus on different windows. But that's the reason I have a larger monitor, so I can have a bunch of normal-sized windows open at once.
If the edges of the screen are further from your eyes than the center, the content and text doesn't appear at the same size. If you wear glasses, the edges might even fall out of focus unless you physically move closer.
But I'm getting older, so I might have to make it a big bigger soon.
I found myself repositioning things so that one is in front of the keyboard as a primary screen and the other is further off to the side as a secondary dumping ground. I found myself neglecting the second display most of the time so it was just a blank background. Eventually, I noticed I wasn't even using the entire primary screen. I favored a sector of it and pushed some windows off to the edges.
Ironically, with work from home, I've started roaming around the house with the laptop instead of staying at my desk. So I'm mostly back to working in a 14" screen with virtual desktops, like I was 20 years ago. I am glad that laptops are starting to have 16:10 again after the long drought of HDTV-derived screens.
For 2 years.
Obviously this is not the same product and it has been a long time. But man I hadn’t thought about that in years and now I’m all bitter about it again ha
I guess this almost replaces the Anker, but lacks Ethernet.
Moving my head to see everything doesn't bother me. I also have a setup with 3 32" 4k which I find a little too wide but in that setup 1 monitor connects to different computer.
Late stage FAANGery is watching 20-somethings try to find ridiculous junk to spend money on.
This 6K panel seems like it would scratch a similar itch.
I have a 4k 27" which has nice PPI and I was considering this 43" as a replacement but the pixels looked quite prominent in youtube reviews.
To preserve the PPI you're used to, you'd want 8K resolution as you approach 50".
On windows 11, you can only have 3 verticals columns with a monitor this wide. If I had 3 regular width monitors, I could have 6 columns overall.
I’d also imagine it looks awkward when you have one window in full screen, but I’ve never used one in person.
I also didn't realize that at the Dell store webpage, clicking the "32 inch" option actually slightly changed the product line - from U##26 to U##25 (as the 52" option is the only model associated with 2026), and generally I only consider UltraSharp's of different sizes to be "approximately equivalent in quality" if they share the same model year - and nothing yet shares the 2026 model year with this 52" option.
But their "The 5 Best Work Monitors of 2026"[1] lists a Dell Ultrasharp in the #1 rank and the Asus ProArt does not appear in the recommendations at all. The info cards imply that the recommendation rankings might result from a weighted blend of "Office Rating", "Text Clarity" and "SDR Brightness". However, the ProArt outscores the Ultrasharp in both "Office Rating" and "SDR Brightness" while exactly matching the Ultrasharp's score in "Text Clarity".
So the "The 5 Best Work Monitors of 2026" appears to be a somewhat subjective list, rather than purely a result of objective measurements.
0: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews
1: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/busines...
I think the reason for their list not having that 9.0 monitor is that it is 50% more expensive, and doesn't really add that much more. One might say it is superfluous. They should probably add their justification to the article though. Personally I am in agreement, I wouldn't buy a 5k display for my office staff because I really don't think it adds anything over the 4k display to their productivity, but I could definetly justify a 4k display over a 1080p display.
For a cheap throwaway monitor maybe. For anything premium no way.
I'd rather buy the USB-C one so I know it will work with the Steam Deck, etc.
EDIT: Oh, only one port is Thunderbolt.
It seemed too big, at first, and I split it, but got used to it at full width.
I don't really care that much about pixel density or super-high framerate. I'm old, and don't really game. For software development, it's great.
I'm only like 2 feet from my monitor so it doesn't make sense to go any bigger than 30"
I think I'm already at the edge of how big of a monitor I could use without spinning my head all around. But the curvedness of it might make up for it.
I'm somewhat disappointed with it as a hub/KVM. It's better than having to swap cables, but just barely. It can't handle any high bandwidth USB devices I've tried (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, a DSLR via capture card DSLR and a Logitech webcam). The downstream USB strangely isn't even sending down a keyboard and mouse to a PC, I ended up having to get separate dedicated KVM for those. It worked fine with a Thunderbolt to my Macs, but that's not surprising. I'm not sure how it would work with two Macs (one would have to be HDMI or DisplayPort and use that downstream USB port). I could try that but it's not my use case.
It takes 3 video inputs, but only 1 dedicated USB output. But oh, one of the video inputs is really Thunderbolt, so you get USB over the same cable and it works… but only if your machine supports this (for many laptops this is fine.)
But that’s 2 machines max in the KVM, while the monitor has 3 selectable inputs…
It would have been nicer if they could’ve added one more USB output, so you could have KVM match the display input for 3 machines with a single toggle.
(I have a Mac, a work desktop, and a gaming desktop, and I can toggle between the Mac (thunderbolt) and one of the PC’s, and the kvm input will follow the display’s. But I have to pick which PC I want to plug the downstream USB cable into… so I bought a little $15 USB A/B switch to help. So Mac keyboard always works, but when switching between gaming PC (hdmi) and work PC (DP) I just have to remember to toggle the A/B switch along with it to make the keyboard go to the right host.)
BUT.... this is perfect for folks that want to use one monitor for both work, and as/for entertainment /just normal tv watching in a living room.
