Ultrawide monitors, what's your experience been like?

I have a Dell U3818DW and you'd have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers. I can be working on a document with Word in the middle, a relevant Visio drawing to the left, and an Excel spreadsheet I need some analysis numbers from on the right. It is joy incarnate.

I have VFIO setup so I can run Linux as my main OS and Windows in a VM with GPU passthrough for basically bare-metal speed. The Dell can either switch to that input (of course) or I can do Picture in Picture with a selection of two different sizes. That lets me putter in Linux on my main display while keeping an eye on Windows upates in the PIP (or whatever). The Dell properly scales the screen, unlike the horrible scaling on the Acer that someone else mentioned in this thread.

The glare mentioned by somebody else is not an issue as the Dell has an anti-glare display. Not to mention factory color calibration. Not to mention a three year warranty that even covers you for a single dead pixel. It has USB-Cx1, DisplayPortx1, and HDMIx2. There's a bunch of other nice features too that I didn't mention. If you are a gamer (I'm not), this probably isn't for you as it doesn't have FreeSync / GSync.

Spend the money. It is worth it. Keep an eye out for sales. I'd buy it again in a second.

I switched from two monitors to a single, curved, ultra-wide 38" doing 3840x1600 pixels (LG 38UC99-W) about two years ago. I would never go back. I took maybe two days to get used to it. At first it was funny: going back to a flat screen and I would see the flat screen curved (!) but this weird effect disappeared after a few days and now I can use either curved of flat screen and everything always look normal: it's amazing how fast we adapt.

That's 3x 1280 wide columns (I don't always use three columns of the exact same width that said). That's a lot of screen real estate already.

Common setups I use are three columns (say IDE / Emacs in the middle, browser at the left / terminal bottom left / PDF open on the right / another terminal at the bottom left) or two columns. I often also have one virtual desktop with 9 terminals opened.

IMO when you begin to go really ultrawide the pixels "in the corners" are kind far away compared to the others. A slightly curved monitor helps a lot with that.

Now I don't game and don't watch movie on my monitor so there may be better 3840x1600 monitors than the one I picked two years ago.

I try to arrange things logically and always in the same order, so I always now on with "virtual workspace" I'll find what opened. I use a tiling window manager and keyboard shortcuts to resize windows.

Only app I run in full screen is photo-editing software. I take it audio and video editing software would do too.

I cannot go back to 27” - ultrawide is game-changing for me.

Basically, it comes down to working on 3 interfaces seamlessly, versus two with a single screen. Think REFERENCE, ACTION, SOURCE/DESTINATION.

Couple that with using Spectacles (for Mac) to move windows in position with the keyboard, and Mouseless App to master keyboard shortcuts, and you’re flying.

I considered ditching my ultrawide to buy the new iMac 5K 27”, but it was more geared to 2 interfaces, not 3, so I couldn’t. Even though I prefer the hardware over my MacBook Air 11” 2015 - maxed out.

I love my LG 34UC80-B 34-Inch 21:9 Curved UltraWide. The Sceptre C305W-2560UN 30-inch 21:9 Super Curved Ultrawide is a great budget option.

I doesn't work for me, but that's probably very application-specific. I'm not a dev nor a graphic/video artist, my work is motly editing office docs. Why it didn't work for me: 1- OSes are rather bad at handling large monitors. You can't just dumbly Maximize anymore, which is what I always do. Windows positions don't get memorized so your screen is a permanent mess. 2- I need the doc I'm working on, sources, and social/comms/entertainment. That's an ideal setup for 3 monitors and a good stand 3- it's hella expensive. 4- it maps better to how my brain works ?

I want back to 3 medium, cheap monitors, and I'm happier.

I use an a 38" Acer 3840x1600 ultrawide.

For 2D windowed applications, it works exactly as you'd expect. Be sure to have tiling support in your window manager for the best experience -- I typically have two windows opened side-by-side, and the Windows 10 window manager makes this tiling easy to do.

Support for ultrawide resolutions in full-screen applications like games can be hit or miss, but it generally works, and you can always fall back into standard widescreen or fullscreen resolutions with letterboxing if it doesn't.

One downside I've noticed is that due to the curved screen, glare from bright light sources (e.g., the sun) that reflects off the screen is somewhat out of focus with whatever is being displayed, which is fatiguing to look at. I don't know if this is a problem with this display in particular, or curved displays in general, but something to look out for.

