Introduction

If you’re anything like me there’s nothing you love more than researching a tech purchase to death. I recently updated our standard equipment recommendations for our staff at work. As part of that effort, I researched modern monitor options for productivity work - in our case, software development. It turned into a fascinating journey down a very deep rabbit hole, so I decided to put together this blog post to share what I learned.

Establishing Our Goal

Choosing a monitor is about much more than just getting the maximum size and resolution you can afford. There are many factors to consider:

Resolution
This is what is often called your “screen real estate”. It dictates how much information you can fit on the screen at once.
Diagonal Size
You can get monitors in all sorts of sizes now - from 24" all the way to things like 49" ultrawides and 55" monsters.
Pixel Density
This is how many individual pixels per inch (PPI) there are.
Aspect Ratio
The aspect ratio is expressed as X horizontal pixels for every Y vertical pixels. A common aspect ratio is 16:9, meaning there are 16 horizontal pixels for every 9 vertical pixels. This, combined with the monitor size, determines the physical dimensions (height and width) of the screen.
Viewing Distance
How far away from the screen to position your eyes to maximize comfort and content quality.
Refresh Rate
How many times per second the monitor is refreshing the content on the screen.
Panel Type
Several different technologies are used to manufacture display panels, each with strengths and weaknesses.
Other Features
Monitors can serve a lot of other purposes than simply displaying visual content. They may have audio, peripheral connection, docking, switching and ergonomic features.

The most important thing is to first understand your use case. There is no perfect one-size-fits-all monitor. For example, gamers want an immersive experience, and flinging your head from side to side to check out the peripheral action may be part of the fun. That doesn’t sound nearly as fun when writing code for 8 hours a day.

For the rest of this article, I will assume our primary purpose is programming, but I think much of what works well for programming can be extended to the general knowledge worker productivity use case. For programming (and most business work) I imagine most people would say that the goal is to get the maximum screen real estate with content at a comfortable size for reading into your field of view such that it doesn’t require too much head and neck movement to see everything.

Achieving this is a tradeoff amongst all of the factors I listed above. Let’s break them into two groups:

The Primary Factors - Resolution and Diagonal Size - from which Pixel Density, Aspect Ratio, and Viewing Distance derive - help you choose what size and resolution of monitor is best.

The Rest - Refresh Rate, Panel Type, Window Management, and Other Features help you differentiate monitors within each size-resolution segment.

In the next sections, I’ll walk through how to use the Primary Factors to evaluate a monitor based on its size and resolution, and then how to evaluate the other factors to make the best choice within the size-resolution category you’ve selected.

The Primary Factors

I’m about to firehose you with a ton of information, but in the end the Primary Factors are all about finding the balance between maximizing screen real estate and keeping things comfortable for long days of work. Let’s talk through how each Factor contributes to the equation.

The Fundamental Primary Factors - Resolution and Size

These are the two most critical factors in making a monitor choice.

Resolution describes how many physical pixels of light the monitor has for displaying information on the screen. It’s how much “screen real estate” you have to work with. For programming and other office work, this dictates how many lines of text/code can fit on the screen at one time and how many windows you can have open.

Diagonal Size is how physically large the panel is, which in turn dictates how physically large each pixel is. Larger panels of the same resolution have larger pixels and therefore have larger content (NOT more content - that’s resolution). At equal resolution, the same font at the same size will appear bigger on a 32" screen vs. a 24" screen. Diagonal size also contributes to the overall physical height and width of the screen, which in turn dictates minimum viewing distance to fit the screen comfortably into your field of view without too much eye/head/neck movement.

The Derived Primary Factors - Density, Aspect Ratio, and Viewing Distance

These factors are all computed from the diagonal size and resolution of the monitor.

Pixel Density - Not all resolution-size combinations work well for monitors. For each resolution, there is a sweet spot range of size - too big, you start to see individual pixels too easily. Too small, and everything appears uncomfortably tiny on the screen, and may require scaling content up to make it usable. Pixel density is expressed by the number of pixels per inch, or PPI. The PPI on monitor panels is the same in both dimensions (in other words, the pixels are squares), so we can simplify this to just one number. The higher the PPI, the sharper that content will appear to your eye. Low PPIs can appear to make the content blurry. High PPI can make photos, videos and games look amazingly sharp, but it can also make text, icons and other UI elements tiny. For productivity work, the sweet spot PPI for eye comfort for most people is about 110 PPI when using typical font sizes.

Aspect Ratio - The aspect ratio, combined with the diagonal size, determines how tall and wide a screen will be. Wider screens are better for fitting more windows side-by-side, while taller screens are better for minimizing vertical scrolling within applications. Aspect ratios that are too tall or too wide can create ergonomic problems when combined with larger diagonal size screens. For programming, the aspect ratio affects how many editors and other windows you can have displayed simultaneously as well as how many lines of code you can see in the editor at one time.

