New Monitor: Ultrawide or 4K?
Monitors that are both cost a lot, so which would you prioritise?
• 1440p (typical for ultrawide) for is a sweet spot for gaming. It's the highest resolution that works well with current generation of GPUs. In 4K gaming is hard, because most 4K monitors don't support high or variable refresh rates, so if the GPU isn't strong enough to consistently hit 60fps at 4K, it'll have to drop all the way to choppy 30hz.
• 4K for text. It really makes a huge difference. If you work with code, and don't care about color reproduction and black levels, then there are very cheap 4K monitors.
I've had a 34" curved ultrawide (3440x1440) for about a month now, and I love it. For gaming, it's great because my GTX 1080 has no issues with it with the games I play. For design work, having all that extra horizontal real estate is great to tuck away palettes and other extras. And for coding I can have an IDE in 2/3s of the screen and a browser for stupid CSS questions in the other 1/3, and still have that browser at a width that doesn't trigger mobile media queries.
I find my 32" 4K scales poorly in macOS, basically I can have everything tiny or everything massive and the scaling options make no sense there's only 720p, 1080p, 1600x900 or 4K.... there is no option between 1920x1080 and 3840x2160.
In Ubuntu it is more flexible but I think the sweet spot is going to be a 6K for scaling the UI at 3K but those might be a year or two away from existing and affordable. At below 30" 5K would be fine, I have a 25" 2.5K monitor that is very comfortable to use.
I thought about monitors quite a bit over the years:
1. Don't be cheap. You look at the damn thing 1/3 of your waking time. Monitor is like a mattress - buy the best for what you want to do on it (be it text, or gaming, or colors, etc). No compromises.
2. Refresh rate is just as important as resolution. I can feel my eyes physically hurting as I'm looking at text while I'm scrolling it up or down on a 60Hz monitor.
3. Go with dual monitors instead of a single ultrawide. For me it's just easier to organize files on two smaller screens than on one large one. And I can have steeper "curvature".
4. 27" is the ideal size for me. Tried 32" it was too large vertically to look up and down. Tried 25" it's a bit too small to fit multiple windows.
5. The ideal setup would be two 27" 5k @ 120Hz, unfortunately they don't exists yet.
High DPI. It makes text so more easy to read. For me personally I also wouldn't have too much use for ultrawide, since I run most apps in fullscreen mode and don't like turning my head while working.
High quality 4k/27" are most likely the sweet spot right now and works good with 175-200% scaling (on MacOS I use 200% and decrease font sizes in some apps - on Windows 175% works ok). 5k/27" would be the ideal thing, but there are barely models available, and the requirements for Thunderbolt 3 makes them less interoperable. I'm waiting for higher resolution screens to show up with new Displayport and HDMI revisions and would upgrade then.
I picked 34" Ultrawide. It works just fine for everything. Easy to read, almost two "regular" monitors worth of screen space. Gaming on 3440x1440 is hard to max out (but easier than 4k), but you barely notice the difference between 3440x1440 and 2560x1080 in most games.
I actually quite like the aspect ratio - it means I can have 2 windows in normal proportions (IDE for example) and another one on the side (terminal for example)
1 thing to note; I thought 34" Ultrawide will be bigger screen than it turned out to be.
I’m on a 40” 4k, have been for a couple of years. It’s generally fantastic and a huge leap up from either a 32” 4k panel Or two 27” 1440p panels. No comparison. However, I do often find myself thinking that I would give up some of the vertical real estate for extra space on either side; you can run a three (even) column setup but it feels just that little bit too tight. If you’ve an IDE up covering 2/3 of the horizontal space and 1/3 of the screen as a browser or terminal, there’s no room for anything else. My next monitor will be ultrawide.
I use a 27" 4k at work and a 38" ultrawide (3840x1600) at home. The 38" is too big frankly; maybe some of the mentioned 34" are better. I do like having Rider and Unity open in full size windows with room for terminal windows and other stuff on the ultrawide but for longer use I prefer the higher DPI of the 4k.
My pet peeve with ultrawide is the wobbling. I suggest one that has two legs (are there any?)
I picked a 4K. It works just fine for everything. Easy to read, more than two "regular" monitors worth of screen space.
The only downside was that games couldn't max out on it, even with good specs and Gsync. That might be where ultrawide does better.
