Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor In 2017 we learned that Samsung had given the world the CHG90, a curved, 49-inch, 3840 x 1080 monitor with a 32:9 aspect ratio. Rather a lot of Reg readers read and/or commented on the story about the screen and more than a few of you seemed intrigued by the ideas of having your heads just-about-surrounded by display. So we …
I don't know how serviced offices like WeWork, erm, work. I presumed they mostly provided a desk, power, toilets, heat, networking. Having a monster like that would require either a semi-permanent desk that no one else can use or lugging it away into a cupboard every night, at more expense and effort, so probably not worth keeping it in this case.
"I don't know how serviced offices like WeWork, erm, work. I presumed they mostly provided a desk, power, toilets, heat, networking."
My employer has had me in a temp office at WeWork for the past couple weeks so I can tell you they do offer lockable offices that you can rent by the month since I'm in one. Also, the included items are: desk, power, toilets, heat, networking (speedtest.net says 780 MBPs here in Montreal), mouthwash, fruity water with the fruits arranged artistically, tea, "microground coffee", and a beer tap loaded craft beer that gets unlocked at 11 am every weekday.
"'and a beer tap loaded craft beer that gets unlocked at 11 am every weekday. 'How on earth do you get any work done?"
Well if you're a 9-to-5 type, that's two hours of work on something where you need to be able to mentally manipulate more than one complex concept followed by an hour of work where things degrade a bit followed by a liquid lunch at the local followed by four hours of increasingly problematic social media posts. Sounds like a normal day at the office for most of the people I work with..
I don't know how serviced offices like WeWork, erm, work
There was an interesting interview on Today this morning around 0715 with the bloke in charge of a services company that offers a very similar product to WeWork, but which has been around a lot longer. He ruefully admitted that he was jealous that WeWork has a valuation some ten times that of his company, the implication being that they were simply more fashionable for being a "tech" company, even though his company actually operates in exactly the same way, in similar locations and has a longer, better track record of profitability.
M.
"the implication being that they were simply more fashionable for being a "tech" company, even though his company actually operates in exactly the same way, in similar locations and has a longer, better track record of profitability."
They are more fashionable because that's what they put effort into. The "Micro ground" coffee, the fruity water that it takes the girl 15 minutes to prepare because the fruit has to be artistically arranged in the sides and held in place with ice before the water gets added, the art in the common areas, the social events etc.
This is literally the most hipster place I've ever been. The valuation is high for the same reason Apple's is: People like the whole experience.
Yep, I read that far and lost interest. 1080 is a lower vertical resolution than the CRT monitor I had 20 years ago.
I'm currently lucky enough to be using an Acer 34" curved QHD monitor - at 3440x1440, it has a FAR more useful resolution than the one reviewed here.
I have "only" a 27" 2560 x 1440 monitor and those extra vertical lines really help. If I have the budget/new video card/cleared desk then probable would go for a 40" 4k monitor to get more usable height as much as anything.
Having said that, ANY increase in monitor size is useful, more so than most CPU speed increases* in recent years, and if you often have two windows open side-by-side I can see such a monitor having its appeal.
[*] yes, lets not talk about meltdown/spectre
1080 is a lower vertical resolution than the CRT monitor I had 20 years ago.
I remember there being a lot of CRTs that could be driven at "1600x1200" or higher, but at that pixel density they didn't have the necessary dot pitch to truthfully produce that resolution, i.e. they fell below an average of three dots per pixel.
Macs are 16:10, MS Surface are 3:2, and some older laptops are 16:10 though they are as rare as hens teeth today. A few times here I've invited anyone to name a current 16:10 laptop but it seems you're all as stumped as I am!
From an ergonomic perspective, taller laptop screens place the user's gaze higher above the keyboard - that is, closer to the most comfortable and healthiest working position. That said, no laptop is ergonomically suitable for long time working, hence stands and discrete keyboards.
It's true that in many CRT monitors the maximum resolution the monitor will sync to is somewhat above what the monitor can resolve, but a decent CRT will fully resolve 1600x1200.
I still have two IBM C220p 21" CRTs on my desk (plus a 1600x1200 TFT, a 1280x1024 3D monitor, and a 1280x1024 elderly TFT) and it will sync as high as 2048x1536x75Hz. It will fully resolve up to 1700x1270, and I usually run them at 1600x1200x100Hz.
Of course, because it's a CRT the loss in definition is gradual, so you probably could drive the monitors a little above that without any issue - but then I'm using a non standard resolution, and have to drop down from 100Hz to 75 or 85.
When one of the monitors finally dies I will be moving to a 1440p monitor - there's none of the scaling issues prevalent with 4K, plenty of vertical resolution, and using it for gaming only needs a graphics card that costs a kidney, rather than an arm and a leg.
@ BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
When one of the monitors finally dies I will be moving to a 1440p monitor - there's none of the scaling issues prevalent with 4K
With a bit of luck, your existing monitors will last long enough for the scaling issues to go away. Things are a lot better than they were. Application compatibility is steadily improving. I'm even optimistic that the next version of SQL Server Management Studio may work propery in 4K.
