* More pixels -> more characters on screen.

* More characters on screen -> easier to glance between different parts of your code , open manuals, etc.

A 4K screen has 3840x2160 pixels. You could see that as either fitting 4 regular 1080p screens in a rectangular pattern, or just over 3 regular screens in vertical orientation (which is what you were considering).

Of course, if your current HD screen is only barely comfortable to you (likely), you will end up needing to buy a screen with larger dimensions (findable) to actually be able to utilize the screen to that extent.

Alternately, you could still go for that higher pixel density; in which case you end up with more readable characters. This does alleviate eye-strain!

Given enough pixels at your disposal (and a large enough screen), you can have the luxury of determining your own favorite trade-off between pixel density and amount-of-code-on-screen. You can do so on the fly, as tasks/whims/fatigue demand.

This is why -at least for now- I'd say you can never have enough pixels.

I'm sure there's a point of diminishing returns somewhere, but I think we have a long way to go before we reach it.

Now, an ultrawide. That was truly a game changer in productivity for me.

Ditto. At one point I had 2x34'' Ultrawide side-by-side, but recently replaced with a single 49'' UW w/QHD.

Now, perhaps people are unwilling to wear glasses or contacts for very small vision distortions (understandable), but I do have poor vision, and I want even higher pixel density, because my glasses/contacts get me great vision (I get headaches if I don't correct to 40/20 or something).

We are reading paper books printed at 600 or 1200 dpi (though that often uses similar tricks to subpixel rendering), and nobody complains. As a matter of fact, people can tell a difference between 300 and 600 dpi, yet books are kept at, at most, an arms distance, so usually closer than most big displays today.

Depends on the UI you use. Gnome and tiling window managers should do it just fine. I prefer the macOS keybinds (including where full screen becomes a new desktop, combined with the "Magic Touchpad" gestures).

With regards to keybindings, one thing you can do is get ctrl/meta/alt in the same order as your Mac. Personally, I've swapped ctrl and meta on my MBP while I am using VirtualBox (with Kali) because that way when I'm in the VM I get local consistency. I usually SSH into the Kali machine from the MBP anyway.

With two 1920x1080 displays you can fit even more (or better 1920x1200). Also, what is the benefit of an ultrawide 2560x1440 compared to 2560x1440 or 2560x1600?

If you're used to 24" 1080P, going to 32" 4K gets you 1.5x the DPI and 1.77x the screen area. For what's now a $300 monitor, that is a pretty significant improvement overall.

The DPI means my characters go from 9x18 pixels to 13x27, which is a big difference in text rendering fidelity and just feels a little nicer. And the additional screen real estate speaks for itself.

Though if you have the space (a very deep empty desk) to put your display like 6 feet away from your face, then the 32" might be a decent way to reduce eye strain.

I’m using a 27" screen with 4K which is ok. But I would definitely upgrade to 5k to get 200% scaling once display standards properly support it (Thunderbolt 3 will not be a permanent solution) and screens are affordable

I had gotten the vague impression that Thunderbolt 3 is in line to be adopted more-or-less whole-cloth as USB4. Is that not accurate?

I haven't followed USB4 too much. I expect it to again have multiple "levels" like USB had before. And whether some or all of those will be high definition video capable it to be seen. For USB-C video was just a mere alternate mode which switched the meaning of the wires inside the cables to displayport. Doing video over the PCI Express subsystem of thunderbolt is a different story.

If 8k is supported, so is 5k, which is kinda getting mainstream.

From reading this[0] it looks like USB4 and TB3 will be broadly compatible, modulo the usual sort of tiresome licensing and compatibility BS our industry loves to burden us with. Pity.

[0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/usb-4-faq,38766.html

I'll buy a 32" with no bezel when I can get it with a Thunderbolt 4 port, and my desk will be right about maxed out.

Some of the $300 ones are VA, though, which is OK.

There's quite a few choices at that price point, though.

