Monitors over 1920 x 1080

[Protec]

My home computer setup has two 24" 1920 x 1080 monitors and I think they are perfect for my needs. I have used larger monitors but never really liked them that much. The 3440 x 1440 34" monitors are just too large in my opinion. Websites usually end up like a little strip down the middle and multitasking is harder compared to when you have 2 monitors. Does anyone else use curved monitors / 1440p+ monitors and what is your opinion on them?

[3s-gtech]

I bought an AOC 32” 1440p screen a few months back. Honestly, it’s way too large for productivity stuff, and website navigation is much harder (like, turning your head to find the back button [emoji28]) but I bought it for gaming and at that it wins.

 

Should have kept space for two screens, but an iMac has to fit on there too somehow.

[Norphy]

I’ve not got anything over 2560x1440, but don’t like using anything smaller. 1080p didn’t give you a massive amount of vertical resolution, 1440p gives you a lot more despite the aspect ratio being the same.

 

I agree on the ultrawides though, they’ve always seemed silly to me.

[dhicks]

I bought an AOC 32” 1440p screen a few months back.

 

I have something similar on my desk at a shared workspace. It's large enough to act as a partition to the desk opposite, which is handy in my case but I can see how some would find that a little large. I do notice the difference when using that screen to the other screens I use - it has just that bit more verticle space, which is nice as you can fit all of most spreadsheets / web pages on the screen without having to scroll. I'm tempted to get a 4K version to add even more verticle resolution, although I'd stick with a standard aspect ratio rather than something ultra-wide.

[Norphy]

32” at that resolution would be too big imo, like 1080p at 27”.

 

The sweet spot for 1440p would be somewhere between 24” and 27”.

[Protec]

Yeah, what I ended up doing was pulling the two applications together into the middle so I didn't have to keep moving my head. Most applications and websites look silly with 1440p too, they just aren't designed for such as high resolution.

[Rob_D]

At home I run dual 1440 27" displays. I've never had a problem with scaling on websites or any of the apps. (Most of the time I forget how much more space 1440 give me until I remote into a machine running 1080.)

 

What with windows 10 snapping or 3rd party apps to enhance this for ultrawide displays, I don't see why you couldn't use an ultrawide like two normal widescreens. Although outside of gaming I don't see the advantage of ultrawide.

[titch]

Am I the only one that still prefers a pair of 4:3 monitors together. Obvouisly the more pixels the better but in terms of aspect ratio I just prefer I bit more height and a bit less width.

[Rob_D]

Am I the only one that still prefers a pair of 4:3 monitors together. Obvouisly the more pixels the better but in terms of aspect ratio I just prefer I bit more height and a bit less width.

When we first started rolling out widescreen monitors in the classrooms we a teacher complain that she didn't like the 16:9 screen size - something about having to turn to be able to see the edges of the screen.

Years ago we had some really cool 16:10 Samsung "productivity" monitors.

[Norphy]

For me I think it depends on the size of the screen. 19" or smaller, 4:3 or 5:4. 20ish", 16:10. 24" or above, 16:9 is getting acceptable if you can have 1440p.

 

At the moment, because I'm working downstairs and my big screen is upstairs, the monitor I'm using is a 24" 1080p screen which is a nice screen but I'd prefer to have more vertical resolution.

[Rob_D]

I'd prefer to have more vertical resolution.

You could turn it sideways.

[Norphy]

My old boss likes to have two monitors, one aligned horizontally and the other vertically. He encouraged the rest of the office to do the same when he joined and when all the monitors in the office were replaced, he set them all up like that. Needless to say, it drove me bat:censored: crazy and the first thing I did with mine was align them properly.

[Duranis]

My old boss likes to have two monitors, one aligned horizontally and the other vertically.

In my old job I had a rotating mount. Often I would be working on something on the main screens with written reference material on the off screen. It was a lot better having the off screen flipped for that as I could see more of the reference doc at a glance.

[chazzy2501]

I have a 1080p 27" at home and a 1440p 27" here at work. I prefer the 1440p it's a better balance imho.

 

I think 4k and HDR (most HDR is fake or underspecced) are not worth it in windows or gaming. Productivity is probably better suited to a multi monitor setup than 1 expensive monitor.

