Ultra wide computer monitors

Kicking around the idea of replacing my three screen setup (2 24’s and 1 27) for a single 49” for work. Anyone have any recommendations or thoughts on them?

 

Depends on what you are doing when you have three.
Single 49" is hella big width-wise, so it is not necessary good for some work while some would be good, especially for comparing multiple things, excel/word/website/code, etc.
If shopping and general usage, I would say maybe a 34' and keep the 27'
I personally have a 32' and 27', but am looking to either upgrade to dual 34'....funds of course, not there....lol

EDIT: Also, if you are able, use arms to lift the monitors off the table to give you some extra space. I did that and it worked great.

 

I find the 34" annoying with how much dicking around I have to do. I like my focus right in front with supporting objects on the sides. Of course shortcuts exist but SBS/quadrant isn't preferred for the neck. I'd rather run your current setup than my 34" as it's easier to keystrike what you want into view.

 

I used to have a 32 and a 24/27(depending on what my kid is using, I am using the other one) and the 24/27 will be vertical for running codes, so technically my main is the 34"

 

I use my left screen for web browser, center for email and drawing review, and right for teams chats. What I’m finding myself running into is when I’m comparing multiple drawings or excel docs, the middle 27 is to small and comparing something between a 27 and 24 just doesn’t work. Hadn’t consider getting a 34 and then keeping the 27. Maybe run it vertically. Although 2 34’s would be pretty cool and they are significantly cheaper than a single 49”.

 

If you do a lot of comparing, I would get two same size monitor than one big 49

 

Sorry for the piggyback on your thread @centex but you guys sound pretty knowledgeable about this stuff...

Are the curved monitors I'm seeing everywhere now good for regular everyday home computer stuff, or are they mostly for gamers?

 

I am a coder/heavy usage person, so my view might differ.
However, what are your use?

The biggest issue with curve is, the curve. Some are so big that they "wrap" around your field of vision, thus, rendering the most side edge useless if you are working.
Gaming, it should be fine as it is more like your eyesight, you see out of the corner of your eye, but ain't your main vision field.

If you edit, I would suggest curved but don't get 49, 34 might be the max out for cost/performance/actual usage, simply because how much space it takes up vs some much is actually usable without twisting your neck like a twister.....

 

Excuse my messy desktop, was building my wife's new computer tower and the table is just a mess, along with cats trying to walk into the case.

Anyway, left is Dell 27 straight and right is LG 34 curve.
My main vision is right, with left mainly for code and sometimes emails. Right is mostly documents/viewing/comparing, photo/video editing is also mostly done on the right and then review on the left due to color calibration issues..

 

Definitely not going real big, maybe like a 32".

I've only dabbled a little in editing... it's cool and creative, but a lot of time & work. I guess that would lessen if I did it more and got proficient.

Mostly just normal browsing, watching videos, wife uses it some for work, nothing crazy.

Was thinking about going with two screens, but still debating since we'd have to change out the video card to support dual monitors.

 

I'm realllllllyyyy looking at cleaning up my desk (dual 32's) with the 59" Neo G9. Basically it would be the same as the dual 32's but a single curved. If you have EDU/Epp you can get it for $1275. Im scared of going with OLED because i end up leaving some server pages up on the screen for a bit.
https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...&ranSiteID=lw9MynSeamY-g.CXCMPm6D_I1IUCh2PBYg

 

59”? That’s huge. A 49” would replicate my current setup. One my main concerns is sharing content on teams or zoom. I don’t always want everyone to see what I’ve got going on so when you are sharing with one of these large screens, are you able to pick just the application (say excel) to share or does it share the whole screen?

 

With Teams you can do either - whole screen or a specific app/tab.

 

If you have that concern, let me tell you, time to upgrade the tower, since whatever you upgrade in GPU might require the board to be supporting, which in turns, CPU/RAM, HDD/SSD/M.2 SSD can be re-used to some extend.
For what you do, dual 32/34 is fine, if you can see a floor unit live, that will give you some better idea of what it will actually feel like.

I thought about the Ark, but honestly, like I mentioned earlier, the wrap around is losing the edges, which kinda defeats the purposes of getting something so big....
If you tend to leave things up there for a while, OLED might not be the best, but honestly, it might not be the core issue, hopefully, unless you leave it on there for weeks on end without closing out the monitor....
But if you do, you have other things to worry about than just getting an Ark....