Viewing Distance

There are two elements that go into figuring out the appropriate viewing distance.

  • Part 1 - Visual Acuity

    For every monitor, there is a particular distance away from the screen such that you cannot make out individual pixels but you can still see all the detail that the monitor is capable of. That’s the visual acuity distance, and it varies based on the pixel density of the monitor and your personal vision. Research indicates a person with 20/20 vision can notice details as small as 1/60th of a degree, so using that fact and the monitor’s PPI, you can figure out the visual acuity distance - the point where 1 degree of view contains exactly 60 pixels. Sitting closer than the visual acuity distance may lead to eye strain and loss of sharpness as the eye is theoretically capable of seeing individual pixels and the voids between them. Sitting farther than the visual acuity distance means you are potentially unable to discern all the detail the monitor is capable of providing. In practice, many users sit closer to their monitors than the visual acuity distance (for example, the visual acuity distance for a 24” 1080p display is 38”!) Look at your screen right now - can you make out individual pixels? If so, you’re closer than the visual acuity distance.

  • Part 2 - Field of View

    There is also a minimum viewing distance based on fitting the entire screen into a comfortable field of view without requiring side-to-side head movement. Research shows that the human eye can comfortably perceive detail in about a 70 degree field of view without turning the neck. Therefore, ideally you should sit far enough away from your monitor so that the edges are no more than 35 degrees from center when looking straight ahead (for a total field of view of 70 degrees).

There is no one ideal viewing distance, but most people doing productivity work are going to find it most comfortable to be around the visual acuity distance as long as the minimum viewing distance is less than the visual acuity distance. There used to be a rule of thumb that you should sit about an arm’s length away from your monitor but for today’s larger displays, this often is no longer sufficient.

Trade-offs and Compromises

I’m going to talk a lot about ideals in this article. Life is rarely ideal, and if you can’t get the ideal resolution, screen real estate, PPI, or viewing distance, it’s not the end of the world. The ideal solution rarely exists, and even if it did, it would be a different ideal for every person based on their own needs and characteristics. You will more than likely be making some sort of compromise with any monitor choice. My goal here is not to discourage you by illustrating that every monitor choice is flawed in some way, but rather to educate, so that you can make those compromises from an informed point of view.

Now let’s illustrate using these factors to evaluate monitors by working through a couple of examples.

Using the Primary Factors to Make a Size-Resolution Choice

Example 1: A 27" WQHD monitor

  • Resolution: 2560x1440
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Physical Dimensions: 13.2" high x 23.5" wide
  • Pixels Per Inch (PPI): 109
  • Minimum Viewing Distance: 16.8"
  • Visual Acuity Distance: 31"

This is a 27" diagonal size monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1440. That yields a 16:9 aspect ratio and a screen that is 13.2" high by 23.5" wide and which has a PPI of 109.

Pixels Per Inch (PPI)

The first thing to notice is that 109 PPI - nearly our 110 PPI ideal for productivity work! So far so good, moving right along.

Screen Real Estate

Next, let’s consider how much content you can fit on this screen.

Let’s start with the easier case: vertical space. The number of lines of code you can see at once can really help understand the context of the code you’re looking at and reduce scrolling up and down through the source file, so this is an important metric for productivity. When I display my preferred VS Code editor setup on a WQHD monitor, I get 55 lines of code visible.

Horizontal space is next. Here’s where it really helps to spend some time really paying attention to how you are using your applications. Since my use case is programming, I considered a typical programming setup. When I am coding, I typically have VS Code open as well as a browser for previewing my work or accessing reference material, and also Slack to stay in touch with the team. Evernote for notes. Spotify for background music. I spent some time looking at those apps to figure out how much horizontal real estate they need for comfortable use.

For VS Code, I ended up needing about 1100 pixels for laying out the editor with all of the elements I like and still leave room for a little more than 80 columns of code (aside: learning why 80 columns of code is a well-known standard is a fun Google rabbit hole to go down). For my browser, it seemed that all of the sites I visit frequently started triggering responsive design around 1024 pixels so that’s my minimum, but I found a slightly wider window to be more comfortable - let’s say 1100 for a browser too. Slack also surprisingly came in at around 1100 at my preferred settings, although I found I could zoom out one level and shrink the side bar a bit and get by with 1000 if necessary. Evernote was comfortable even at 850 pixels if not a little less, and Spotify was also fine around 850. Those are the main apps I would tend to use through a day of coding.

