Designed as gaming monitors, huge ultra wide monitors are becoming popular with coders… I’m tempted myself!
The curve on the G9 looks like it could be the sweet spot for a monitor this wide…
2 Likes
I was skeptical before listening to the videos. Now, I’m maybe convinced.
I usually have my one big screen (27" LG Ultrafine) in the center in front of me. This is where I have Sublime Text and Chrome running. Then I have a stand for my laptop (13.3" MacBook Pro) that sits to the right of the main screen. The laptop is showing me Slack.
I could see myself changing to a setup with just the 49" screen with Chrome and Sublime Text running next to each other and Slack running on a separate space (or just in the background)
The price range (that I could quickly look up) is around $1,100 to $1,900.
2 Likes
I would definitely wait until January @ohm - lots of tech gets announced at CES, which will be on Jan 11-14: https://www.ces.tech/planning-for-ces-2021.aspx
The only thing that worries me about these monitors is that they’re not Retina/HiDPI - so the text won’t be as crisp… which is important for devs who stare at code all day long. Still, I would love to try one and definitely think they’re they future.
Quick question re your set-up, when you have the laptop open do your fans spin so they’re audible?
I usually have mine in clamshell mode, and it’s silent, but if I open it (so have two displays) the fans kick in and it’s annoying. Might be because I have lots of spaces open with loads of apps, but still, my Mac has a dedicated GPU so should be able to handle it 
2 Likes
Another one…
3 Likes
Yeah, I’d definitely wait until next year. Maybe my employer would like to sponsor a new screen. 
I haven’t tried having my laptop in clamshell mode while working, but the fan does definitely spin up from time to time. Especially when I have Elasticsearch and our own product running in Docker along side Chrome and my editor. 
I’ll give it a try Monday maybe.
2 Likes
Tell them you feel it would make you even more productive - that’s gotta be a good incentive 
Try it and let me know what how it goes 
I tried mine again and this time I turned off automatic graphics switching -before- opening the laptop and the fans didn’t go into overdrive 
I then turned automatic graphics switching back on and it seems to have carried on working as normal and so I am now thinking about buying a second monitor arm just to house the laptop. I posted a pic of my updated setup with monitor arm here: Post Your Workspace.
The arm I bought was this one - it’s incredibly well made is extremely sturdy - no play at all once you’ve moved your monitor to your desired position. Here’s a promo vid for it:
Want an alternative to an ultrawide monitor set-up? How about a big OLED TV 
Good for game devs who want to test things, but I think for the rest of us a HiDPI ultrawide would be better. Until that time comes, I think what we have now may be hard to beat if set up with monitor arms like in the video above - a larger Retina display and a smaller secondary display…
3 Likes
I love everything about that video. Very ASMR.
And, yes, I am convinced. My next screen will be an ultrawide (possibly curved) screen.
2 Likes
Yeah it was I love her keyboard (I love natural materials and especially wood :D)
Let us know how you get on when/if you get one! One thing I would recommend before getting one tho, is to get a monitor arm - I am surprised by how much difference it makes. You don’t need an expensive one for the LG5K either, as it is pretty light. Arms selling at around £30 here are getting lots of good reviews on Amazon.
Re ultrawide, I would personally go for curved, maybe even the more extreme end like the Samsung G9…
1 Like
^^ with regards to clamshell mode:
It’s a lot more silent, but still the fan starts up from time to time being very noisy! I do have a lot running (Docker running Elasticsearch, Rails running multiple processes for a websever, extractor threads interacting with third party APIs, as well as Chrome with 10+ tabs and an editor, Slack, and an email client) 
2 Likes
For Mac enthusiasts, does this monitors fit your high standards?
4 Likes
BenQ is a good monitor brand, it’s a shame they do not make any 5/6K 27/32" monitors as they would be good competition for apple/lg.
4 Likes
I’ve always liked BenQ monitors but agree about the res - why aren’t anyone else making displays with 220+PPI? Once you use a Retina display it’s hard to go back to anything else imo.
3 Likes
Thought this was an interesting set-up:
He says “You need a monitor that can display as much code as possible”, I wonder if he’s aware you can do split panes in code editors like #vim and #onivim (tho I think VSCode can as well). Split panes is one of my favourite features of Vim
2 Likes
At my previous work I had one vertical monitor and I really miss it, because it gives you a lot visibility into the code without the need to scroll, and this help so much to help understanding the code flow in that complicated logic or legacy code.
2 Likes
I think you can do that in all modern editors. Emacs, Vim, Atom, Sublime Text, VSCode, Coda, RubyMine etc.
3 Likes
Here’s another thing to consider - viewing distance:
Resting point of accommodation (where your eyes don’t use muscle tension to focus) is about 30" away, resting point of vergence is 40" (where your eyes don’t see ‘two’) - anything before those distances causes eye strain.
Lots of people buying OLED TVs (LG’s 48" seems popular) as a monitor - especially those doing video work.
I want to get a PS5 so I am considering one of these then putting my desk at an angle to see what it’s like as a monitor or second monitor.
Might be worth considering instead of those large curved monitors Ohm…
3 Likes
I don’t believe in mixing work with fun, so I’ll be having two distinct screens, one for each.
I don’t really think a large screen for coding will help me, like I don’t think I’ll work better on an 65" screen than I do on a 13". Screen real estate isn’t really the problem here.
I get the appeal of having a large screen for watching movies and playing games, especially console games. I use my Switch more often in the stand than handheld mode.
I’m currently waiting on my new TV to arrive (bought a Samsung QLED QE55Q90 55") so I might be able to try it out anyway with the old TV (a 42" screen)
3 Likes
Aside the screen size, be it 65" or any other one, just try to use any monitor that gives you more real estate, like a 4k one that doesn’t make you to feel the need to use scaling for reading the text, and then tell us if is not worth using that bigger real estate. The size of the 4k monitor will depend on the distance you sit from it, and how good your eyes are.
For me it makes a huge difference to be able to:
- See much more lines of code without the need to scroll
- Not having to switch back and forth between editor, browser and terminal. Doing it breaks my concentration, thus my dev flow becomes slower.
4 Likes