I had a Dell 4K USB-C 32" 2019 model and then got an Alienware Ultrawide 34" 2018 (1440p) when a friend was moving and didn't have space for it.
Unless you need the smaller resolution for gaming performance, I'd go 4K everytime. You probably won't get anything above 60Hz refresh rate for a reasonable price. But, if all you are doing is programming, consuming content, and browsing the internet, it is more than sufficient.
If you do any color specific work, you can get some pretty good panels in the 4K display range.
If you spend a lot of time reading and writing, a 4K monitor with a diagonal ≤ 28" is a good pick. The switch from ~ 100 ppi to ~ 160 ppi feels like a vision correction akin to new glasses or contacts.
With the aim of filling both central and peripheral vision with screen space, I use 3 × 28" 4K monitors on a triple VESA mount (EasyMountLCD EZM 002-0020). Having sufficient screen space for /everything/ related to my current task feels like it reduces pressure on my short-term memory.
I think it's very personal. I prefer ultrawide because my eyes are a little older at this point and 34 inches has the best compromise for me. 42 inches would have me moving my head around too much. (that said, I have a smaller 15 inch laptop monitor on the side that I use for status windows, and that does have me swivel my head.)
For younger people, I might suggest the 4k. However, I'd go into a best buy and spend some time looking at them and imagining your daily activities.
Depends on your use case and operating systems. Are either/both of the monitors high DPI? Do you want thinks to look 'sharper' or do you want more screen real estate.
It also depends on which operating system you are using. Scaling on Linux is pretty terrible so I wanted a monitor that had ~100dpi so that no special scaling would be required. I also wanted the screen real estate of 4 ~22" monitors, so a 43" 4k monitor was perfect for my use case.
Ultrawide experience has been great, I use it at my home office and 2 screens at the company office and the ultrawide offers much more readability and productivity.
I have made long research and comparison about this. My budget was $1200 usd. My need basically browsing, sending email, write docs and coding. Nothing fancy and i have small working room.
Finally, i bought 38inch curve ultrawide (was huge 25% discount). I found it amazing and been using it for 1 year now. I have 34inch flat screen at office, but i prefer 38inch.
I tried more than 40 inch screen at office but i got neck problem for that.
I went for a 4k 28" monitor because it has the same DPI as my 1080p 14" laptop screen, which is convenient when using them together.
The priority depends on your usage of vertical space vs horizontal space. Ultrawide is great for spreadsheets, music/video/timeline editing, etc. For coding, ultrawide is nice for splitting your IDE into 3-4 sections, however there is more vertical scrolling vs 4K.
I'm on a 42" 4K at work (software developement).
In my experience 42" is too big to be ergonomic. Width is not the issue but height is: it takes too much strain on your eyes to look up to the top of the screen.
If I were to buy a new work monitor I would probably go for ultiwide.
For a long time I was using a 27" 4k screen. I recently upgraded to a 32" 4k screen and tried ultra wides before buying. For me, nothing beats a single 32" 4k screen. Sadly there are no 32" 5k screens, otherwise I would have bought one.
I have a 4k monitor and a 2k monitor. If I could go back and do it over, I'd just get a 2k ultra-wide. The 4k monitor has caused me a lot of headaches trying to get hardware / software to support it with dual displays.
I made the mistake of getting an ultrawide that is not curved.
Been getting some neck and trap issues from it.
Doesn't matter which one, but just make sure it's curved if you get an ultrawide.
Depends on your eyes. Mine(I wear glasses) prefer 4k for text/code. Will try 4k curved at some point to avoid unnecessary neck movements
I love my new 34 inch 1440p ultrawide. I used to have two monitors. The ultrawide experience is just so good.
I am still at 24" 1080p and i like it the most for gaming and working. Overall works best for me.
Had both. Now have a 32in 4k. Go with the 4k but 32in. 28 is too small and over 32 is too bog
Whatever route you go, make sure the monitor you get is a curved one.
How is 4k on Ubuntu these days?
I just picked up the lg 5k2k 34 inch ultra wide. I’m very happy with it. Before this, I ran two 3440x1440 displays but got tired of how pixelated everything looked.
If you’re ok windows or Linux, dell makes an 8k 32” display that you might enjoy. It’s fallen to just a couple thousand dollars now on amazon. Sadly incompatible with the Mac.
I don't see why you wouldn't just get a 1080p monitor