I'd hope so, I do like CRT but it's mostly a solved problem. There's Gsync/Freesync and ULMB to solve the refresh rate issue, the inbuilt monitor scaling is way better than it used to be, and application compatibility has improved. Some modern TFTs are even decent at handling some of the old CRT timing tricks used by old games and consoles.
Also, it's increasingly more difficult to drive a CRT through modern systems, they've simply dropped support.
Fortunately I have a very large desk (re-purposed kitchen table), and a small room to fill with computers, so I'm not in a hurry to save a bit of space.
That's why I have two 24in 1920x1200 screens mounted vertically at my desk.
Imagine what you could do with a set of these. Why settle for two, when you could use eight to give yourself near 270 degree vision up-down left-right*. You'd need to seat yourself in a gimbal with a full safety harness. And in addition to never, ever having to scroll again, you could do a mean sim of being the belly gunner on a B17, complete with complimentary motion sickness.
* No, I've not done the maths. If you want to work out how many of these would really be needed for a 270 degree on two axis, fellow reader, then feel free. Being the Reg, I'm 100% confident somebody will.
"I'd say about twelvety"
About 9.5 would give you 360 degrees but at 1.8 meters away they are sort of short. If this thing had a radius of 700 mm to 1000 mm, I might consider it but for now I'll stick with several monitors. I have a pair of 24 inch curved samsung displays and I figured the curve was just a bit of a gimmick, but they do reduce eye strain even though they have the same 1800 mm radius curve.
If they came on a 1m radius, I could see mounting them on a turn table that physically rotated them around me maybe using something like plane rudder foot pedals. I could set the background to yellow and have a halo like in the icon.
1080 might be fine for TV, Absolutely stupid for editing documents. The 1200 I had on my 2002 laptop is a minimum.
The so called "retina" screen laptops are madly expensive and most are a far too small screen for 16:9. The 16:9 or 16:10 (if you are lucky with 1920 x 1200) is not great either for a laptop / documents. Makes a tall enough screen too wide.
11" high paper shown at 120 dpi needs 1320 pixels high. At old 1.66:1 Cinema Widescreen that is 2192 pixel wide approx. That would be about a 17" screen but less wide than 16:9 laptop. 120dpi is a minimum resolution. Above 150 dpi you need more pixels or the screen & text gets too small.
I have big screens for video. I want to watch video without reading glasses.
The problem of filling in all the vertical space with useless icons and menus is 'Pratkinsons Law' where designer shit expands to fill all the space available to the exclusion of ergonomics or anything useful. Programs that once worked perfectly well on 640*480 now need 4k monitors just to fit on the scroll bars you need to find the menu item you are looking for.
"...filling in all the vertical space with useless icons and menus..."
Perhaps; on the other hand, having witnessed the modern trend of trying to cram all the menus / toolbars / address-bars / tabs up into a single titlemulti-bar I concluded early on that I want nothing whatsoever to do with any such scheme, even if that means losing the upper fifth of my screen - I'd much rather see clearly what I have there and where to aim for it than have to remember where to try to unpack it from.
There is a limit to the usefulness of this strategy.
The amount of strain on your neck muscles from left-right movement is significantly less than the amount from left right.
I have a 2560x1440 32 inch monitor and it will be unusable if I turn it 90 degrees. My neck will need rehab by the end of the day as it is very difficult to force yourself to use only eye movement to look up/down.
If it was 27 or even 24 - maybe. At that size however, the advantages of higher res than 1920x1200 are rather slim - your eyes will strain too much.
If I ever have to extend the amount of video real estate I use it will probably be one or two small 1440x900 turned 90 degrees on the side. Once again, if there are more you get into diminishing returns from neck/eye movement.
@ inmypjs > I have been using 2 x 30" 2560 x 1600 for years.
I used 3 x 30" 2560x1600 for years too (two LG W3000H and one HP ZR30W), but just a few weeks ago I finally jumped to 4K with the 43" LG43UD79-B. I now have the 30" HP on the left, the 43" on the middle and one of the 30" LGs on the right.
If you're planning on going the same route AND you are still running on Windows 7 like I am, then be aware of the following limitation (I wasn't): the total width or height in pixels of all your monitors cannot exceed 8192 pixels. This is because the DWM in Windows 7 uses a DX10 texture to compose the Windows desktop, and a texture under DX10 cannot be larger than 8192 x 8192 pixels.
If the combined vertical or horizontal resolutions of your monitors exceed this limit, as mine did (2560 + 3840 + 2560 = 8960 horizontal pixels), Aero will stop working and Windows 7 will NOT tell you why it's not working anymore. You will be dumped into the Basic theme, all Aero related options will be gone, and there is no work around other than to reposition your monitors in relation to each other or reduce the screen resolution of one of them.
Took me a long time to figure out what was happening because very few people in the world use multiple monitors with extreme resolutions such as these, so unless you already know what you are looking for, 99.999% of all the solutions you will find in Google will be for completely unrelated issues.
