Monitor choice for developers - 32" UHD, or 27/32" QHD?

spacemuis

spacemuis

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Hi, I'm looking at a monitor upgrade with a view (ahem) to enhancing productivity.
Been working on 24" 1080P HD monitors for ... over 30 years? I work on a laptop whose screen is off with the monitor as main display in Windows 10.
Mostly Visual Studio, often with a browser if I'm doing full-stack work.
Some options I'm considering:
1. Vertically stacked monitors, i.e. 2 x 24" HD monitors one above the other. (will obvs require double VESA mount). Pro is that I already have "half" the monitor-age required.
2. Bigger monitor with higher res, best options for coding seem to be either 27" at QHD/2k or 32" at UHD/4k but there are other options like ultrawide (e.g. FHD+33% additional horizontal res)

Bit more background:
My eyes are good, no glasses required.
I have a large desk so there's room for large monitors and/or arm mounts.
High refresh rates are a waste of time since I don't play games at all.
I live in the sticks so nobody near here as a 27" or larger monitor I can take for a spin with my laptop.

Of course prices for these larger monitors are considerable so I'd rather not have to buy one only to find it sucks for dev.
So I'd like to hear advice from other devs about these options - or others I should consider - especially if you have experience of multiple of these options and can compare them from a dev point of view.

Thanks.
 
I use the 43” Dell monitors. I have 2 in my one office, and one in the other, and one at work. I used to use 6x 30”, but found this to be more compact, yet with sufficient screen real estate.
 
Neither. :D I would recommend an 1440p Ultrawide like:

Dell S3422DWG 34" UWQHD (3440x1440) 144Hz 2ms VA AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VESA Display HDR 400 1800R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor - Wootware

Buy Dell S3422DWG 34" UWQHD (3440x1440) 144Hz 2ms VA AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VESA Display HDR 400 1800R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor at Wootware with fast shipping & superb service.
www.wootware.co.za www.wootware.co.za

or

www.wootware.co.za

Samsung LS49AG950NUXEN Odyssey Neo G9 49" DQHD (5120 x 1440) 240Hz 1ms Quantum HDR 2000 NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible 1000R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor

Buy Samsung LS49AG950NUXEN Odyssey Neo G9 49" DQHD (5120 x 1440) 240Hz 1ms Quantum HDR 2000 NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible 1000R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor at Wootware with fast shipping & superb service.
www.wootware.co.za www.wootware.co.za

1080p horizontal just doesn't sit right with an IDE if you have a terminal/debug tools/interpreter/shell/other window in the bottom bar. 1440p has just enough vertical room that you won't miss a vertically oriented monitor

Or better yet, why not both.

 
32” 4K @ 125%

You can then mix up between 2x portrait and 1x full screen. Using i3 or Powertoys can make this really nice.

Multi monitor is kak.

Use a hot key show/hide terminal like Conemu or Yakuake/Guake, instead of running terminals in your IDE like a complete noob :p
 
Ejeckt said:
Neither. :D I would recommend an 1440p Ultrawide like:

Dell S3422DWG 34" UWQHD (3440x1440) 144Hz 2ms VA AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VESA Display HDR 400 1800R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor - Wootware

Buy Dell S3422DWG 34" UWQHD (3440x1440) 144Hz 2ms VA AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VESA Display HDR 400 1800R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor at Wootware with fast shipping & superb service.
www.wootware.co.za www.wootware.co.za

or

www.wootware.co.za

Samsung LS49AG950NUXEN Odyssey Neo G9 49" DQHD (5120 x 1440) 240Hz 1ms Quantum HDR 2000 NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible 1000R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor

Buy Samsung LS49AG950NUXEN Odyssey Neo G9 49" DQHD (5120 x 1440) 240Hz 1ms Quantum HDR 2000 NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible 1000R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor at Wootware with fast shipping & superb service.
www.wootware.co.za www.wootware.co.za

1080p horizontal just doesn't sit right with an IDE if you have a terminal/debug tools/interpreter/shell/other window in the bottom bar. 1440p has just enough vertical room that you won't miss a vertically oriented monitor

Or better yet, why not both.

Click to expand...

That Joma guy is a hoot!

Your recommendations raise a few more questions:
- panel type - I see the first suggestion is a VA panel. There's a lot of discussion in monitor reviews about IPS vs VA but it mostly centres around gaming, responsiveness and colour accuracy - none of which are that important to me.
- also curved vs straight: I see the attraction of wide curved monitors for gaming, but I always figured that's all it's good for and will die a silent death like curved and 3D TV's ... was I wrong? (wouldn't be the first time)
 
cguy said:
I use the 43” Dell monitors. I have 2 in my one office, and one in the other, and one at work. I used to use 6x 30”, but found this to be more compact, yet with sufficient screen real estate.
Click to expand...
Wow that must be overwhelming.

