[gouthamve]

I just setup mine today, and I am not sure I recommend it.

I went from a 40" to a 52", and I'm just moving my head waaay too much and my shoulders hurt. It is curved, but very little imo, it's almost like it's flat. I'm going to try it for a week before making the call on whether to return it.

I feel like this needs a workflow where you do work in the middle and use the fringes for other applications that you rarely look at. Otherwise you're moving your head waaay too much and squinting a bunch.

[cosmic_cheese]

Based on personal experience, I think the upper bound for comfortably useful size at normal sitting distances is probably about 32", and even then I think there'd be better returns on adding vertical pixels to a ~27" monitor. A modern equivalent to the old 16:10 30" 2560x1600 monitors (ideally 2x scaling 5120x3200) would be great for example, but one could also imagine a 4:3 or 5:4 monitor with the same width (~23.5") as current 16:9 27" monitors.

[peppersghost93]

I'm still rocking a couple of 30 inch dell 2560x1600 monitors. They're about the perfect size and not dealing with scaling in Linux is nice. I'd pay a ton of money for a modern equivalent.

[kccqzy]

Same! My employer offered a choice of 32-inch and 40-inch monitors. I “upgraded” from 32 to 40 but I regretted it. I just don’t make use of the extra horizontal space effectively.

[kcrwfrd_]

I run a 42” 4k at 1:1 pixel ratio and I agree. It’s a little too big, but it does nice double duty for gaming and watching tv.

5120x3200 in 30” would be awesome.

[switchbak]

That was my issue with multiple monitors years ago - I'd be cranking my neck over too often (looking at logs, etc). I vastly prefer an ultrawide where I can put logs / monitors on the side flexibly.

I have a 34 inch now, and feel like I could use more space - but it's nice to know there's an upper bound. Do you feel like there's still room to go beyond 40, or is that the sweet spot?

[estearum]

3x27” high-PPI displays in portrait orientation is the winner and no one does it

The center display is always actually centered. The short edge of a high-PPI 27” screen is wide enough for actual normal width browser or IDE usage, but now you get much more vertical real estate on that window.

Not nearly as much neck movement as an ultra wide and since the entire array is pretty square, the neck movement is way more balanced.

[ProZsolt]

I went from 34"(3440x1440) which felt a little bit small to 38"(3840x1600) and it is nearly perfect. I can have my main window in the middle and 2 or 4 smaller windows (logs, chat, youtube, etc) on the side.

The only thing I want now is double pixel density.

[gouthamve]

I honestly think 40 is the sweet spot.

[swiftcoder]

When I owned a 40" monitor, I had to get a deeper desk and sit pretty far from it. Even then, I couldn't game on it, because games shove the HUD and minimal into the corners, and they were too far to the side to keep an eye on.

Can't picture a 52" being usable as a PC monitor, really.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I sometimes think that my 40" is too much because the extra space just ends up hosting distracting junk like Slack.

I also have a mild take that large screens make screen real estate cheap so less thought goes into user interface design. There's plenty of room just stick the widget anywhere!

[cosmic_cheese]

It'd be pretty interesting to compare how much the amount of information one can cram onto their ~27" screen has changed between 2005 and 2025, with the comparison points between between a Mac running OS X 10.6 and a Mac running macOS 26, which I think is a particularly salient and apples-to-apples comparison since Apple was selling 30" 2560x1600 displays back then, which are close cousins to modern 27" 2560x1440 displays.

My gut feeling is that the difference would be around 30-40%. Information density of the UI of OS X 10.6 and contemporary software was much higher than today's tabletized "bouncy castle" style UI.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

It would be interesting but I don't think that information density necessarily makes a good interface.

As a personal pet peeve example, developers love to cram a search bar (or browser tabs) into the top of the window. It's more dense but it's also harder to use and drag the window.

[cosmic_cheese]

True. More accurately, it's a combination of high density, judicial allocation of whitespace, and layouts that have been thought through. The 2000s versions of OS X were better in those regards too, though.

[fidotron]

This is why multiple monitors win: put the distractions on a whole other screen.

[Mixtape]

Seconding this. I have one for my work desk, where (surprisingly enough) it made a lot of sense. The DPI isn't as big of an issue as people make it out to be if your workflow doesn't depend on high density, but the curvature definitely could benefit from being a bit tighter. You need a fairly deep desk or a keyboard tray if you don't want to be turning your head a bunch.

That being said, having this in combination with PowerToys FancyZones has been fantastic. At any given time, I'm usually running 1-4 main working windows plus Signal, Outlook, and an RSS reader. This gives me more than enough real estate to keep them all available at a moment's notice. I have roughly 40% of the screen real estate dedicated to Signal, Outlook, and my RSS client, with the interior 60% being hotkey-mapped to divide in different proportions. Compared to my old setup (one ultrawide plus two verticals) it's been awesome.

[goshx]

I've been using a 49" monitor for almost four years. I have the center window taking half of the screen, and on the sides I have my email, messaging clients and other things I like to monitor from time to time.

Kinda like this: [ | | ]

I am on mac and I use an app called Magnet to manage the windows. I will only change this setup for a larger monitor.

[qwertox]

You'll get used to it. I have 3 24 inch monitors side by side. Center one is usually the editor, right one documentation or more editors, left one browsers with info.

[bilsbie]

Let me ask you ..Would it work better with a standing desk? It seems like moving around would feel more natural standing up.

[qwertox]

I have one and while it makes you generally more movable, you shouldn't stand all the time; it's just as unhealthy as permanent sitting.

[Tempest1981]

A chiropractor told me, "your best position is your next position".

Meaning to avoid staying in the same position for too long.

[maxglute]

Maybe it's a head turner vs eye mover thing. It's a lot less fatiguing moving eyes, which might not be option for glass wearers. I sit 2 feet away from my 50 inch OLED and moving eyes is much less work than windows management. Otherwise it is very workflow dependant, i.e. working on visuals or schematic diagrams.

[rconti]

Yeah, I'm on a Lenovo 5k2k 40" UW and it's never occurred to me to want something wider. Though I will admit I definitely noticed the loss of total real estate vs my old 3x 27" setup.

[fridder]

hmm, good to know. I have an lg 40in 5k2k that I rather like but this tempts me

[alchemist1e9]

> it's almost like it's flat

It is almost. 4200R means the circular radius is 4.2 meters for the curve. That’s too big a radius for using as a desk monitor that large imho.