I sometimes run an ultrawide (3440x1440) off my M1 Air. It works... ok. MacOS doesn't output more than 50hz, and every hour or so the display will flicker off and on. I haven't decided if its an issue with the M1, or an issue with the hub I'm using, but its not a big enough concern for me to justify investigating much further.

I personally feel that 21:9 ultrawides aren't quite as good as dual 16:9 displays for productivity. But they're fine. My biggest complaint is that most people would reasonable center their monitor on the desk. If you run 2x16:9, you can have one centered, and one off to the side, which allows you to mostly look straight forward and have a natural primary/secondary setup.

At 21:9, this setup is weirder; either you size your primary window (browser, code editor, etc) to ~16:9, left-or-right-align it, then you have to slightly crane your neck, or you center-align it and you're left with slivers of screen real-estate to the left-and-right. Or you can shrink the primary center window, approaching maybe a max of 7:9 for all three windows, which is maybe rarely useful for some applications. Or you can maximize the window, and in most applications you get tons of unused space. Or you can physically offset the monitor on your desk, which looks weird. There's just no solution that works "great" especially given these displays are oftentimes at a small premium over 2x16:9.

I think something like the Samsung Odyssey CRG9 would be much higher productivity in ultrawide, with its 32:9 aspect ratio. There, you could run a ~16:9 centered primary window, and still have ~8:9 canvases to the left and right, which is enough horizontal estate to comfortably have a terminal, Spotify, browser, etc. Its also relatively affordable (~$1100), though given you can find solid 1440p 27" monitors for $200-$300, you're effectively cross-shopping 3x16:9 displays. Still definitely a "luxury" buy. Its ultimately unclear to me that it would be better, and not just "differently similar".

I have 3440x1440 and it works fine - I run 100 hz on my work MBP. Which is Intel, granted, but 3440x1440 is strictly less than 4k, and we don’t see an epidemic of people noticing that their 4k monitor is running at 30 hz on their M1 MBPs.

50 hz happens to be the limit of hdmi 1.4b (at 3440x1440), it sounds like somewhere in your chain you have something that is running at legacy speeds. Could be your dock, could be your monitor, could be an active adapter cable.

I’d start by making sure you’re running DisplayPort and not HDMI. HDMI is more or less a “legacy” port these days, as far as workstation usage is concerned. And unlike DP there is no embedded HDMI support in USB-C Alt Mode so any sort of USB-C to HDMI adapter needs an active converter - which may be your hdmi 1.4 bottleneck.

(note that the "passive" HDMI mode that full-size displayports offer - aka DP++ - is an optional part of the spec. It's so widely implemented on full-size ports that most people don't realize it's optional, but embedded DisplayPort implementations like eDP or USB-C Alt Mode, Thunderbolt, etc don't implement this feature.)

I think it's your dock. I have an LG 3440x1440 (and a Dell at work) that works fine over USB-C directly to my M1 Air.

I tested my 3440x1440 monitor with M1 Air. I found that fonts are rendered without anti aliasing and looked not good at all. Do you have similar issues?

Anker sells a relatively cheap dongle that will do 100Hz ultrawide over HDMI.

I'll switch as soon as High DPI ultrawide is a thing.

I know there's the LG 5Kx2K monitor, but MacOS can't drive it at 6880x2880 which is the scaling option I'd want - It's less pixels in total than a Pro Display XDR, but I guess their logic is "if (width > 6k) { don't allow }"

You can use better dummy to achieve a similar resolution: See here https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDummy and this MacRumors thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-mbp-lg-34-inch-ultra...

I tried it on my M1 Mini + LG5K2K and soon disabled it again. The performance impact was noticeable in Lightroom and the display adapter config got in the way once I switched display input to my work laptop.

Let me rephrase that, I'll switch once I can do it in a non-hacky way.

It should be possible - 6880x2880 is fewer pixels than the Pro Display XDR, which an M1 MacBook Air can drive perfectly well.

I don't have experience with this on a Mac but I've been trying this recently on Windows. Window snapping and edge-of-screen behaviors make using multiple monitors slightly better than using a single monitor that is just as large.

Fancyzones makes this much more tolerable but misses a few minor scenarios.

I replaced two 1440p monitors with a single ultrawide and complemented it with a tablet on my desk showing hdmi through deskreen, usually showing a chat window. I guess technically I still have two displays but it takes up less desk space overall.

On the positive side the displays are centered in front of me better and I can fiddle with the tablet placement much more easily than a real monitor. I've experienced neck strain working for extended periods with windows on the edge of the farthest dual monitor.

I haven’t, for a few reasons.