Overall, I'm satisfied with my ultrawide, and will continue to use a single large display over multiple smaller displays in the future.

For the longest time, I was using dual 1920x1080 screens.

Eventually, I decided to upgrade and got myself a 31.5" 4k display. That lasted about 6 months before I ditched it for a 34" 3440x1440p Ultrawide.

I found coding on the 4k screen to be just too difficult, I had to scale the text way up for things to be readable. However, since I use a laptop running Fedora which I connect to through a thunderbolt dock, I found one monitor to be much less... finicky than using two (I'd briefly considered getting two 2k screens). So far, I've been much happier with the Ultrawide.

My wife took the big 4k monitor off my hands and is using it with her mac mini. I'll admit, MacOS does appear to do a better job dealing with a 4k screen than Gnome.

Copying my answer from "Ultrawide or 4k?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21451124

> 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 had a Dell 38" ultrawide that I loved, but it did not survive a cross-country move so I just replaced it with a Philips 499P9H 49" ultrawide - 5120x1440 - Really the same dimensions as two 27" monitors side by side, but without a center seam

So far, I really like it - But getting it to work at full resolution with my 2013 Mac Pro has been frustrating - It essentially cannot be done at full resolution with a single cable, unless you boot into Windows (also true for Mac Minis, but apparently newer Macbook Pros can drive it) - Despite what you may read, hacks such as SwitchResX will not help here; it's a limitation of the Mac's video card drivers that Apple seem uninterested in addressing.

The "solution", for me, has to drive it using two identical Mini Displayport->HDMI cables as if it were two screens and then have MacOS treat it as a single space. Using identical ports/cables has meant the color temperature on both halves is identical and i cannot tell it is not being driven as a single display, other than the fact the menu bar is only on one half of the screen.

Aside from that, it would be nice it were higher resolution, but the older I get, the less my eyes notice and the extra width is more useful than the DPI.

I use the Dell 43". It's not perfect but it's pretty great for the price:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-43-ultra-hd-4k-mul...

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.

I’m on dell ultra wide and not happy with it. The angle isn’t quite right except in the very middle, strains my eyes. Going back to dual monitors soon. Also prefer having one in portrait and one in landscape orientation.

I have a 32" curved ultrawide (3440x1440) at home and a 32" 4k at work. I work and game from home, and I mostly prefer the ultrawide even though it has less pixels.

For the ~ decade before I got this monitor I used to use 2x24" 1080p displays at home, but always ended up craning my neck using them as you either have the bezel down the centre to fit and then you're constantly looking to the side, or have one monitor way off to the side so it's even less useful. I find myself turning my head much less with an ultrawide for whatever reason.

Compared to the similarly sized 4k monitor I use at work, the one at home is essentially just shorter. It makes using 4 tiled windows not as good, but I don't really miss it (though this could be due to the tiling WM I use).

I don't do a ton of gaming anymore—but when I do, it's awesome. Surprisingly immersive.

I dual boot my computer at home with Linux / Windows, and use Linux as my daily driver with i3 [1]. I do find the monitor much more usable in Linux with i3 managing windows and workspaces than the occasions I need to develop on Windows (on Windows, I hate how windows just pop up pretty much where-ever). When working I tend to keep two windows side-by-side, one for my editor and the other for whatever I'm working on (terminal instance, android emulator, website, etc). I then use hotkeys to switch instantly between workspaces so it's quite fluid, but the monitor plays less into that. When I first bought mine I had visions of using 3 windows side-by-side, but I just never do that in practice for some reason. I also run everything at 1x scale, so the added vertical screen real estate (1440 vs 1080) is quite useful.

I use LG monitors almost exclusively, but that's simply because of cost—they're almost always cheaper than other brands and I've never had any problems with them. They may not be as high quality or stacked as full of features as other brands but they've always been good enough for me.

I'm never going back to dual-screens—to me they seem embarrassingly bad in pretty much every way compared to a single ultrawide these days.

[1]: https://i3wm.org/

Love mine, they're way, way better than having two 24 inch screens side by side. But here's the thing — you need a tiling window manager. That's the only way I've found myself actually utilising the 'sides' of the screen and not just the smack dab centre.

