My day job involves untangling SQL that was written under fire. I consume more spaghetti than a pre-covid Olive Garden. Every vertical pixel is precious for grokking what some sub query is doing in the context of the full statement.

Have you rotated your monitor 90 degrees to portrait already?

I used to when I ran dual 24" monitors! We had really sweet old IBM monitor stands that could tilt, raise and rotate. You had to be quick to grab them from the copy room before the electronics pickup. I swiped one from the still warm desk of a colleague on the way to their farewell happy hour.

So I had a '14 13"(? Might have been 15" but probably not) RMBP on the left with email and chat stuff, 24" main monitor in landscape and then another 24" monitor in portrait on the right. I think at some point I put a newer panel on the IBM mount. It was sweet.

Back then we still had desktop PCs at our actual desks so there was a KVM on the main monitor! What a time to be alive!

These days I do prefer a single monitor workflow if possible. It's just cleaner and move convenient.

Being used to MacBooks with retina screens, 4K on at 30” is perfect to me as “retina”. Anything larger needs to be 5k or 6k. 1440p is passable on <24”.

You still need to scale the resolution to make it easily readable on most common monitor sizes like 27". The end result is really good and sharp.

27" x 1440p has been my go-to for a while now. Works well without scaling between win/mac/linux, does not dominate the desk completely, high quality monitors are readily available in this resolution etc etc.

I think my dream set up would be a 27" 1440P (What I currently have at home, with a pair of smaller (19" maybe?) 1080p screens on either side setup in portrait. Basically a similar screen area to 2x27", but without a bezel right in the center of my field of view, and the 1080x1920 screens will be a good size for displaying full page (e.g. PDF) at more or less full screen.

At that point not just run an Ultrawide at 1440p?

I actually like having multiple screens. I know I'm weird in this but I actually like running certain apps maximized.. but I wouldn't want it maximized across a whole ultrawide.

Plus, if I take a working vacation somewhere it's a lot more practical to schlep around one 24" or 27" than an ultrawide.

Also, just as an ergonomic thing, I could angle in the two outer screens a bit while not having one of those icky curved screens.

The price is probably double.