[rleigh]

You need to cater for both nowadays, I think.

I recently upgraded from a 26" 16:10 1920×1200 display to a similarly-sized 16:9 4K display. I ran them side-by-side for a few days to compare. The difference in text quality was night and day. After using the 4K for a week the quality of the old display looked terrible: blurry and unreadable. Like going back to 800×600! I sold it; I saw no value in it as a secondary display. If I do ever need a second, it will be another 4K. Or 8K when it's available and affordable. If you're developing, writing or reading all day long, the improved legibility makes such a difference for ease of reading, eyestrain and headaches that it makes little sense to retain the old.

We clearly need to support low DPI displays for some time to come; the installed base is huge. However, high DPI displays are the future, and it's going to be increasingly a requirement that they are also properly catered for.

I'm not a particularly big fan of the trend by Microsoft (for example) to use very thin fonts with Windows 10. Just because you can to show off the technology, doesn't mean you should. I'd prefer bolder, more easily legible text even with a hi-DPI display, even if the thin ones are fashionable for some reason.

[mark-r]

I only wish 4K was offered in 16:10, or just that 16:10 was more popular in general. I'll be hanging on to my 1920x1200 until it dies.

[rleigh]

Yes, it is annoying. However, it's not as bad as I thought it might be. Since the display is quite big in size, I generally use one window on each half of the display and I don't feel I'm really missing out on vertical space too much. The DPI is sufficiently high that I don't find the horizontal size too small either, which was certainly the case with half of a 1920×1200 display previously.

On the other hand, it's sufficiently big that I don't generally need such a large space. I could have gone with a physically smaller 4K display with a higher DPI and still been very happy.

[eiaoa]

My main problem with 16:9 is how obscenely long they are. I use my monitors to do work, not watch movies, so I have a lot more need for vertical real-estate.

Tilting them on their side doesn't help, because they're far too narrow that way.

[ramraj07]

Boy do I want to know what you feel about them ultrawide monitors

[eiaoa]

They are harbingers of the computing apocalypse and have shown that progress is a lie. By 2050 we'll be forced to use monitors with the aspect ratio of swords, because the manufactures are going to need to find another ratio to senselessly maximize after they've achieved peak thinness.

[noir_lord]

Same, I have 2560x1440 at 24" at work and a 4K 27" at home, the Dell 24" 1920x1200 I replaced look terrible (and they where good in their day).