With those values in mind, let’s consider how I might utilize this real estate. If I placed VS Code on the left side and the browser next, I’ve consumed 2200 pixels, leaving only 360 to work with. Since I can’t reasonably fit a third column of apps there, I’d likely just allocate the leftover across VS Code and the browser and call it a day. I’d have to alt-tab to everything else as needed. I’d especially dislike not being able to have Slack simultaneously visible - perhaps I would use my laptop screen for this purpose instead.

So to sum up, I can fit an editor with 55 lines of code and a browser on a 27” WQHD monitor for my typical work style.

Viewing Distance and Ergonomics

How far away should you sit from this monitor for productivity work? We need to calculate both the visual acuity distance and the minimum viewing distance.

The math for calculating the visual acuity distance gets a little fancy if you haven’t thought about it since high school, but thankfully there are charts online for screen size and resolution based on someone with 20/20 vision (naturally or corrected). Referencing one of those, the ideal viewing distance is about 31" for a 27" WQHD monitor. This is actually quite far away - in my current setup it is hard to get 31" back from the monitor. However, sitting a few inches closer is probably fine, especially if you have less than 20/20 vision, just pay attention to potential eye fatigue issues.

The minimum viewing distance calculation is straightforward trigonometry. We know the width of the monitor so we can use 1/2 of that, plus the desired angle (35 degrees, for half of that 70 degree field of view we’re after) and the 90 degree right angle that our line of sight makes with the plane of the screen, to do our calculation. This yields 16.8" as the minimum distance to keep the entire monitor within a 70 degree field of view.

Now we know our two distances - 16.8" for minimum viewing distance and 31" for visual acuity distance. So what is the ideal distance? Well, there’s no one ideal, but since the minimum viewing distance is less than the visual acuity distance, most folks should start out somewhere around the visual acuity distance of 31". If you have less than perfect eyesight and/or find this uncomfortably far, a bit closer might work better.

Conclusion

This setup isn’t ideal. The 31" viewing distance is a little problematic but manageable with eye fatigue good practices that we all should be practicing anyway. The limitation of 2 visible windows feels constraining for my workflow though. Let’s see if we can improve upon this in the next examples.

Example 2: Dual 27" WQHD Monitors Side-by-Side

  • Resolution: 5120x1440
  • Aspect Ratio: 32:9
  • Physical Dimensions: 13.2" high x 47" wide
  • Pixels Per Inch (PPI): 110
  • Visual Acuity Distance: 31"
  • Minimum Viewing Distance: 32" (with one in portrait) or 35” (both landscape)

What about if we put two of these 27" WQHD monitors side by side? To simplify this example, let’s ignore the fact that there will be a bezel between the two for now. That yields a logical 5120x1440 panel with an aspect ratio of 32:9, and a physical width of 47".

Pixels Per Inch (PPI)

The PPI doesn’t change from the previous example - we doubled the horizontal physical size but that also doubles the number of pixels, so it’s a washout and the PPI stays the same.

Screen Real Estate

For years our common work dual monitor setup has been dual 24" 1080p monitors. 1080p is a pretty limited resolution - a 1080p doesn’t always do two side-by-side windows comfortably (the 2200 pixels I need for my two primary apps don’t fit on one 1920x1080 screen), so what I typically do with 1080p monitors is maximize an application on each,making it effectively still just a 2 application setup. One of the main reasons I am doing this deep dive is to provide an evidence-driven rationale for upgrading our default configuration, so I’m hoping the WQHD version of dual monitors improves on this.

Of course, the screen real estate doubles from our prior example in the horizontal direction. So that means we could get four application windows side-by-side! Perhaps by using the second monitor for the apps that are less frequently used and require less real estate, we might be able to tile a couple more apps in there as well.

We still have the same 55 lines of code vertically.

Viewing Distance and Ergonomics

Visual acuity distance doesn’t change since we have the same PPI, so we’re still at 31" there.

Now let’s calculate the minimum viewing distance. Remember for now we’re ignoring the bezel and pretending that it’s a big 47" wide 5120x1440 panel. Updating our trigonometry with this value, we get a minimum viewing distance of 35"! And remember, there will actually be a bezel between these two monitors, so that makes everything a little wider still, further impacting minimum viewing distance.

This is the first example where minimum viewing distance exceeded the visual acuity distance. What that means is that if you sit at the visual acuity distance to be able to see all the detail, you’re going to need to do a little more musculoskeletal work to see all the regions of the screen. Alternatively, you could back up to the minimum viewing distance, sacrificing some ability to see detail.

However, I don’t know too many people sitting 35" from their monitors - it can feel unnatural and require a very deep desk. It is even somewhat hard to sit 31" away at the visual acuity distance. So, a user with this configuration may have to sit a bit closer, which then requires even more side-to-side neck movement throughout the day, and they may also start to see some pixelation or fuzziness in the content.