I've been using this one. (Typing on it right now) Has a display port I wire my mac into when coding for work and run a Linux box on it when I'm playing. It is a nice panel, for what I paid. 32" @ 2650x1440 IPS. I've got it next to an older 30" 16:10 (2650x1600) and it is comparable.

I do wish I could get my hands on cheap 16:10 monitors. My old 24" dell is vertical, which really makes for a nice way to view the web.

The Linux desktop is dead.

Arch running Gnome on Wayland just freaking works. Input is miles better. Output is miles better.

I run two 4k displays and the internal display is 1920x1080. Even dragging windows between the external and internal monitor, with different scaling factors works SO much better.

I'm on Linux, and as long as I have screen composition on in the NVidia Settings Panel and software vsync off, 4k60 is as smooth as butter and as sharp as 4k, much like OSX. It's nicer than Windows.

EDIT:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA/Troubleshooting#...

That's helpful! :)

Each and every of these applications is blurry as hell. My eyes hurt. True that the multi-monitor experience with mixed scaling factors per display under Wayland is better, that's why I am still suffering of that stockholm syndrom.

Gnome does better, I acknowledge that, but their opinionated UI decisions make me feel like a retard.

I'm running 3x 28" 4k@60 driven from nVidia using prop driver with an Openbox at the Window manager. It is working great. Super fast, super snappy, fonts look fantastic. Same goes for video. I have one monitor dedicated to code, one monitor monitor dedicated to logs ( 6-10 tmux windows ) and one monitor used as a general workspace.

Pity it seems to top out at 4 cores and 16GB RAM though. I might have to take a hard look at that series once it refreshes to i9...

How do you feel about the touchpad?

I still have 1 1080p screen attached (just for NVR viewing) and if I drag my IDEA (code editor) window from a vertical monitor to my 1080 then it takes up over 3/4ths of the width. Just to restate that a different way: I gave up less than 1/4th of my screen width but got ~3x the height (just for the 2 vertical screens).

My current setup looks like this with 1 & 3 being vertical, 2 being horizontal, and 4 being my old 1080p horizontal.

    |   | | 4 | |   |
    | 1 ||  2  || 3 |
    |   |       |   |

I don’t use the full screen for editing (it’s too wide for that), but the edit window is in the middle and stuff that happens in the background (compiling etc.) sits in the virtual background, showing up in the border around the wait window. So I see immediately when things have stopped scrolling.

After using this configuration at work, I upgraded all my home setups as well.

The controller for this one isn't the best and is picky about inputs (I can't get the original Apple HDMI adaptor to work well even at 30hz, so use DisplayPort instead), but it does well enough for the price.

I use 1:1 pixel ratio and a tiling manager to manage the screen 720p subdivisions (3x3 = 9 of these) and will have editors or documentation arranged vertically in 2-3 of these subdivisions, terminals in individual subdivisions, and screen shares or video in 2x2 spaces (1440p) depending on what I'm up to. I have configured hotkeys which place windows in predefined positions in the grid and gotten pretty quick with the muscle memory of them. I aggressively organize windows into spaces, and use the Apple track pad + gestures to move spaces, this acts as a stack of second monitors that I don't have to move my head to see (but can change attention to with similar speed).

32" at arms length seems to be just right in terms of not feeling like I have to turn my head to change my area of attention, and the pixel density isn't too hard on my eyes without any scaling, but both of these are just on the edge (I wish I had slightly larger UI elements, and slightly less FOV occupied) but with these being at direct odds with each other, this device (and a more expensive one with the same resolution and dimensions I purchased for home use before this one at this price point was released) occupies a sweet spot (for me personally).

The other benefit is that I can sit farther away from the screen (I make the font larger to compensate). Feels like it's better for the eyes not to have to focus up-close.

Though the 4K monitor is sharper, specifically for the task of writing code, I actually prefer my home monitor.

[1] https://tiamat.tsotech.com/4k-is-for-programmers

What's less pleasant is how unsharp all of the icons and images in apps that haven't provided high density images look.