I went from dual 27” to 43” 4K and I found it way to big, on an 800mm deep desk (big as in I had to move my eyes too much) and eventually then settled on 32”
 
Have been looking at ultrawide myself.
Problem with reviews are they all show some video editing related stuff.
What I've not been able to see is having e.g browser+ vs code + browser/3 rd app open on the same screen, without the browsers going to mobile layouts or the IDE being unusable.
 
spacemuis said:
Hi, I'm looking at a monitor upgrade with a view (ahem) to enhancing productivity.
Been working on 24" 1080P HD monitors for ... over 30 years? I work on a laptop whose screen is off with the monitor as main display in Windows 10.
Mostly Visual Studio, often with a browser if I'm doing full-stack work.
Some options I'm considering:
1. Vertically stacked monitors, i.e. 2 x 24" HD monitors one above the other. (will obvs require double VESA mount). Pro is that I already have "half" the monitor-age required.
2. Bigger monitor with higher res, best options for coding seem to be either 27" at QHD/2k or 32" at UHD/4k but there are other options like ultrawide (e.g. FHD+33% additional horizontal res)

Bit more background:
My eyes are good, no glasses required.
I have a large desk so there's room for large monitors and/or arm mounts.
High refresh rates are a waste of time since I don't play games at all.
I live in the sticks so nobody near here as a 27" or larger monitor I can take for a spin with my laptop.

Of course prices for these larger monitors are considerable so I'd rather not have to buy one only to find it sucks for dev.
So I'd like to hear advice from other devs about these options - or others I should consider - especially if you have experience of multiple of these options and can compare them from a dev point of view.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

3840 pixels wide @ 100% scaling is a must. Don't accept anything less.

4K 27" @ 100% scaling
or
4K 32" @ 100% scaling

I use 4K 27" @ 100% scaling and it's great. The text can be slightly small for some things, but at around 55 - 60cm from my face it's perfect. Monitor arms are a must though.

I have a 27" 1440p monitor as well, and while it's great for gaming, it's only OK for dev work. Its like a slightly better 1080p monitor. You have a little more real estate in editors, but not really enough to have multiple windows or tabs side by side.
I suppose 1440p ultra-wide would do as well, as long as it's 3840 pixels wide. Then you can no longer divide the monitor in quarters, but I seldom do that anyway.

Edit: The reason I prefer a standard 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio is that you can then easily have another monitor on the side in vertical orientation. Works great for browsers / email / slack.
As for panel type, I like IPS for viewing angles and colour accuracy. VA is pretty much just as good for dev work. TN wouldn't really matter, although vertical viewing angles can suffer and I find the colour shift slightly annoying.
 
Last edited:
spacemuis said:
That Joma guy is a hoot!

Your recommendations raise a few more questions:
- panel type - I see the first suggestion is a VA panel. There's a lot of discussion in monitor reviews about IPS vs VA but it mostly centres around gaming, responsiveness and colour accuracy - none of which are that important to me.
- also curved vs straight: I see the attraction of wide curved monitors for gaming, but I always figured that's all it's good for and will die a silent death like curved and 3D TV's ... was I wrong? (wouldn't be the first time)
Click to expand...

I've never had to do any work where colour accuracy was a thing so can't really comment on that.

As for curved... well, pretty much every dual-monitor or tri-monitor setup has a V shape where the point right in front of your seat is further away, and the sides are closer to you. I think a non-curved ultrawide would just feel uncomfortable. For a standard 16:9 I really don't see the point in curved.

kolaval said:
Have been looking at ultrawide myself.
Problem with reviews are they all show some video editing related stuff.
What I've not been able to see is having e.g browser+ vs code + browser/3 rd app open on the same screen, without the browsers going to mobile layouts or the IDE being unusable.
Click to expand...

I have used both the 3440x1440 and 5120x1440 resolution.

The smaller screen is like two 4:3 screens, while the bigger one is like two 16:9 screens.

On the 3440 screen I comfortably fit an IDE (with 2 side-by-side code windows/tabs), browser and debug tools, and I use laptop screen for chat/music/other.

On the 5120 screen I basically fit the same, except 3 vertical code windows and the browser is a bit wider.

I do most of my work in python though and rarely have code longer than 100 chars per line tho.

The 5120 is great for DB browsing with tools like SQL Management Studio. Really nice for those table with too many cols.
 
spacemuis said:
High refresh rates are a waste of time since I don't play games at all.
Click to expand...
Disagree with this, you want to get a higher refresh rate as it makes scrolling smoother, it makes it nicer to read text while scrolling, I can actually often read while free wheel scrolling on my mouse (G502), on 60Hz it's noticeably more difficult.

I'd probably go dual 27", just try and make sure resolution is the same on both, best is both the same monitor. I tried dual 32" and it started getting too much.

Not really a fan of ultrawide, the pixel density is generally bad.
Barbarian Conan said:
TN wouldn't really matter, although vertical viewing angles can suffer and I find the colour shift slightly annoying.
Click to expand...
Would definitely not get a TN panel due to losing color accuracy over time, and a lot worse if dark IDE.
 
I recently upgraded from a 32" 1440p monitor to this:

Dell S3422DWG 34" UWQHD (3440x1440) 144Hz 2ms VA AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VESA Display HDR 400 1800R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor - Wootware

Buy Dell S3422DWG 34" UWQHD (3440x1440) 144Hz 2ms VA AMD FreeSync Premium Pro VESA Display HDR 400 1800R Curved Gaming Desktop Monitor at Wootware with fast shipping & superb service.
www.wootware.co.za www.wootware.co.za

Productivity increased quite a bit, especially if you're a software developer. The extra horizontal space helps having multiple tabs open in VisualStudio, or similar IDE. Debugging is now a breeeze!
I don't care for color accuracy, pixel density and other irrelevant crap, therefore this was perfect.
 
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