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Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

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Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#1
I need a monitor for work that has lots of space so that I can open up different applications side by side. I was initially considering buying two separate monitors but am now considering ultrawide monitors as an option as well. For those of you with ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like? Are there any brands or models that you recommend? Is there anything I should look out for?

Re: Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#2
I have 2 wide now. 2 ultrawide would be hard to command the whole field. I could deal with a single ultrawide - as long as it was nearly as wide as my duet? 2 ultrawides would lead to craning of neck. I just bought a card that will drive 4 monitors for a new system, so I will try 2 up and 2 down - and see how I like it. I could try one up and one down with both ultrawide? In both cases I would tilt the top down a little and the left and right in a little. I do geological drawings, so it is good for spanning to all corners as well and cut and paste from panel to panel as I change stuff around.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#3
At work I have one of the dell curved ultra wide monitors. (https://amzn.to/36tH96T). Love it.

I used to have multiple monitors, but many years ago I made the decision that it works better for me to completely control windowing concerns in software. (I use the i3 tiling manager for this.)

I have seen no reason to change.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#5
I've used one a handful of times and if my company ever gives me an option to switch, I would in a heartbeat for one reason alone... merge-conflicts!

At least for intellij, merge conflicts get resolved in a three screen mode, and ultrawide monitors handles them in a way that dual monitor, or normal aspect ratios can't compare.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#7
I needed to constantly move and tilt my head so much it hurt.

My specimen also had some problems with blurriness, I couldn't quite put a finger on what it was exactly, just it was definitely harder reading things on it compared to my previous setup, but this could be just an isolated manufacturing defect.

Got rid of it and went back to two 27" monitors: one primary straight in front of me where all the work happens, I don't have to move head while working on it. One secondary for less important side things. Both are 4K and so in total I have way more resolution this way than with a single ultrawide. Very happy with this setup.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#9
I switched to an ultrawide and i3 window manager at the same time, and it's been a game changer. I can't imagine going back to two side-by-side monitors. Being able to resize windows and not be restricted by the screen boundary is the real game changer for me.

Re: Ask HN: Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

#10

I am considering upgrading to a 4k moniter or a less-than-4k resolution ultra wide screen. Can anyone with experience in both tell me which you found to be better?

I tried an ultra wide monitor, but I somehow found the limited height annoying. I am much happier with the screen space distribution since I have switched to a 43 inch 4k monitor. Mostly using it for coding. Nice to have a full IDE on the left and an emulator or web window on the right. When viewing code, height is quite important to get a better overview of a function or class.
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