My 38" LG goes up to 144Hz. I would have figured something larger would be at least that much.
if you truly want a great display for productivity, I can't recommend the Samsung 57 enough. 240hz, 2x4k in one panel. it's great.
LOL
I am also using only Linux on all my desktops and laptops, and I have never used any display with a resolution less than 4k, for at least the last 12 or 13 years.
Despite of that, I have never encountered any problems with "scaling", because in Linux I have never used any kind of "scaling" (unlike in Windows, which has a font "scaling").
In the kind of Linux that I have been using, I only set an appropriate dots-per-inch value for the monitor, which means that there is no "scaling", which would reduce graphic quality, but all programs render the fonts and other graphic elements at an appropriate size and using in the right way the display resolution.
I configure dots-per-inch values that do not match the actual dpi values of the monitors, but values that ensure that the on-screen size is slightly larger than the on-paper size, because I stay at a greater distance from the monitor than I would keep a paper or a book in my hand (i.e. I set higher dpi values than the real ones, so that any rendering program will believe that the screen is smaller than in reality, so it will render e.g. a 12 point font at a slightly bigger size than 12 points and e.g. an A4 page will be bigger on screen than an A4 sheet of paper; for instance I use 216 dpi for a 27 inch 4k Dell UltraSharp monitor).
Right now I'm using a Dell/Alienware AW3225DM and it's perfect for my needs (work + occasional gaming, and most of my gaming is retro). Best Buy was discounting these during the Xmas season.
I do not want anything higher than 2560x1440 because it makes my fonts look tiny, or I have to turn anti-aliasing on. Neither option is OK with me.
The size of the fonts used by your documents is specified in typographic points, e.g. 12 points or 14 points. This corresponds to a fixed size on the screen, regardless of the screen resolution. The increased resolution only makes the letters more beautiful, not smaller.
If your fonts become smaller on a monitor with a higher resolution, then you are holding it in the wrong way, i.e. your operating system is badly configured and it does not know the correct dots-per-inch value for your monitor, so it uses a DPI value that corresponds to the obsolete VGA monitors.
A decent operating system should configure automatically the right DPI, because the monitor provides this value to the GPU when it is initialized.
Despite this, for some weird reason many operating systems do not use the DPI value read from the monitor to configure automatically the graphics interface, so it must still be configured manually by the user. Even worse is that the corresponding setting is frequently well hidden, so it is difficult to discover.
In any case, these endless discussions about fonts being to small on high-resolution monitors have been caused only by some incompetent morons who for inexplicable reasons have been in charge of the display settings of the popular operating systems. The user may have reasons to override the true DPI value of the monitor, but by default the OS should have always used the value provided by the monitor EDID, and then you would have never seen any change in font sizes when substituting monitors with different resolutions (except when even more incompetent Web designers specify some sizes in pixels instead of length units; allowing pixels besides length units for the sizes of graphic elements has been a huge mistake, but when this was done several decades ago, most computers did not have GPUs yet, so there were concerns about the rasterization speed in software).
For a kid I was passably good at setting up headlines for paste-up, but I never had to be the one who used an X-Acto Knife.
I'll die on the hill where 2K is better than 4K if your livelihood depends on having to stare at a screen at a distance of 60cm for upwards of 10 hours a day, longer sometimes.
I also think you missed my point about about the anti-aliasing. For various reasons I still use Windows and some of my favorite monospace fonts only exist in the the .FON format. I can emulate the X-Windows experience of using the misc-fixed-medium family and it works just fine for my needs.
I've tried most of the fonts here, but none of them really do it for me: https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads
But if you want to keep going on with the pedantry, have at it. Were you around in the Usenet days?
Your problem is precisely that you use monitors with a too low resolution. On monitors with a high enough resolution, you approach the quality of printed paper and you can use monospace fonts that are more beautiful than any bitmap fonts, without being able to perceive the pixels.
The only problem is that big monitors also need a bigger resolution and the combination of big size with big resolution can be expensive.
While for a size of 27" or 32" the 4k monitors can be quite cheap, I believe that at such sizes a 5k resolution is the minimum for good text rendering, and 5k monitors remain expensive.
If you want that blocky-font retro look, you can use vector art to make squares.
There’s a gulf between 130 dpi and 460 dpi, and in that gulf there are densities which stop being poor at monitor viewing distances.
That smartphone densities are excessive for that purpose does not make middling standard densities good.
But the density is definitely enough for text for the distance required for such a screen size. At least when using grayscale AA, because OLED subpixel...
Pointing out to the other guy that their reply made no sense?
> There's no point to making a 400dpi 32" display
Thank you captain obvious.
You do know that there are densities between 130 and 400+ though, right?
At the sizes of 27" or 32", which are comfortable for working with a computer, 5k is the minimum resolution that is not too bad when compared with a book or with the acuity of typical human vision.
For a bigger monitor, a 4k resolution is perfectly fine for watching movies or for playing games, but it is not acceptable for working with text.
e.g. The Steam hardware survey only goes down to 0.23% usage, and doesn't have any >4K resolution listed.