I use Amethyst on Mac OS, which is great. https://ianyh.com/amethyst/

I've had so many screens... I've run 3x 27" 1440p (that felt oppressive), 2x 23.8" 1080p (comfortable), 43" 4k (loads of vertical real estate for reading code), and currently on a 35" 1440p 21:9 ultra wide.

Ultra wide is like having two screens, when splitting windows left and right, though I think two monitors is better for work, as you can put one as the primary and one off to the side, you don't want to be looking sideways when working on code.

When I was reading a lot of code I didn't write, the 4k was the best, as it had a lot of vertical space.

The ultra wide I bought for games (it's 120hz).

I'm about to start a new gig and I'll run 2x23.8" 1080p for that.

Phillips make decent 4k screens at 40" and 43" for the money, but they are glossy so no good if you have glare problems.

The nicest screens overall for work I find are the Dell ultra sharp line. They are premium in price but side by side to a cheaper monitor and you can see why!

I have a 27" ultra sharp that is about 8 years old and is still fantastic compared to most mid range monitors, it's worth the investment. 1x 27" is nice, 2x 23.8" is nice.

Samsung make good ultra wides for work, and they make some ultra ultra wides too!

I use 3 monitors:

2 x ASUS @ 1920 x 1200 (total: 3840 x 1200) 1 x 42" 4K TCL "TV" @ 1920 x 1080

I (almost) never have a window I want to span monitors (or be larger than a single monitor). I like the organization that the monitors force on me. I use 5 workspaces ("Work", "IRC", "Telegram", "Web", "Music") and in each workspace, the left and right halves (the two ASUS monitors) provide distinct zones within the workspace. In the "Work" workspace, for example, the left side is invariable terminals, the right side is invariable emacs. In the "telegram" workspace, the right side is (Surprise!) telegram, and the left is any other application i need to use while communicating via telegram. Etc. etc.

If I had an ultrawide, it would remove the "bezel" divider between the two ASUS monitors and require me to keep that left/right organization all by myself. Boo.

The TV screen is "special" and not in use normally, but when I use it, it's invaluable because it's huge.

I had one for two years. I recently switched back to two 27' inch monitors and I won't ever go back. You'd need to tile it and even then it's not worth it. I don't recommend it, it's too clunky and big. If you're gaming or watching movies on it a lot it's cool, but for coding I'd pass.

I have a Samsung 49" 32:9 ultrawide with a resolution of 5120x1440. The primary reason I went with this monitor is that I use two computers: one provided by my employer and another provided by the government agency I'm contracting with. The model I have supports picture-by-picture, which makes jumping between the two computers really easy.

Apart from that, I do really enjoy all the screen real estate. It's nice to be able to have a full-sized browser window and two instances of VS Code all running within a visible portion of the screen. That being said, I'd easily give it up for a reasonably priced 27in 5K display that works over DisplayPort. The extra screen space is nice, but I'd much rather a display that had crisp, high-DPI text.

Amazing. I can never go back. Everytime I have to go back to using two monitors it's feels so awkward and unnatural. I didn't think it would have this big of an effect but being able to center windows on the screen and have equal space on the sides really helped my workflow. I'm a programmer. I also got one that is 144hz. It's so smooth. It's such a pleasure to work on. I can read text as it scrolls now! Totally worth the money if you stare at a monitor all day.

I have a 1440p. I would think 4k would not be worth it. Also way to hard to drive

If you have a laptop just make sure it can drive it. And that you have the proper cable. Mine was finicky until I got the proper 8k dp cable.

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.

I've been using inexpensive ~40-inch-diagonal 4K (3840×2160) televisions as monitors for quite a few years and will continue to do so. Current one is TCL 43S405 (wife commandeered the Sony 43X800E). A single monitor makes for far less configuration fuss — multiple monitors coerce distinct assignments and as well introduce discontinuities in the midst of the workspace (of which I was once tolerant, but no longer). I have yet to try anything in the 50-inch diagonal range, which would likely work but the periphery might go largely unused.

At work I use a single Dell 38" 21:9 ultrawide curved. Ultrawide + curved is 100% the way to go for productivity imho. Make sure you get a monitor with 1440 vertical resolution and not 1080.

At home I use a single flat 27" 16:9 1440p 144Hz so I can game.