[Omega_NL]

Been using Ultrawide monitors at home for about 4 years and an Ultrawide at work for about 8 months attached to a 1080p 16:9 display, mostly snapping two windows side by side so they're both about 4:3 in size. Mostly the work I do is 1st and 2nd line IT support stuff so your use case may differ. I found that curved monitors for 21:9's are almost essential to get a useful viewing angle, but with a more narrow display the curve might be less useful. 1440p would have more benefit for gaming though I would say I haven't noticed text being too small for me to read though that may also be a preference. Some computer hardware shops may have some on display you could try out?

[bald_pig]

I have 2 27" 1440p monitors at work, and a 27" 1440p monitor and a 24" 1080p monitor at home. The extra screen real estate is a godsend!

[flyinghaggis]

At home I run dual 1440 27" displays. I've never had a problem with scaling on websites or any of the apps. (Most of the time I forget how much more space 1440 give me until I remote into a machine running 1080.)

 

What with windows 10 snapping or 3rd party apps to enhance this for ultrawide displays, I don't see why you couldn't use an ultrawide like two normal widescreens. Although outside of gaming I don't see the advantage of ultrawide.

 

I've been using an Ultrawide (34" 3440x1440) at home as a replacement for my previous dual monitor setup for the past 5 years. Most of the time I just use Windows Snap as it basically gives you the equivalent of 2 x 20" 4:3 monitors. Or the Microsoft Powertoy FancyZones if I want something a bit more custom. I prefer it to a multi-monitor setup personally but I guess it depends on your use case. Good for gaming as well especially with space/flight/driving sims and first person games.

Edited September 29, 2021 by flyinghaggis

[Garacesh]

27" 1440p 1440Hz here. Absolutely phenomenal for gaming. Pretty crappy for office-work, sometimes too much screen real estate is an issue.

I can't say I find it problematic, though. Windows is still perfectly fine at 100% scaling, I just tend to have chrome zoomed in at 125% as a lot of sites still don't really scale properly above 1080p.

 

What I have found, though, is with 1440p I can have two windows side-by-side and not struggle at all. So I tend to have Discord on the left and Chrome on the right.

[Protec]

With 2 separate monitors you can angle them in a "V" shape more than a curved monitor. As for just one large widescreen monitor I find myself turning my head too much from left to right. Yeah, for gaming widescreen is fine but I'm talking about productivity and office work, related use.

 

Yeah, most websites and applications aren't scaled properly for monitors over 1080p and end up looking something like this:

 

 

 

Using software to simulate 4:3 monitors wouldn't really work for me personally since I use different computers on different networks regularly. Therefore, I don't want to get used to a certain layout, design, theme, etc.

 

My computer at home normally has Chrome on one monitor the other one I usually switch between CCTV view and TV such as BBC News or YouTube videos long enough to make it worth moving it there. I have my monitors physically set up unusually. I have one monitor on the desk and the other is above on the wall. I still have it so that the pointer switches to the other one from the right of the main monitor. I have tried where it went from the top of the main monitor but I was already used to the old way so never changed it.

 

Another thing I prefer about 2 separate monitors is that if one monitor fails I've got a backup so I'm not temporarily without a computer.

Edited September 29, 2021 by Protec

[Rob_D]

Yeah, most websites and applications aren't scaled properly for monitors over 1080p and end up looking something like this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63219[/ATTACH]

Out of interest, what resolution is the screenshot at?

BBC.co.uk looks like this on my 3200*1800 resolution screen:

Edited September 29, 2021 by Rob_D

[Protec]

Out of interest, what resolution is the screenshot at?

BBC.co.uk looks like this on my 3200*1800 resolution screen:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]63220[/ATTACH]

 

That was at 2560 x 1440 pixels. Default settings, no scaling, zoom, etc. Most websites look like that. They end up like a little strip down the middle with a load of white space. The screenshot was at 16:9 too. On the ultrawide curved ones it looks even worse.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Protec

[Danp]

In my old job I had a rotating mount. Often I would be working on something on the main screens with written reference material on the off screen. It was a lot better having the off screen flipped for that as I could see more of the reference doc at a glance.

 

Me too.

 

Although now, I've got us to a single 1920 x 1080 screen now and it's fine, I've just got used to it. No monitors at home now, a single laptop if I really need to use a device.

