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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#491

Post by ralmidani »

I actually “downgraded“ from a 43” 4K to a 30” (2560 x 1600). Trying to focus strained my eyes, and the brightness from the big monitor meant I had to position it as far back as I could on my desk, which made it even harder to focus and caused even more eye strain. I also realized a 16:10 ratio is more friendly for coding.

Frankly, 4K/5K monitors seem like a gimmick for most people. Especially puzzling is why you would pack so many pixels into smaller (~27“) monitors and require more power and graphics muscle for imperceptibly “better” images.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#492

Post by mulmen »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #464
mulmen wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first. In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent. Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect th…

> every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first Maybe we can get to the bottom of this. What is your use case? I ask because as long as I plug them into the same ports it remembers how I arranged them previously (2018 macbook pro 15"). I haven't had to arrange them in over a year... even remembered when updating to latest operating system. Occasional…

MacOS cannot drive one 5120x1440 display using Intel display hardware. It will happily drive two displays at 2560x1440. The monitor had multiple inputs so by putting it in PBP mode I was able to drive one input as USB-C and another as HDMI through a dock converter. This means the wakeup was not in sync. MacOS would see one monitor, arrange everything on that then realize there was a second one and fail to move anything back in this "new" arrangement.

The fact that it was all one physical monitor may have further confused the OS as a sibling comment mentions.

The solution was to sell the monitor to a Windows-using architect friend and buy a different panel with a resolution MacOS supports. She has a macbook too but it's the fancy one with discrete graphics which can drive 5120x1440.

The value proposition of MacOS to me is that I plug things in and they work. Any fiddling beyond that destroys the benefits of using this platform. I'm willing to iterate on hardware until I find something that works.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#493

Post by cecilpl2 »

dsabanin wrote: post #131
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

I love my 3 monitor setup. In 20 years of coding, I finally reached peak productivity in my workspace. No switching between windows, ease of throwing a window aside for monitoring, laying out information and tools side to side. It’s incredible once you readjust your habits and learn to use that new space. I compare it to having a large, wide desk when you’re working on something. Who wouldn’t want that? I was one of…

I got a 6 monitor stand for my home office, filled it with 22-24" screens, and never looked back. It is phenomenal.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#494

Post by slantyyz »

thomaslord wrote: post #239
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

So I'm a little nuts in that I run 2 x 27" 4K monitors side by side with no scaling. 27" is about the smallest I can tolerate 1:1 pixel sizes.

Since aging has forced me into wearing reading glasses, I wear single vision computer glasses that are optimized for the distance range of my monitors' closest and furthest points.

Because I dont have scaling enabled, I don't get any of the HiDpi issues that I've gotten on my laptops with Windows.

I have found that I am still wanting for even more screen real estate, and for a time I had a pair of ultrawide 23" monitors underneath my main monitors, but it created more problems than it solved and I recently went back to only two monitors.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#495

Post by z3t4 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #330
the_af wrote: post #76

The technical details are all right (or seem right to me, anyway), but this is too opinionated for my liking. No, you do not need a 4K monitor for software development. Some people might like them, some won't. [edit/clarification: someone rightfully pointed out that nobody will actively dislike a 4K monitor. I was unclear here: I meant "some people won't need them" more than "dislike them"] This sounds like when Jeff…

Atwood is a bit of a prima-donna and part of being a blogger is a to make big statements. One of my roles for a long time was speccing/procuring computer equipment (later overseeing the same) for a huge diverse organization. I took feedback, complaints from users and vendors, etc. People are passionate about this stuff... I was physically threatened once, and had people bake cookies and cakes multiple times as a than…

You dont need a good display until you have used one. Its like glasses, you think you got perfect vision and then you get glasses its night and day in comparison. You dont know a good display until you have seen one. The thing with high res monitors is that you should upscale or everything will look tiny.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#496

Post by AdrianB1 »

I want to thank the author for the article, it comes at the perfect time for me. Earlier today I just had a main power line incident that resulted in burning almost half of all my electric equipment in the house, so I need to buy immediately at least one monitor and I was in doubt about spending too much on it (I need to buy other stuff too) and I am a cheap bastard, but I am moving a bit up versus what I was planning to get.