I wrote my own, super simple Windows tool to help control window placement. https://github.com/forrestthewoods/fts_winsnap

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've tried them but far prefer running triple-head setups (since the days of Xfree and CRTs). Triple-head is pretty easy these days and gives you one central monitor plus one either side to chuck windows onto. Current set-up is 3xDell U2715H for a total of (2560*3)x1440 (and 10 workspaces).

If you are going wide, consider vertical resolution/vertical size as well (to minimise swivelling side to side).

I use a 32" 4K monitor (LG UltraFine 32UL950-W) directly in front (landscape), and an identical 32" 4K monitor to the right (portrait) off a rMBP 2016, which gives me the best of both worlds. (Both running Retina mode at logical 1900x1080.)

The landscape monitor is for the usual tasks, and the portrait monitor for coding (100 visible code lines in 15pt Operator Mono in VScode).

A fantastic combination.

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.

I don't use an ultrawide* but if you're on Windows and get sick of having to move the mouse cursor all the way across the screen then I can recommend getting DisplayFusion and enabling the "Wrap mouse cursor around left/right monitor edges" function.

*: My setup is two 27" monitors next to each other: one in portrait mode and one landscape mode.

All the "ultrawide" monitors I've seen are just cropped 4k or 5k screens. Having used full-size versions (3840x2160@32" and 7680x4320@32") I'd never voluntarily give up the vertical space.

If you can find yourself a good deal on a 16:9 27-32" 4k screen, you'll appreciate the extra usable space.

I'm using a Dell U3419w (34 inch ultra wide).

I'm a web dev, I love it, it is effectively windows at a time. It helps that there is a built in KVM, and it works great as a USB hub with USB-C.

The software to manage window placement is extremely helpful as well.

I go to work with a dual monitor setup and am kinda underwhelmed / annoyed.

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.

I have a Dell 34" UltraWide curved and I love it. I upgraded from two monitors to a single UltraWide and not having a bezel is amazing, and the slight curve helps because my eyes don't need to refocus as I move from one corner to the other when looking at it. It has reduced my eye strain tremendously.

I use a 34" 21:9 Dell monitor at work and I love it. As other have mentioned, you can get two super wide or three reasonable windows side-by-side, which is great. And I like the option to have a super wide terminal for the overly-verbose Java console output I get to debug.

I've got the LG 5k2k 34".

It's great for what I use it for, mostly software development. Only issue I have is that occasionally MacOS decides it can't see it or won't use the full resolution and I have to do a bit of plugging and unplugging.

I might get a smaller 4k monitor on the side. I really value a lot of pixels.

Advantage of multiple monitors: you can turn one 90 degrees if you work a lot with vertical documents.

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.

The only reason I wouldn't recommend it is that it becomes a necessity.

I can no longer code on my laptop to save my life, after running a stacked dual 34" + 29" UW setup.

Absolutely love it. For Mac OS - spectacle or magnet are a must for arranging windows though.

I had the option at work to do either two monitors or one ultrawide. I took the ultrawide, and have never regretted it. You have to use window organization software to use it effectively. I use Spectacle for Mac, it does the job.

I use a single 42.5" LG 4k monitor. Never use the full width or height except for watching media. Works fine.

At the office I use a 27" 4k monitor with the 15" MacbookPro off to the side for Slack. Also fine.

I have an LG 29", 2560x1080, flat monitor.

It's great for having two full windows side to side (e.g. Firefox and a Terminal), and I love it in my sim racing games, the extra field of view helps a lot with immersion.

I have two monitors, one of them ultrawide.

The UW is great. I am getting a second one. It is just more screen real estate and makes it easier to work off of, especially if you type and have research open at the same time.

I have a Dell U3818DW (38' 3840x1600 curved) and a Dell U2718Q (27" 3840x2160). I love them. They are big enough that I don't need to wear glasses (I'm older).

I have a 49" with a native Res of 5120x1440 and can't use it with my MacBook Pro on MacOS.

Works fine in Windows but can't go past 4096x1440@70hz in MacOS...

i prefer ultrawides , and not too big ones, as i think sitting in front of many monitors too many hours gives me headache.

I do have an issue with wobbling though. i dont understand why they dont make an ultawide with two supports

I use 3440x1440 with 2560x1440 on each side.

By day this is a productivity powerhouse, currently Ubuntu 19.10 with an extremely minimal i3 desktop.

I use the left monitor for terminals and the ultrawide normally the entire expanse for my work in sublime text - on my font settings, I can get five panes of 80-col files side by side. The right monitor is Chrome and F12 for whatever I’m building.