[Rob_D]

That was at 2560 x 1440 pixels. Default settings, no scaling, zoom, etc. Most websites look like that. They end up like a little strip down the middle with a load of white space. The screenshot was at 16:9 too. On the ultrawide curved ones it looks even worse.

Not in my experience. It turns out the screenshot in my above post is at 90% scaling (not sure why I did that) and while the content doesn't fully span the page the ratio of content:page width (on the BBC homepage) is the same on the 1920*1080 screen at work as on the 3200*1800 resolution display on my home laptop.

 

I can see it potentially not scaling up enough on Ultrawide aspect ratios and looking ridiculous, but in my experience changing resolutions within the same aspect ratios isn't an issue.

[Protec]

Went to check the scaling on my home PC and was surprised to see that it says "make everything bigger". Surely I'm not the only one who preferred when Windows was more formal? Anyway the scaling for my 2 1080p monitors is 100% which is the default and probably the same for the ultrawide monitors I would think. Edited September 30, 2021 by Protec

[mikes]

I'm the rare person who prefers an absolute massive display it seems, my last monitor was a 48.5" Acer 4K display, and it was awesome. Just the right size to sit about 1.5 meters away from, nice 4K resolution and very immersive for gaming. My eyes aren't great so I prefer a large screen where I can sit a little bit further back from and not have to strain to see where things are.

Unfortunately my Acer 48.5" failed 2 weeks after the warranty ended, and I bought a 65" Hisense TV to replace it. Which was a) too big, 48.5" is the ideal size I think for me, and b) as it is a TV and not an actual Monitor, it has no Displayport and had all kinds of silly image processing nonsense on it that made the picture quality in Windows look garbage.

 

You could turn off most of the image processing in "game mode", but it still had this awful fake 10bit interlacing that meant every alternating row of pixels was slightly lighter or darker, giving you a banded appearance. From far away the colours did merge into one, but up close it just looked dreadful and you can't turn it off either. Most solid blocks of colour had this banded appearance, even in chroma 4:4:4, so the quality sucked. Luckily it failed 2 days after I bought it, so after being messed around for 6 weeks I'm about to get a full refund on the thing.

 

The problem is they no longer sell 48.5" computer monitors any more, so if you want a big PC monitor, you have to risk buying a TV. And the majority of TV's on the market are hopeless as PC monitors, even if RTNGS gives them a good review. RTNGS gave the Hisense a 9/10 as a PC monitor despite this trash interlacing, same with other displays - they gave an OLED a 9/10 yet I saw posts on Reddit showing how that OLED's RGBW pixel layout made Windows text in particular, look very ugly. I no longer trust TV RTNGS, it seems to test as a PC monitor, they plug in a PC, launch a game, and judge how good that looks - they don't judge how the unit actually performs as a PC monitor in Windows. (e.g. do they output 1:1 exactly as the PC outputs, which is all that is wanted)

 

The biggest actual monitors I can find are these trash 32" ultrawide displays, basically half of 4K if you are lucky. My friend swears by his 144hz 27" ultrawide, but I used it and could barely see what I was aiming at - what's the point of 144hz if what you are aiming at is 1 - 2 cm high??

I was tempted by the LG CX OLED, a 48.5" (or the 55" version actually) - it has a 120hz 4K panel - but OLED's are known for bad burn in for Windows, plus it has RGBW pixel layout which means text in Windows looks trash, and it has no DisplayPort so getting 120hz 4k at chroma 4:4:4 over HDMI is a nightmare (these TV's often use cheap chroma subsampling tricks to fake full 4k colour).

 

So at the moment if you want a good looking, large (42" or above) PC monitor, there isn't really anything good on the market at the moment for a decent (sub £1500) price. Even the expensive TV's have problems as monitors. So I am stuck on my ancient 32" Hanspree 1080P TV from 2010 until I can find something tolerable as a PC monitor again that doesn't have interlacing, subsampling, VA blacksmear (a lot of these TV's have VA panels with awful blacksmear, I'd much rather IPS, anyone who I've talked to who knows what they are talking about has despised large VA panels for gaming), I might be waiting 5 years by the sounds of it

Edited October 13, 2021 by mikes