- The logical “partitioning” of workspace between displays is a nice tool for organization, particularly when combined with Spaces/virtual desktops

- I work from home, so my main display does double duty between work and games, which is a problem with the latter with many games having bad or lackluster ultrawide support

- Ultrawides restrict display selection quite considerably and often require concessions on things like color performance, backlight bleed, pixel response times (especially curved ultrawides, which seem to all use VA panels which are known for smearing and slow response times)

> The logical “partitioning” of workspace between displays is a nice tool for organization, particularly when combined with Spaces/virtual desktops

Use a better window manager.

That wouldn’t really work for me. The physical separation (and different display angle that brings) and ability to set different wallpapers per workspace per monitor are important and can’t be reproduced with a window manager.

I also just don’t like micromanaging my window arrangement or having the WM try to do it automatically (and usually get it wrong).

> I also just don’t like micromanaging my window arrangement or having the WM try to do it automatically (and usually get it wrong).

How is that solved by adding a monitor? If I used two (I don't any more) I would still use a (better than macOS default) window manager.

Both an extra monitor and an ultrawide add more space for windows, but the naturally partitioned nature of a second display combined with virtual desktops also provides low effort organization.

So in my typical usage, secondary/tertiary/etc windows go into purposed virtual desktops on the second monitor — e.g. one virtual desktop for documentation, another for chat, etc. This allows me to swap out the sets of less important windows independent of the main display’s workspace, with practically zero management overhead (just assign apps to virtual desktops during initial setup).

The extent of third party window management I use is Moom, which I use to snap maybe 3-5 windows across my entire workspace into specific locations/sizes. Something that emulates a Linux tiling WM like Amethyst would drive me insane.

> I would still use a (better than macOS default) window manager.

What are some of the alternatives that you would recommend?

I use Divvy (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/divvy-window-manager/id4138575...).

It's probably the simplest one. Draw the shape you want on a grid, assign a global hotkey to each shape (fullscreen, top half, bot half, left, right, etc.), press the hotkey to move current window into that shape. Press the same hotkey again to move it between monitors.

It's funny how you get so used to your own dev environment and all the global hotkeys you might have and then completely take it for granted until you use a computer with it.

For macOS? I no longer use have any Macs in use, but I used yabai when I did.

On Linux I use i3.

That's a good point. I personally like having one horizontal and one vertical setup.

I have the LG38" connected via USB-C to CalDigit TS3 via Thunderbolt MBP (2019). It looks fine. Still wishing someone made a HD-DPI wide screen (AFAICT all wide-screens are low-dpi). Mac does a great job of scaling though (I'm set to 3200x1333)

I'm not sure which is better. I like there's no divider in the middle of my display area! Work is giving me two 27" monitors so we'll see how it goes.

The only complaint, which is minor but annoys me several times a day, ... It takes several seconds for the Mac to wake up. Meaning, I have a PC also connected to the LG monitor vs DisplayPort. If I switch over and press a key Windows wakes up immediately. When I switch back to Mac and press a key it's easily 3-4 seconds before I can even start typing. I'm pretty sure that's USB-C/Thunderbolt only issue and if I used Displayport or something that problem might go away but still surprised Apple finds this acceptable give their focus on UX. I guess I get the number of people using 2 devices is low. But, even if I don't switch away and just walk away but leave it on Mac, when I come back, it takes 3-4 seconds to wake up vs Windows which is instant.

Note: "wake up" is the wrong word because the Mac has not started sleeping. I have processes running. I hear notifications, etc. It's just something to with getting things to display again.

I use a 32" 4K monitor with my M1 Air and it's great.

I've got it just close enough to me to hit my max comfortable FOV (so I don't have to crane my neck to see parts of the screen) while still being unable to see pixels.

It's got a USB C port that can do 4k 120Hz (which is awesome) and puts out just enough charging power to keep my Air from draining while I'm using it.

At native 4K things area little small, but moving the MacOS scaling down one or two ticks is perfect.

Hard to imagine a more perfect setup, personally.

This is where I am now. 32” at native 4K, 1@ resolution, but with text size bumped up a bit on some windows. Internal monitor is the slack/mail/calendar display, work is on the big one. Even when I’m using the mini, with no internal, I don’t find that I miss having two monitors.

The few times I’ve used a 49 ultrawide, meh, I’m not impressed but it’s better than just the internal. I’d probably need to reset the window manager to do 1x4, rather than using thirds.

I have gone one step past that. The really wide monitor gave me a neck ache as I'd persistently find myself wedging stuff at one end. It was also 1440p which is crap.

I now have a single 27" 4k monitor which has better text rendering and no neck ache.

I will buy a 27" 5k if Apple sell one.

Apple sells the LG Ultrafine 5k which is 27". It's not Apple made but iirc they worked with LG to design it. I really like mine, the high dpi is fantastic. I have a 27" 1440p next to it that is pretty much relegated to being a Spotify screen because looking at text on it feels vastly inferior to the LG.