These effects can be somewhat mitigated if you are intentional and put the most frequently used content closer to the center of the viewing area, saving the edges for less frequently accessed windows. Another solution is to turn one of the monitors into portrait mode. This brings the minimum viewing distance back down to a somewhat more manageable 32” - but then you may have issues with the vertical ergonomics! That monitor will now be tall, and you might need to lift your neck up to use it effectively.

And, you still have a bezel straight ahead. Many users would instead treat one of the monitors as primary and center their body on the primary monitor rather than the center of the two-monitor span, which forces the second monitor farther out to the side, potentially exacerbating things further. This again may be somewhat mitigated if the frequently accessed content is mostly kept on the monitor straight ahead, but it’s not ideal.

You could angle the monitors in towards you, which reduces the overall width a little and brings more of the screen into your comfortable field of view to also help a little.

It’s all a series of tradeoffs! Definitely not as ergonomic as the prior example, and may require some thoughtful management to mitigate negative effects.

Conclusion

Two monitors sounds like a great idea at first! And maybe it is, but consider whether your working style and environment is conducive to the additional viewing distance and/or whether you’re willing to compromise on ergonomics in favor of the extra screen real estate.

Beyond the actual ergonomics there’s also the overall aesthetics. WQHD makes text and UI look too small on 24" monitors, so you need a 27" panel for effective WQHD. These take up a surprising amount of space - I feel that two of these side-by-side is a lot more imposing and desk-dominating than two 24" 1080p monitors.

Note that 2x 27" WQHD monitors are exactly the same as one 49" Ultrawide UWQHD monitor, so this same analysis would mostly apply to that configuration too, although the lack of a bezel helps a little bit. 49" ultrawides are still quite expensive so I did not include that example separately here.

Example 3: A 32" 4k Monitor

  • Resolution: 3840x2160
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Physical Dimensions: 15.7" high x 27.9" wide
  • Pixels Per Inch (PPI): 138
  • Recommended Scaling Factor: 125%
  • Effective Resolution (for scaled text/UI): 3072x1728
  • Effective PPI (for scaled text/UI): 110
  • Visual Acuity Distance: 24"
  • Minimum Viewing Distance: 20"

This example is for a 32" diagonal size monitor with 4k (3820x2160) resolution. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio and a screen that is 15.7" high and 27.9" wide with a PPI of 138.

Pixels Per Inch (PPI)

The first thing we notice about this example is that the PPI is much higher than our previous example. With a PPI of 138, that media and game content is going to look great, but typical size fonts and UI elements are going to be pretty small and tough for most people to comfortably read.

What to do? Time for a side trip to learn about scaling…

Scaling with HiDPI Monitors

This is where we introduce the concept of scaling. Scaling is when we use more than one physical pixel to represent a single virtual pixel. The Apple Retina screens popularized this concept for computer monitors. Retina screens were originally developed for phones and other mobile devices. Because users tend to view these devices from a closer distance, more PPI were needed to present smooth content and prevent users from seeing individual pixels. Modern phones can have PPIs well over 300 or even 400 (there exist phones with 4k screens!)

When Apple first brought Retina to laptops, they used a panel that had a PPI of 227. That’s a ridiculously high PPI for computer use, so to make the screen usable, they applied a scaling factor of 200% - in other words, they used a square of 4 physical pixels to represent one logical pixel. This brought the effective PPI of the Retina screen down to 113.5, very close to the sweet spot.

Fortunately, operating systems and modern applications have pretty smart scaling capabilities - they can apply the scaling to fonts and UI widgets to make them easier to read, but allow images and video to still benefit from the full native resolution. Images, videos and games appear sharper, with less pixelation along lines and borders, because they can use every one of those pixels independently, while UI and text elements take advantage of scaling to reach a more manageable size.

Since Apple’s popularization of high-PPI-density for computer monitors, the market has exploded with options, with 4k and even 8k panels becoming commonplace today. Together, these high-pixel-density monitors are known as HiDPI.

Let’s use scaling to address the issue for our example. If we apply a 125% scaling factor to this configuration, we’d get an effective resolution of 3072x1728 and an effective PPI of 110, right at the magic sweet spot! Perfect, right?

Scaling purists are immediately going to notice that 125% is not integer scaling. In the Retina example, every virtual pixel used the same number of physical pixels - each virtual pixel is represented using a 2x2 square of physical pixels. When every virtual pixel uses the same number of physical pixels, that’s known as integer scaling. However, when scaling by 125%, things don’t map that neatly - you can’t just share or split a physical pixel across two virtual pixels - the technology doesn’t work that way. When you can’t evenly divide your physical pixels into virtual pixels, you instead need to do something called non-integer, or fractional, scaling.