 

I use the 49" for work and play. The latest version of Teams (work) with Windows 11 fixed one of the two problems I had, which was teams window sharing would not refresh on the client side of things. I always had to share my desktop, which made the window tiny on their plebian screens. No longer a problem now. The other issue was with a program written 25 years ago and never updated, so it doesn't count. When I am working with spreadsheets (which are huge) the 49" real estate is awesome. Otherwise I generally divide the windows into three. The curved nature of the screen took a little getting used to but I adapted. I've been using the screen for about 2 years now.

 

It will be up for a full work day (when i WFH), then the monitor will be off the next day (when i go into the office). Not sure if it would be a big deal, but just worrying about burn in. It would probably be fine.

I just like the 59" since it would be the same screen size as dual 32's so i wouldn't loose any real estate.

 

I would say burn-in really takes time to burn-in, so your case should be fine, I mean, I haven't have burned-in.....

 

Awwww crap... I shoulda' known asking this question on here was gonna' cost me a lot of money.

 

Sorry for being the bad news bearer, but yea, you wanna power two monitors with possibly 4K+, yea, that's asking a lot.
However, if you are quick, right now Amazon has quite a bit of parts on sales, you might be able to pick up some parts for cheap, and take your time until end of the year to get it done.

 

Guessing my IT hasn't updated ours yet. I still only get the screen option.

 

Do none of you keystrike shortcuts?! My work varies a lot and I absolutely hate manually resizing/repositioning window panes all day. If I wasn't now WFH with my tower in my rack (which requires a 50ft+ cord snaked from desk, through walls, into closet), I'd be back to running a central 27" landscape with one or two 24"/27"s in portrait.

 

I do, but sometimes I do have to manually scale it to fit some more....

 

I originally wanted two of this, last year model, but man, they are expensive...
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/del...5we/apd/210-bmds/monitors-monitor-accessories

 

I think before I were to put much money into upgrading our Dell Inspiron that is probably 10 years old and pretty slow, wouldn't I be better off just spending that money on a new computer?

Are the SSD's superior to HDD's all around, or are there pros & cons with solid state too?

 

If you are good with building electronics, buy parts and do it yourself, it ain't that hard.
But if not, buy a set is fine, but just be careful that most of them are not future expandable proof.

SSD will be faster than any HDD, but if your funds allow and the system setup allows, I would suggest a good size SSD for startup and couple of HDD for storage/files/backup.

 

I have the older gen - U3415W. It is a nice display but definitely wouldn't want to DD two of these.

 

I have a real old one, U2417W or something like that. Reason I swear off the U series is that, even though that screen is so old, it outperform my more modern monitors, eyes closed.
If I DD two of the U34 series, one will be in vertical for ease of reading..... and minimize tabletop space

 

You would. 10yo hardware doesn't compete with new hardware. CPU frequency hasn't bumped but the CPU count has. This is cool and all, but an average person will not benefit from more than 4-8 cores. High core count really only matters when you need it to do parallelized number crunching. Where the average person "feels" it is in current

$19 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) to NVMe PCI-E M.2 SSD Case Support UASP for NVMe SSD Size 2230/2242/2260/2280(up to 2TB)

M.2 NVMe drives. These are far superior to SSDs and HDDs, which should be relegated to bulk storage needs only now. And then you decide how important graphics are. GPUs have advanced a tremendous amount and aren't stopping. But if you don't game, nor work with AI/ML, the on-board chip-based graphics are good enough for web browsing and emails.

 

I totally agree with what you are saying, hell, my current rig has 3

$19 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) to NVMe PCI-E M.2 SSD Case Support UASP for NVMe SSD Size 2230/2242/2260/2280(up to 2TB)

M.2 NVMe, 6 HDD of various size, total is about 18T.... I was spying the two 20T HDD or RAID....
My wife's new rig, the white one in the picture above that I was building, has 1 2TB SSD, 2 M.2 NVMe, 2 HDD of 12T, total of 30T (I think)
Aside from master OS drive, she's filling the other with our kids' pictures/videos, and I have three external HDD for duplicate backup, which I really should do with NAS.... just too lazy now....lol

 

I'll spare you my rant and summarize. All of those drives are wasted IN the towers. You should have a network setup with a RAIDed NAS config. I personally view user devices as throw-aways. The value is in the data, and with a proper networked sol'n, the data is preserved and accessible anywhere - LAN or WAN. Of course, implement off-site replication with another NAS or bucket (I've yet to do this).

I don't keep anything local on my machine. I work exclusively off of the network.