[Stratoscope]

Wait until you get to your 40's or 50's and your eyes lose the ability to adjust their focus distance. This will change everything.

First, you should get two pairs of glasses, progressives for general use and single vision lenses tuned to the specific distance to the monitors you use.

Since I use a ThinkPad for much of my work, my computer glasses are adjusted to a focus distance of about 20".

This means that all my monitors, in whatever configuration, also need to be about 20" from my eyes. And it means that large monitors are unusable unless they are curved, because the distance to my eyes changes too much from center to edge. I tried a 32" flat monitor at a company I was visiting a few years ago and it was hard to keep everything in focus.

My vision does correct well, so as long as I can keep the focus distance constant, small high-DPI monitors work best.

The sweet spot for me is the high-DPI monitor on my ThinkPad combined with one or two 24" 4K UHD external monitors. One external monitor is centered above the ThinkPad display in landscape orientation, the other is to the side in portrait orientation. The external monitors are also 20" from my eyes.

If I only have one external monitor, I like to have it on a mounting arm so I can use it in either of those orientations as needed.

Each monitor is positioned so the screen is centered relative to my eyes (i.e. I'm not viewing it at a slant).

By sticking with small monitors and adjusting them to all be at the same distance, I can easily see everything on all two or three of them.

Whatever you do about monitors, take care of your eyes! Don't do what I see too many people do, where they avoided getting glasses long after they should have and squint and crane their necks to try to read the text. Or even worse, they only get a pair of progressives, so when they try to read the screen they have to tilt their heads back and aim their eyes down through the close-up part of the glasses.

Getting proper prescription computer glasses - and getting the prescription renewed every couple of years in my 40's (when your vision changes most rapidly) - was one of the best things I ever did for myself.

[zepolen]

Sounds cheaper and better to get laser eye surgery in the long run.

[Stratoscope]

Laser eye surgery does not restore your eyes' ability to dynamically change their focus distance. Age will take that away regardless.

I have heard of people getting laser surgery where each eye is adjusted differently, one for near distance and one for far. In fact, that is how my eyes worked naturally for many years: I had good close-up vision in and good distance vision in the other.

This did let me avoid noticing how my vision was changing for some years, but it meant I was only getting clear focus in one eye and blurry vision in the other. When I got my first computer glasses and I could see the displays with both eyes, it was like night and day.

I've also seen references to new procedures that use multifocal implants, so you would essentially have some kind of progressive lenses in your eyes. This sounds terrible for computer use.

I don't see how any kind of surgery could give me the usability and flexibility that I have with my progressive glasses and computer glasses. With the computer glasses, all of my displays are in perfect focus with both eyes. And the progressives are perfect for other everyday activities - driving, reading on smaller devices, etc.

I like the ability to tune my vision to these different needs. With surgery it seems I would have to pick one or the other.