To illustrate the challenge, consider the very simple example of a 1 pixel black line on a white background. If we apply 125% scaling to it, then the line becomes a 1.25 pixel line. But we can’t just turn .25 of a pixel black. What can we do?

There needs to be a strategy to deal with this inconvenient fact, and there are a number of techniques applied. Modern apps themselves can have HiDPI support to varying levels. For example, the app could dynamically resize the line back down to a 1 pixel line in this situation. A HiDPI app is usually the best case scenario and leads to the best results, but if the app is not HiDPI-aware, then the OS has a few options. It could employ a brute force option and just let the majority owner get that physical pixel - in this case, since 0.75 of that pixel would belong to the white background, it could just turn that pixel white. This would effectively turn the line back into a 1 pixel line.

This works fine for our simple example, but if that pixel was part of a curve or a colorful image or a font character, the quality loss will start to become noticeable as blurriness or jaggedness. There are some more advanced tricks, like resampling algorithms, anti-aliasing techniques like blending pixel values (in this case a light gray might be produced for the contested pixel), or even fancier tricks like sub-pixel manipulation. Each pixel in a panel has three sub-pixels (red, green and blue, RGB), and some approaches take advantage of this to manipulate them independently for better results.

Regardless of the techniques applied, inevitably there’s going to be some quality loss with fractional scaling. Fractional scaling in a HiDPI environment is a balancing act. You’re starting with more pixels to begin with, so you’re starting at a higher quality. Then you apply fractional scaling, which sacrifices some of that quality. The question of whether or not you end up at a higher quality than a lower resolution panel would provide natively is dependent on the quality of the fractional scaling implementation, the specific content being fractionally scaled, and the subjective perception of the user. Many people feel this tradeoff is an obvious improvement, while others feel the opposite.

Screen Real Estate

The other tradeoff with scaling is that you’re losing some of the screen real estate benefit that a 4k panel provides. At native resolutions, 4k has 2.25x, or 125% more, pixels as the WQHD/1440p example above. With the scaling applied, that reduces to 1.44x, or 44% more, pixels.

Still, 44% more real estate is nothing to sneeze at. With the effective resolution of 3072x1728, using the same assumptions and calculations from prior examples, we could probably squeeze out that third column of apps with a few minor compromises. We’re also getting 20% more pixels vertically, and those can all go to additional lines of code, so we could see about 66 lines of code on this monitor.

You can see that 4k, even scaled, will provide additional useful real estate, just not as much as you might think at first.

Viewing Distance and Ergonomics

If we’re happy with our scaling situation, we then also consider physical dimensions and ergonomics. Again consulting any of the many handy online charts, we get a visual acuity distance of 24". Here we start to really see 4k shine - you can sit a lot closer and still not see pixelation, thanks to the extra PPI. As far as minimum viewing distance, applying some simple trigonometry again, we get 20”. These values are easily achieved in most office setups.

Conclusion

Using a 4k monitor for programming work is almost always going to require applying a scaling factor, which means that you’re not getting quite the screen real estate boon as it may seem at first glance. It could still be a good choice if the OS and apps you use do a decent job with fractional scaling - because it still does provide a 44% real estate boost over 1440p, and since more physical pixels are being used, things may appear sharper overall even with fractional scaling.

Perhaps the biggest advantage this example has over the single 27" WQHD panel is the better viewing distance parameters - you can be at a much closer and more natural distance and not lose detail while still keeping everything in a comfortable field of view. If your job involves graphic or video work, or you are buying this monitor for a home office setup for both work and gaming, the appeal grows even more. As a single-panel solution, I believe this example is far superior to the 27" WQHD.

Example 4: 34" UWQHD Ultrawide

  • Resolution: 3440x1440
  • Aspect Ratio: 21:9
  • Physical Dimensions: 31.4" wide x 13.1" high (but often curved)
  • Pixels Per Inch (PPI): 110
  • Visual Acuity Distance: 31"
  • Minimum Viewing Distance: 22.5"

Ultrawides have exploded in popularity the last few years, but they’ve made far more inroads into the gaming space than the productivity space. Having said that, there are productivity-focused ultrawides on the market. Would one of those compete well against these other examples? Let’s examine a 34" UWQHD ultrawide monitor, which provides 3440x1440 resolution in a 21:9 aspect ratio.

Pixels Per Inch (PPI)

In this example, we are right at the PPI sweet spot, so we’re great there.