I'm mostly interested in Apple selling one because the LG warranty and service support here (UK) is absolutely dire.

I've been using the LG C1 48", it's a little too tall so the upper portion of the screen rarely sees use outside of full screen video/games, but otherwise it's great. Although my opinion may change if it starts burning in significantly

I switched to an ultrawide and will never look back. My last setup was 2 monitors. Having 2 1440p monitors basically stuck together to make an ultrawide is a dream come true. It’s 100% worth the switch.

My M1 Air runs my ultrawide at 60hz and is buttery smooth.

IMO, 1440p is too low of a pixel density for productivity. My first 1440p monitor was 10 years ago. If only 2160p ultrawides weren't prohibitively expensive.

Agreed, 4K is my favorite resolution. I was going to add above that the only way I’d buy another monitor was if it was a 4K or higher ultrawide.

I've long preferred one large monitor. Which ultrawide do you have?

I bought this one but it was overkill for my needs. I think the model below this one is a better buy. They were out when I bought it.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/639902/lg-34gp950g-34-2k...

I highly recommend the Dell UltraSharp U4919, of which I currently have four (two at home and two at work). Almost my entire department switch to them as soon as they came out.

My other ultra-wide is an ASUS PG348Q. It's crazy how that monitor felt huge when I got it, but it just seems tiny now.

Two 49" monitors? At the same time? That sounds crazy! I like the Dell UltraSharp though.

I have an Acer XR382CQK which is 3840x1600 and can do 75hz. I can’t live without it now.

Similar journey, but I went from two down to one 27" 4k. I found that I was getting distracted by all the extra open windows and time spent arranging them. Maybe it is just because I'm getting older, but I've found the key (for me) to productivity is getting back to doing just one thing at a time. It has taken a lot of discipline and a little bit of creativity to achieve this, but I think my productivity has improved.

I use an ultrawide monitor alongside a vertically-oriented monitor (for code review) - I find this setup fits my personal and professional needs perfectly!

Having a single monitor messes up macOS's virtual desktop environment. Much easier to swipe between fullscreen apps with two seperate desktops.

The Dell UltraSharp U4919DW is 32x9 with a 5120 x 1440 at 60Hz. I works with the MacBook as long as you do not use the HDMI port. I have mine hooked up either via a Thunderbolt 4 dock or a USB-C to DisplayPort cable.

You can test you got the full resolution by doing:

  system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | awk '/Resolution/{print $2, $3, $4}'

I love the single ultra wide over two monitors. The only problem I have is when presenting. I need to show several apps at once but if I share my entire screen it obviously looks horrible for everyone else. The solution is to open my MacBook and share from there. Not a huge deal, but a bit annoying.

I wrote this[0] post on how I use OBS to share a 1080p sized portion of my upper left ultrawide monitor through Microsoft Teams. If you can share just a specific window, then this should work with google meet.

https://jamesdesmond.org/posts/teams-screenshare-mac/

I have a shortcut setup in my window manager app to resize the current window to 1920x1080 specifically for screen sharing.

By “window” do you mean “display”?

I wish that when you shared an app window, Zoom would let you scale that to fit the full screen share. That way you could present a reasonable image of a window to viewers while using an ultra-wide monitor.

No, I mean the window. Usually I’m sharing chrome or a code editor via zoom.

I share a tab/window and resize that window to be approx 16:10. Shows up nicely for others and I can still see the rest of my screen.

If I had another window open for chat/notes/emails I can still have that at half my ultrawide and just deal with a bit of overlap on my end

I did the same but not being able to share a terminal and a browser window at the same time is tough.

Ended up using OBS and sharing the obs preview window instead. This lets me add fun gifs and overlays as well to my screen for loading or success.

I have had a 43" monitor at work and at home for a while, and the solution I've used throughout the pandemic has been to share only a region of the screen, or to share a single application or window, which I often shrink down to a "laptop" size" in order to share my screen with colleagues. That still leaves plenty of real estate around the "shared" window that is not visible to others, but is useful to me.

Zoom lets you share a region of your screen if you click the advanced tab when sharing.

Yeah, sadly we use Google which does not.

I did this and I agree that it's a better solution (for me). Keeping your neck twisted to the side for long periods of time is not good. With an extra wide monitor you can pull over windows to the center if you want to focus on them for any significant period of time.

I switched from 2 21.5" 1080p monitors to 1 40" 4k TV. At first it felt comically huge, but I found it great for both media consumption and working on huge documents. If I had a larger desk, I'd move to an AORUS FO48U.

I switched to a 34" UW UHD display, from 2x 24" - I definitely prefer it.

On my MacBook Pro I have two ultrawides, and two HDPI 4ks, it's nice.

I like my single 32” at home better than my dual 27” at work.

I’m running dual 27 4k and considering a larger single monitor, what have you like about it?