Monitor Madness
How many monitors do you really need?
How many monitors do you really need?
Three.
“But Carson, clearly you have 8, how can you say that?”
Well, yes. But hear me out. I’ve been using computers for most of my life, for most of the things that people use computers for. I do engineering, software development, research, gaming, excel, photoshop, slack/signal/email, and of course, I have lots and lots of chrome tabs.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve spent considerable time with pretty much every reasonable screen configuration there is. And I really do think three monitors is the perfect sweet spot, possibly with one monitor in a vertical orientation.
Let’s go through each of the configurations
| One | Literal torture. I don’t know how anyone can stand only having one monitor. |
| Two | Upgrading from one to two monitors is genuinely life changing. This is the minimum acceptable number of monitors. |
| Three | The sweet spot. Going from two monitors to three won't get you a raise and a bigger house and that three axis milling machine you always wanted, but it will let you keep slack open to the side while you do your main work on the other two monitors, which is almost as good. |
| Four | Four is what I actually use most of the time. If money were no object, I’d prefer this to three, but honestly if you are effectively using virtual desktops I don’t see a huge difference. It's worth noting that I think I experience less neck strain with a dual vs central configuration. |
| Six | You have to actively search for things to do with all 6 monitors. You'll find yourself having an entire monitor dedicated to the weather, and another to GameStop updates. |
| Eight | Literal insanity. Please don't tell anyone, but I honestly can't remember the last time I used my 8 monitors to their full capacity. They do look fucking awesome on my desk tho. |
What resolution do you really need?
4k.
People I talk to seem to think that 1440p is the logical upgrade from 1080. It is not. It’s barely any different. I made a nice chart below that you can study, but some of the highlights are that 1440 is only 1.78 times more pixels than 1080 while 4k is a whopping four times more.
Many consider 720->1080 to be a somewhat minor upgrade, but there is a 32% bigger difference between 720 and 1080 than there is between 1080 and 1440. If you take a look at the megapixels column, 1440p is only 3.7 megapixels. Can you imagine having a 3.7 megapixel screen in the age of 100 megapixel smartphone cameras?
Anyway I think 1440p is a waste of money when 4k monitors are so cheap, and at least for productivity purposes (not gaming) I can’t understand why anyone buys anything else.
| Res | Ratio | W | H | MP | Norm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 360 | 360x1 | 640 | 360 | 0.2 | 0.11 |
| 720 | 360x2 | 1280 | 720 | 0.9 | 0.44 |
| 1080 | 360x3 | 1920 | 1080 | 2.1 | 1.00 |
| 1440 | 360x4 | 2560 | 1440 | 3.7 | 1.78 |
| ---- | 360x5 | 3200 | 1800 | 5.8 | 2.78 |
| 4k | 360x6 | 3840 | 2160 | 8.3 | 4.00 |
Interestingly, the monitor market seems to have a missing logical increment at 360x5. At 2.78x more pixels than 1080, this is much closer to the upgrade between 720 and 1080, and I’ve always found it strange that monitors of this size basically don’t exist.
me doing some totally normal coding work