Screen Real Estate

Since we’re still at the same vertical resolution of 1440 as we were in our first two WQHD examples, we’re still talking about fitting about 55 lines of code in the editor. The big advantage of using an ultrawide is to fit more applications side-by-side. With 3440 pixels to play with, we’re easily fitting 3x 1100 application columns, with even a little extra leftover to distribute. We could have that code editor, browser, and a third column of Slack and Evernote, for example.

Viewing Distance

The PPI is basically the same as the 27" 1440 panel above (probably just a rounding error), so we can assume a 31" visual acuity distance.

For minimum viewing distance let’s ignore the curvature for a minute and pretend this panel were flat. If that were the case, using our trig again, we get about 22.5" - quite manageable. The curvature will also help this out a little more by pulling the sides in slightly closer.

So here again we’re going to want to start out sitting about 31" out, moving a few inches closer if that proves uncomfortable.

Conclusion

We finally have an example with three very comfortable app columns and no bezels to worry about. That’s a winning combination. The visual acuity distance of 31" remains a bit problematic.

My Size-Resolution Pick for Programming Work

First I’d like to consider the dual monitor option. When I set out on this analysis I really thought dual monitor was going to be the obvious choice for productivity work - even today the overwhelming opinion online seems to be that dual monitors are far superior to one, even a 4k or ultrawide, for productivity work.

It is true that the “dual 27" WQHD monitors” example we considered is the only one that gets four applications side-by-side, but it presents some troublesome ergonomics. Either you center them on the desk and have a bezel in front of you forcing you to have your attention off center 100% of the time, or you center one of them and put the other angled to the side, which means that part of that side monitor is way beyond your 70 degree field of view and you have to crank not just your neck but your torso and chair to work on that monitor for anything but brief moments. I actually have dual monitors at the moment, keeping one centered and one off to the right at an angle. I find that I don’t use the right half of that second monitor much, as it’s too far to the periphery. If you commonly work across four application windows this still might be the best setup for you as long as you work through the ergonomic concerns. I don’t generally have that need, so I’m ruling out the dual monitor option.

Next I’ll consider the two 16:9 single monitor options: the 27" WQHD (2560x1440) vs. the 32" 4k (3840x2160). Physically, the 4k monitor will be about 2.5" taller and 4" wider than the WQHD monitor so there may be desk space and ergonomic considerations, but they seem pretty manageable. Resolution-wise, the 4k is 50% more pixels than the WQHD in both directions, but that’s before scaling. After scaling, the 4k is effectively down to 3072x1728 which is 20% more pixels in both directions. The main surprise I see here is that after scaling a 4k can’t quite fit 3 full-size application windows side by side. The 4k does provide a ~850 pixel third column, that’s likely enough for things like Slack, especially if I steal a few pixels from another column like the web browser. I’d likely still pick the 4k here. I’d have to deal with scaling which isn’t ideal, but the extra pixels will probably at the very least balance out the loss of quality due to the scaling, plus I’d get the full benefit of 4k for any videos, image work or gaming I did, and some potential eye strain benefits at my typical viewing distance. I’m eliminating the single 27" WQHD option, but I could definitely see someone favoring the 27" WQHD for desk space, ergonomic, or avoiding-scaling reasons, and that would be a perfectly reasonable choice for one-16:9-monitor programming work.

Finally, let’s compare the 32" scaled 4k (3072x1728) monitor to the 34" ultrawide UWQHD (3440x1440). In terms of screen real estate, the ultrawide adds another 11% of pixels horizontally vs. the scaled 4k. Those extra horizontal pixels of the ultrawide finally get us into a comfortable three-full-windows-across-on-one-monitor setup. It’s still not quite 1200 pixels in each column, but it’s darn close - about 1,150 in each column, or two 1,200 pixel columns leaving a rather viable 3rd column of 1,040 pixels, enough for Slack, Evernote, Spotify or the odd terminal or file explorer window.

On the other hand the scaled 4k adds a significant 20% additional pixels vertically. In my VS Code setup, I would get close to 70 lines of code on screen vs. 50 with the ultrawide UWQHD, also compelling.

So which is it? I’m don’t think there’s a wrong choice between the 32" 4k and the 34" ultrawide UWQHD. Some folks will rather have a wider third column, and may also prefer the ergonomics of the ultrawide a bit better (the shorter and wider panel in the field of view - for those who’d rather look more side to side than up and down), and the three-column layout feels very natural and would allow me to keep my primary window of focus effectively dead center on the screen, as well as most likely allow me to keep my laptop screen closed any time I am docked, which I prefer.

On the other hand, if you’re the type of developer that likes to split code windows vertically, the extra vertical real estate of the 4k might be a better match. If you have excellent eyesight, maybe you can get away with narrower application window columns and work with 3 columns on the 4k.

