"Then there’s the whole problem of managing windows."
Ever heard of tiling windows managers?
How to pick a good monitor for software development
171–180 of 184 posts
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#1724k, 43" LCD Tv for $300 https://www.amazon.com/TCL-43-inch-Class-Smart-Android/dp/B0... Once you go 40 inch, you can never go back.
I have a TCL TV and I've used it to work from the couch a bit -BUT- I can't recommend it to replace a monitor, because it takes ages to boot up. There's a "fast boot" option in the settings, but it stopped working after the first firmware update, so now the TV takes 2-3 minutes to boot into Android TV every time you turn it on.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#173I upgraded to a 1440p 27" monitor on my work PC and do love it. Kinda tempted to upgrade my personal PC (which has dual 24" 1080p monitors) but honestly have a hard time justifying it when both monitors still work just fine after 7 years of owning them.
Why not do it? I have a gallery of three unused displays. They’re my backup now if anything goes wrong. I recently had to use one of them too, until I could repair my (also old now) 27″ display.
Because I don't have space to store two unused monitors, and it's hard to quantify just how much of a productivity gain it would be when my two 1080p monitors do work fine.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Programmers don't need color accuracy so any 4k will suffice. Surely it depends on what we’re programming? Color accuracy ( and inaccuracy for accessibility testing) is important for most anything we produce graphically that’s user-facing. > A monitor is a monitor. Color accuracy isn’t the only reason to invest more in display quality. Viewing angle and refresh rate are important factors as well. Their relative imp…
By and large, modern mass produced monitors are more than good enough. In fact, the best programmers in history had no problems running big CRTs. These people don't need any fluff, and don't blame underperformance on lack of technology. People nowadays are so spoiled. https://www.doomworld.com/lordflathead/id_carmack.jpg
Big CRTs didn’t have nearly the viewing angle problems that TN panels tend to have. And having, and addressing, sensory issues isn’t spoiled. It’s just taking care of oneself.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check https://www.amazon.com/15-6-Portable-Monitor-External-Consol... I use 2 of them on a daily basis.
Wow those seem amazing! Like the perfect minimal office on the go??
Indeed. Another model, apparently only available in China, was wifi display (miracast IIRC) so it should be usable in Windows (Win+K) and Android
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
What scaling do you run it in? If you do @2x things are massive for my taste and you don't have enough screen real estate (same space as 1920x1080).
You can configure widget sizes and font sizes independtly. UI scaling set to have enough space and font size for readability.
Definitely, and it's probably not very noticeable, but there's no escaping the physical problem of not a perfect 1:1 or 2:1 pixel ratio.
Say you have a UI element that's supposed to be 9px wide. If you have perfect 2:1 pixel ratio you can use 18 physical pixels and it's as sharp as the monitor can be. If you're using UI scaling of say 1.5, the monitor needs to use 13.5 physical pixels to render it. Except that's not possible, so it will average together the 13th pixel with the 15th pixel (simplifying). It's basically introducing an extra anti-aliasing pass to your frame. This is is why the Apple/LG 24" is 4k and the 27" is 5k. All that said, I'm sure 4k @ 27" even with 1.5x scaling still looks great and you'd never notice the difference, except if you had the two right next to each other.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can configure widget sizes and font sizes independtly. UI scaling set to have enough space and font size for readability.
Definitely, and it's probably not very noticeable, but there's no escaping the physical problem of not a perfect 1:1 or 2:1 pixel ratio. Say you have a UI element that's supposed to be 9px wide. If you have perfect 2:1 pixel ratio you can use 18 physical pixels and it's as sharp as the monitor can be. If you're using UI scaling of say 1.5, the monitor needs to use 13.5 physical pixels to render it. Except that's not…
Yea it's good enough. I'm using a 27" 4k with my Mac, scaled show the same amount of stuff as a 5k would, so 125% I guess. Sure it probably looks worse than a real 5k monitor if I was to pixel peep, but it's great to me and I don't think 5k is worth the more than 2x asking price.
Scaled resolutions work much better than they used to. For example the iPhone 12 Mini scales at 2.88x by default and I've never heard anyone complain.
However I think it might also depend on the specific panel. I have a Lenovo portable monitor which is 1080p at 14", and running it at anything except 1x looks absolutely awful.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on the game. I much prefer 24" 240Hz+ monitors for competitive reaction-based games. But yes, ultra-wide monitors are incredible for productive tasks.
> ultra-wide monitors are incredible for productive tasks But they always seem really short? The wider they get the shorter they seem to get. Not sure why that is. Doesn't work for viewing code or text does it?
34" and 49" ultrawides are the same height as a 27" 16:9.
38" ultrawides are the same height as a 30" 16:9.
If you want something taller than that, there's also 43" 16:9 monitors, which I guess are basically just TV panels put in a different body / with different firmware.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by "short"? Do you mean like, the monitor support structure is short? You can put ultra-wide monitors on monitor arms; just make sure the monitor arm supports the weight of the device.
When I look on Amazon for ultra-wide, I find monitors that are for example 3840 pixels wide... which is ok... but only 1080 pixels tall?! And the wider they get the fewer rows of pixels they seem to have. My 14-inch mid-range laptop is 1964 pixels tall. My ancient standard-format monitor is 2160 pixels tall. Why are these brand-new, fully mains-powered, desktop monitors so stupidly low on pixel rows? 1080 rows isn't…
I don't know about the Windows world, but afaik Macs can't drive anything larger than 6k currently, so taking a 5k monitor and adding horizontal pixels to it doesn't work.
LG and Dell make a 34" 5k*2k monitor, but on MacOS you can't drive it at 2x because again that would be more than 6k.
Hopefully in the not so distant future the high PPI ultrawide dream will come true.
Re: How to pick a good monitor for software development
#180I'd like to hear from people who develop with a 49 inch monitor. Especially the really curvy one. I had a 34 inch ultrawide for a while, but eventually got tired of the low resolution. Switched to a 32 inch 4K and I'm pretty happy with it. But it's a bit slow starting up, the refresh rate maxes out at 60Hz, and sometimes I find myself wishing for more space. Partially because I'm getting old and my eyes thank me for…
I have an odyssey g9 (pretty much the same thing but the "gaming" version so it has a few additional bells and whistles such as 240hz and G-Sync) and I love it.
I'm not sure if this capability would be available on the model you're looking at, but I typically use the Picture-By-Picture mode (with two DisplayPort cables connected from my GPU to the monitor) for work with custom resolution profiles set to enable each side to run at 120hz. I use Windows and don't have a Mac so I'm not sure if you can do that sort of thing. The PBP options for this monitor allow you to choose the split so if you want to go with an ultrawide and leftover portion, you can do that as well. The main reason I go with this setup is it allows me to go "full screen" with each half of the monitor, or if needed share a half screen over clients like Zoom if necessary.
As a productivity machine, the lack of bezel and increase of screen real-estate is fantastic for multitasking, there's enough room to have the documentation off to the side in addition to the code and any messages.