I love my ultrawide. I was very hesitant at first and thought I may dislike it but it actually feels like I want an even larger expanse now! It works well for me, I know some don’t like it and I can see why. Part of why it works so well for me I think is my use of i3 which makes it really easy to fully utilise all the space.

And part 2 of the above... by night it’s running Steam on Windows 10 and it’s absolutely fantastic for gaming, especially the genre I lean towards (driving/vehicle simulation). Since NVIDIA still don’t allow mixed resolution surround, and I want ultrawide for work, ultrAwide gaming was a necessity which turned out to be pretty fantastic. Games like ETS2, ATS and Assetto Corsa feel that bit more immersive with the extra windscreen space. The monitor fills a good part of my vision and as I have trackir too, it’s really quite immersive overall.

Brands or models - Mine is the AOC U3477PQU which was extremely popular but is now sadly discontinued with no replacement. No bad word to say about it. I’m actually planning to buy another ultrawide soon and mount it vertically above the current one; I may end up getting a used U3477PQU again (AOC don’t seem to currently make any non-gaming ultrawides which is odd seeing how many they sold).

So with AOC gone, LG are basically the market leaders and supply panels to many others (AOC included I think) and Dell are also high-end. I know Samsung and Iiyama have some compelling value options at the lower end of the market.

I went a different way and bought a 42" 4K display¹ (that's roughly the same PPI as 27" @1440p, so 100% zoom on Windows or Linux is just fine, no UI scaling nonsense).

So basically I have 42 inches (107 cm) worth of diagonal in front of me:

Height: 20.84" (≈53 cm); Width: 37.05" (≈94 cm); PPI: 103.64 (≈41 pixel/cm).

This gives me 476x118 lines (476 = 5.95 × 80 chars!) in full-screen terminal using small-enough fonts² (no reading difficulty here, productivity/comfort > all). Key thing being, vertical space versus a much shorter ultrawide (but about as much horizontal real estate). I think it matters a lot for coders, sysadmins, people who look at text (code, logs), long lists and tables in general.

I must confess that I feel slightly constrained by this monster in a way I hadn't anticipated: whereas real estate is never much of an issue, what I'd call "lack of separation of concerns" emerges: most Desktop Environments are not designed to manage several spaces, at best you get quick quarter-screen resizing for a window but that's weak when you have room for almost 4×1000 pixels horizontally (and more than 2000 horizontal). Remember, this isn't like your typical laptop at 4K: you really have all those pixels to work with at 100% scaling.

So you'd want more avanced features, and moving to e.g. i3 (Linux DE, or rather WM) begins to make a lot of sense.

The software is necessary to managing all that real estate, and it's a little bit of a desert because we haven't really moved to the "wall of screens", "cover my field of view" paradigm just yet. If you like tinkering and use Linux you probably can get 80-99% of the way there though, depending on how demanding you are.

____

But beyond that I think I'll eventually extend this setup to a 3-screen config, with two side 24" displays in portrait mode (which at 1080p unscaled, or 1440p scaled by 1.25, yields almost the exact same PPI as the middle 42.5" juggernaut). Something like that, with either 2×B or 2×C for obvious symmetry:

    ┌───┬───────┬───┐ A: 2160p 100%, PPI 103.64
    │24"│  42"  │24"│ B: 1080p 100%, PPI  91.79
    │ B │   A   │ C │ C: 1440p 125%, PPI  97.91
    └───┴───────┴───┘    (C = 1152×2048 usable)

This would allow me to put things "aside" literally so — monitoring and tracking, ref docs/notes, previews... Things I'd rather not move or rarely so.

I would never trade my uninterrupted 42" for the little convenience of optional separation, but I'm definitely considering adding this to that.

I strongly recommend you look at this option because it's made me virtually unobstructed by anything display-related since I've had it (small thing: I wish it had more DP/mDP inputs).

A smaller version of this setup has a 37" landscape in the middle and 2x21" portaits on the sides.

[1]: Dell P4317Q with up to 4 simultaneous 1080p inputs https://www.monitornerds.com/dell-p4317q-review/

[2]: Adobe Source Code Pro 9pt, which at 100% with forced 104 DPI to fit the display yields a pretty legible font size. I do most web browsing at 100% or even sometimes less for density.