What did I choose? Both, actually. I thought I would prefer the ultrawide so I used that for several months. I did love the very natural feel of the three full-size application windows side-by-side, but over time it began to feel too stubby vertically. I think this is personal preference, and I think this is still a strong choice for productivity work. Having said that, I switched to the 32" 4k and have been using that setup for over a year. It really suits my work style, I love the vertical real estate. I also learned that I am not that disciplined with my window management - it’s eventually devolves into more of a jumbled mess that I navigate with alt-tab, and that suits me fine.

Consider Other Uses of the Monitor

If you’re using the monitor for something other than work on occasion, consider what those additional use cases are going to be. For gaming, the greater peripheral vision provided by the ultrawide’s 21:9 aspect ratio may feel more immersive, and your rig might not be powerful enough to take advantage of 4k gaming anyhow - unless you have a top of the line setup, you’re probably going to have to sacrifice image quality for the extra resolution to keep a decent FPS in your FPS (see what I did there?) For media, 4k is going to give you the ability to play movies and television shows shot in 4k natively (technically not always quite true, since movie 4k is slightly wider than consumer 4k, but close enough). The 4k might be the best for “work and media watching” while the ultrawide may win for “work and gaming”. Or, if you have $900+ to spend, you can get a 34" 5k (5120x2160) ultrawide and have the best of all worlds.

Considering the Rest of the Factors

Now that you’ve figured out your size-resolution target, how do you pick which monitor to get? That’s where the secondary factors come into play.

Refresh Rate

Refresh Rate is a contentious one so I want to tackle this one first. Monitors come in refresh rates from 60Hz up to 240Hz. This statement will definitely get some people riled up, but unless you are a competitive FPS type gamer or have special vision considerations, there is no need to worry about refresh rate. 60Hz is perfectly fine for productivity work. I’ve seen a lot of misinformation on the internet about refresh rates that causes people to worry about refresh rate a lot more than they need to. For non-gaming usages, there are far more important considerations than refresh rate that will make a much bigger impact on comfort, including things like Flicker Free and Low Blue Light technologies. The only thing a higher refresh rate is doing for the productivity worker is making mouse movements and browser scrolling a bit smoother, and those things should be way down on the priority list. I would not put much weight on a refresh rate > 60Hz unless you are also going to be using this monitor for gaming, in which case the higher refresh rate can be helpful if your GPU can generate enough frames to make use of it.

Panel Type

There are three main panel types - TN, VA, and IPS - each with pros and cons. IPS panels are the best at presenting consistent results with accurate color reproduction and minimal distortion through the widest range of viewing angles. The downside of IPS panels are that they traditionally cannot do super high refresh rates (that’s changing a bit recently), but we just covered why that’s not important for productivity work. IPS panels are also not as good at contrast ratio as a VA panel, which will generate much deeper blacks. For productivity work though, the standard IPS contrast ratio of 1000:1 is fine, making IPS the best choice for most productivity work. For gaming, fast refresh rates are important. TN panels excel at this, but are poor for color accuracy and have viewing angle issues. VA panels are somewhat in between and a good choice for a multi-use monitor, and they are a bit more affordable than IPS.

Flicker Free, Low Blue Light and Anti-Glare

These technologies help reduce eye strain. Most modern monitors have flicker free technology but it’s best to verify. Fewer advertise low blue light (LBL) features, but this can also be helpful for reducing eye strain. If your monitor doesn’t have this and you’re having issues, you can get add-on screen filters or blue light filter coatings on glasses. Anti-glare can also help reduce eye strain, and many monitors have an anti-glare screen. If yours doesn’t, third-party filters are available as a compromise solution.

Other Specs

My contention beyond these two items is that all of the other specs don’t matter much for standard productivity work in a standard office or home office environment. Response time, color gamut, certified HDR, FreeSync/G-Sync, brightness, and so on are potentially important for gamers or creatives, but for standard productivity work, they are unlikely to be relevant.

Non-Visual Features

Ports

Most monitors are going to give you multiple options for connecting the video signal these days (HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C/Thunderbolt, etc…) but pay attention to the non-video-related ports too. A USB-C hub with power delivery can be very helpful if you’d like to have a one-cable solution for docking a USB-C laptop. Not all USB-C hubs are created equally, so pay attention - for instance, some monitors include an Ethernet port, which is very handy. Monitors also vary widely in the type and number of USB ports they provide, so be sure to understand all the peripherals you’d like to attach. You can always add a USB hub dongle if you need more, but less clutter is better. And make sure your monitor’s USB hub can deliver enough power to drive all of your peripherals and charge the laptop at the same time.

