Widescreen Monitor vs Dual Monitors

[itguy08]

Originally Posted by jhellwig
There is no reason to spend the money on 4K stuff unless you want it or do video and photo editing or some other design stuff. Spread sheets, word documents and webex run just fine on old monitors plus they use up less system resources if your computer or laptop is using onboard graphics.

Razor sharp text is one reason I'd never go below 4k. The text on the 4k monitor looks like printed paper compared to, say a 1080 screen. a 27" 4k Monitor has a DPI of 163.18 - that 34" Ultrawide the OP listed has a dpi of 81.72 or 1/2 - you'll definitely notice blocky text at that DPI.
I've got 2 LG 27UD58-B that are excellent and affordable. I did look at ultrawides but didn't like the lack of resolution.

 

[buster]

My laptop is a 6 year old lenovo that doesn't have a good graphics card. How would that look in a widescreen 4k monitor? Or any widescreen monitor?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by buster
My laptop is a 6 year old lenovo that doesn't have a good graphics card. How would that look in a widescreen 4k monitor? Or any widescreen monitor?

You should probably check the specs of your graphics card to see what max resolution it supports.

My 6 year old Lenovo laptop has Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip, and the max resolution it can support is 2560x1600, which falls short of 4K.

 

[PandaBear]

If you can afford it or someone pay for it, 1 big monitor is always better than a few smaller ones.

I cannot afford it and I salvage smaller monitors for free. 3 at work: 30", 27", 24". 1 at home: 27" (finally got rid of the 19" CRT over Xmas).

 

[buster]

So over the summer I ended up building a gaming/work PC and bought a Pixio 275h 1440p 95hz monitor. 27". I really like this monitor, however, I do at times miss having two monitors.

Being I also play games on this PC @ 1440P resolution, should I just buy another Pixio or upgrade to a large widescreen? I have a Lenovo 21" 1080p I could also use, but I'd have to lower the resolution of my PC down to 1080p.

 

[Touring5]

This past July I ditched my two monitor setup in favor of a single 43" 4K tv setup. Specifically I went with "TCL 43S425 43 Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart Roku LED TV" for about $225. Works great and frees up some desk space as I paired it with an inexpensive wall mount. This setup may not be perfect for playing games, even though the TCL's have pretty low lag - IDK as I don't use my PC for that. Also, I have to wear glasses to see the screen so maybe the resolution or dot pitch might not be perfect for young eyes (when mine were young we had VGA, lol).

As someone mentioned, it really is like having four monitors. You can scale down background windows and still see them well. Two tips for anyone doing this in Windows 10: 1) play with the screen scaling in setup to get things how you like, 2) in apps like firefox & thunderbird you can tweak the scaling further using about:config parameters.

 

[buster]

Nice. That's not a bad idea at all.

I ended up putting my 21" Lenovo monitor next to my 27" Pixio 1440p monitor. I didn't realize I can run both being they are two different resolutions at the same time. It works perfect for working at home.

 

[Malo83]

Happy with my 27

 

[javacontour]

I use 2 monitors because I'll run a VM in one while the host machine is in the other.