I saw some discussions about multiple monitors; I am a heavy user of multiple monitors, 2 most of the time and 3 when really needed; I don't have space on my desks (home & office) for 3 monitors all the time, so it depends on the needs and not on coolness. What I plan to do now is to get an asymmetrical configuration at home with one regular (1080p) monitor for some work and gaming (the CPU is an i3 7100, so I don't do much gaming) and a larger and better one for work only cases where a lot of information needs to be on the screen at the same time. As the article did not mention multiple monitors and buying 2-3 monitors that are 120 Hz/4k resolution is extremely expensive for a home setup, I think it is worth mentioning this kind of compromise of mixing size to have one of each. Not having OCD the different size is not such a big deal, while the extra functionality/productivity helps.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#497

Post by mulmen »

eludwig wrote: post #417
mulmen wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first. In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent. Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect th…

It helped me to check "Displays have separate spaces" in the Mission Control panel. MacOS seems to remember what went where with this checked.

That might work but it breaks my workflow in another way. Physically the display is a single panel. I organize workspaces by task so changing to a new one needs to change "both" panels because I'm actually using them as one.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#498

Post by JohnBooty »

_ph_ wrote: post #298
JohnBooty wrote: post #77

I found this article utterly baffling. The author clearly knows their stuff, having created Fira Code, but my experiences couldn't be more different. I spend most of my days in a text browser, text editor and text terminal, looking at barely moving letters. So I optimize my setup to showing really, really good letters. I certainly appreciate how nice text looks on a high DPI display. But for coding purposes!? I don't…

That Dell would be the screen I would buy right now for coding. I am currently using a 5k iMac at home and a 30" Dell (2560x1600) at work. I really loved the resolution of the iMac, but for my work, I need screen estate. The font rendering on the 30" at 1x scaling is good enough, and having a lot of screen estate is essential for me. Having 50% more horizontal space would of course be great :). The new 32" Apple disp…

I definitely have zero regrets about the Dell. Some of the best money I've ever spent. Depending on font choice (typically I use Input Mono Compressed) I can fit six or seven 80x100 text windows side-by-side on the Dell with excellent legibility.

I can't imagine anybody justifying the cost of that 32" Apple display for coding either. I can't even imagine many high-end creative professionals justifying that.

I mean, on one hand... if a person figures they'll get 5+ years out of that Apple monitor and they work 5 days per week... that's less than $4/workday for a $5,000 monitor. From that perspective it's somewhat reasonable. But most people would probably get more benefit from picking a $1000 monitor and spending that $4000 elsewhere.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#499

Post by slantyyz »

saltcured wrote: post #457
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, my main monitor is a 43" 4k display, and it works perfectly fine on AwesomeWM - but I' don't use any scaling, the 4k is purely for more screen real estate - literally like having 4 perfectly aligned borderless 24" monitors. I can fit 10 full A4 pages of text simultaneously.

I am somewhere in between. I don't go for hi-DPI but am using 28" 4K on the desktop and 14" 1080p on my laptops. So identical dot pitch and scaling settings. I just have more display area for more windows, exactly as you say like a 2x2 seamless array of screens. I actually evolved my office setup from dual 24" 1920x1200 and went to dual 28" 4K. But with the COVID lockdown, I only have one of the same spec monitor at…

I have found DisplayFusion and now PowerToys' FancyZones to be indispensable on Windows desktops with a ton of real estate.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#500

Post by alkonaut »

metafunctor wrote: post #406
alkonaut wrote: post #377

4K at 200% scaling feels wrong for a big monitor like a 27". The desktop looks like a 1080 desktop. And if the monitor is to be used as a gaming monitor too then 4K is again wrong because even with the best graphics cards, 4K@120 is out of reach. The perfect 27” monitor for me would be one that has 5K@120 because at 200% scale you’d get a desktop that looks “1440-size” and when gaming you can run half resolution at 1…

The LG UltraFine is a 27-inch 5K (5120 x 2880) IPS display. The maximum refresh rate is 60 Hz, so not the best for gaming; but it's designed for a Mac anyway. I've had a couple for over three years now and it's the best display for a Mac I know of, outside of Pro Display XDR, I suppose.

Yeah an alternative is always to just keep the screen I have now (1440@144) for gaming, and simply get a second screen for work with High DPI. Seems silly to get a 5K@120Hz mega expensive screen to play games at half resolution. I'll buy a bigger desk instead.
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