Audio

I was surprised to see how many high-end monitors that are supposedly designed for productivity do not include built-in speakers. If you’re a gamer, you’re likely going to have better standalone speakers or headphones, but for a productivity monitor it’s nice to not have to clutter your desk just to have some background music, hear the audio of a tutorial video, or do a quick videoconference. I value monitors with built-in speakers for this reason.

Ergonomic Features

Once you have a size and resolution you like, you should also think about how you’ll achieve the correct vertical positioning. After all of this work, it’d be a shame if we couldn’t get it ergonomically correct! There are two factors to consider: where to position the height of the screen relative to your eyes, and how much your head and neck need to move up and down to see the entire screen.

For where to position the monitor vertically relative to your eyes, research has produced two facts relevant to this discussion. First, human eyes at rest tend to settle into a 15 degree downward gaze. Second, it is less fatiguing to look below this resting point than above. Put together, you want to keep your entire monitor screen within a range of about 0 degrees to -45 degrees (so, 15 degrees above and 30 degrees below the eye’s natural -15 degree resting angle). If the top of your monitor is currently above eye level, you’re probably experiencing more strain and fatigue than is ideal.

Let’s see how well this works for a larger monitor, like the 4k example. In that example the screen is 15.7" in height and the visual acuity distance is 24". If you position the middle at -15 degrees relative to your eye and sit at 24", the top will be at about +4 degrees and the bottom will be at -38 degrees. So it’s a little out of spec - if you could position the middle a few degrees lower (or raise your chair a few degrees higher!), you might relieve a little bit of strain by not having to look up quite so much. Since the 4k monitor is the tallest one we considered, the others should all be easier to manage vertically and without doing the math, they are likely within spec when keeping the center of the monitor at -15 degrees. You may run into issues with monitors in portrait mode, though.

Making sure that your monitor stand or arm has ample vertical adjustment is helpful here. In addition, tilt is useful, so that once you put the center of the monitor at -15 degrees you can tilt the bottom out towards you a bit so that your face remains perpendicular to the monitor.

Final Considerations

Here are some final considerations as you research your next monitor purchase.

Window Management Software

Today’s larger screens mean more application windows to manage, so it is helpful to have a window management strategy that helps you be efficient and productive. I recommend moving beyond the built-in OS features for window management and considering a third-party solution that is more flexible and customizable to your specific workflow. A lot of people recommend DisplayFusion for this purpose, but there are many other options out there. It is worth taking the time to learn one of these to the point where managing windows and zones becomes second nature, helping you get the most out of all the screen real estate modern monitors can provide.

MacOS-Specific Issues

For monitors with integrated speakers, you will need to find a third-party solution for controlling the volume of those speakers. That’s because MacOS doesn’t natively support a standard called CEC (Consumer Electronics Control). Thankfully there are a number of third-party solutions which add this capability. One I’ve used is called MonitorControl.

References and Further Reading

Here’s a list of sites I referenced while researching this topic and article. This was only possible due to the wealth of information many folks have chosen to share on the web, and I thank them all!

Viewing Distance / Visual Acuity Information and Calculators
https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/whats-the-best-viewing-distance-for-a-1440p-gaming-monitor.html
https://stari.co/tv-monitor-viewing-distance-calculator
https://toolstud.io/video/screensize.php
http://screen-size.info
https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/whats-the-best-viewing-distance-for-a-1440p-gaming-monitor.html
https://www.ultraselective.com/blog/optimal-viewing-distance
https://www.calculator.net/triangle-calculator.html
https://www.esportstales.com/tech-tips/ideal-distance-to-sit-away-from-your-monitor
https://www.ultraselective.com/blog/display-resolution-and-pixel-density-basics
Scaling
https://tanalin.com/en/articles/integer-scaling/
https://www.lifewire.com/use-windows-10-dpi-fix-utility-to-correct-blurry-text-4780539
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/10/24/high-dpi-scaling-improvements-for-desktop-applications-and-mixed-mode-dpi-scaling-in-the-windows-10-anniversary-update/#ioIsJTATkKKMored.97
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/04/04/high-dpi-scaling-improvements-desktop-applications-windows-10-creators-update/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/askcore/display-scaling-in-windows-10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF210WeR9C8
Ergonomics
https://www.ergobuyer.com/blog/eye-strain-neck-pain-and-monitor-ergonomics-conventional-wisdom-vs-ergonomics-evidence/
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/office/monitor_positioning.html
https://workerscomp.nm.gov/sites/default/files/documents/publications/Ergonomics/Info_Ergonomics_Computer_Monitor_Positioning.pdf
https://www.learnergo.com/lifestyle-ergo/2020/7/5/ultra-wide-monitors-a-pain-in-the-neck
Discussion Threads
https://lobste.rs/s/wg9zus/time_upgrade_your_monitor