Windows 8 and Windows 10 do not suffer from this problem because the size limit of a single texture was raised to 16384x16384 pixels under DX11. Just wait until 8K monitors become the norm lol
One of the issues I've found with a 3440x1440 curved monitor is that some websites display based on your monitor resolution, rather than the size of the actual window. Presumably they aren't aware that not everyone runs everything full screen?
This had the unfortunate effect of some crucial menu options being waaaaaaaaaaaaay over to the right, with a small section on the left displaying the actual content. When I was running this in a window I initially thought the menu was simply missing. That's a lot of scrolling, and then you can't see what effect an option has had until you scroll back left again - unless you like viewing your websites as if your eyes were 3ft apart :)
"[...] why I have two 24in 1920x1200 screens mounted vertically at my desk. "
Two identical 26" 1920x1200. Main one directly in front with full screen spreadsheet. Second to my right angled at about 135 degrees split into two auxiliary function windows. A turn of the head - but usually only having to focus on one screen at an instant.
Both are capable of being rotated vertically.
The second one is a second hand purchase as can't buy that model new. Had problems getting the colour balance matched - so the second hand one had a slightly warm quality. Very annoying the first day - then my brain seemed to adjust to the different "white" balance without me noticing.
Although they are LED lit the viewing angle colour does go off towards the edges - especially noticeable on the far edge of the angled one. Not a problem for the current application.
All that acreage and still a shit vertical resolution. Avid folk trying to work with 1080 video would be looking at this monitor and asking where's the space for my timeline? I'll be getting a 3840 x 1600 soon that at long last will give me back the vertical workspace I had before MS inflicted The Fucking Ribbon™ upon us.
The Ribbon is intended to be like training wheels on a bike, once you've figured out where the actions you need reside, right click on it and minimise.
When I was responsible for supporting a couple of thousand Office users, I had a team of three dedicated trainers who offered free classes on how to use Word, Excel etc. I'm certain their activities allowed the helpdesk to operate with half the staff that would have been needed otherwise.
Now the assumption is that everyone 'just knows' - clearly that assumption is false.
Minimising the ribbon gives me my screen space back but it guarantees an extra click. With it shown you just might already be on the right tab for a task, with it minimised there is no right tab. Do I inconvenience myself further or lose screen space? What a choice.
With the old button bars I would customise them so only the actions I use most were visible, 90% of tasks I needed were there to be accomplished in a single click. Usually that was one row of buttons. Loads more tasks I had the keyboard sequence or shortcut (not the same thing) committed to memory. Now the keyboard sequences are hopeless and The Fucking Ribbon™ takes loads of clicks to do anything.
Example: Visio - I want to rotate a shape. Click on home, click on position (because obviously a rotate task would be under position), hover over Rotate Shapes, click on the rotation you want. Visio 5 - one click.
I know what tasks I want, I know where those tasks are. Being stuck with training wheels means those tasks are clicky and slow.
All Office products (and most MS products) now include a "Quick Access Toolbar" that allows you to place your frequently used actions just one click away, Right-click on your 'Rotate Shapes' icon and add it to the toolbar.
This is exactly what I mean, people haven't been given appropriate training (even if it's just an hour or so) on how to use a product - I can't imagine how many man-hours are wasted in this way, and it really bugs me.
This is exactly what I mean, people haven't been given appropriate training
Clearly this is true. If people had adequate training they would know that subcommands from the ribbon cannot be added to the quick access toolbar. Top level commands that are already a single click (left / centre/ right align text for example) can be added to the quick access bar. Nested stuff such as the rotate tools cannot.
Nor can they be added to a custom ribbon tab, they simply don't exist as top level commands any more. I can add a higher level group object that saves one operation compared to the 4 in my earlier post but I cannot make it a one click job.
I bow to your greater Visio expertise, it isn't a tool I've used much. Maybe it suffers from being (by origin) a non-MS product, but the problem you describe doesn't exist in Word or Excel (though it gets belly-ached about a great deal), which is where 99% of Office users live.
...place your frequently used actions just one click away...
I want them to be no-clicks away. I'm using the keyboard to enter the data - I don't want to have to move my hand all the way to a mouse, move it to a toolbar icon, to expand another window, to select an option. Just leave me with the keyboard control.
I've previously done (company mandated) excel training and it was terrible - if you tried to use keyboard shortcuts to menu options it complained you were doing the wrong thing, even though you were applying the same ultimate controls, just not using the mouse!
I have a 34" Dell curved monitor, with 3440x1440 and it is a great step up from 2 24" monitors. Not having the black bar in the "middle" is a huge benefit, as is being able to automatically maximize spreadsheets etc. to cover the whole display, as opposed to having to manually stretch the window over multiple screens.
It varies. I have three monitors, a 1920x1200 screen in the middle, and two 16:00x1200 monitors each side. Although there's the black bezels inbetween, it does at least mean that I can very easily snap three applications on the screens at once. For two screens however, I can accept that a single wider monitor would be better.
There's a monitor brand who make a stick-on bezel that acts as a prism for joining monitors. It minimises but doesn't eliminate the bezel.
Samsung have touted monitors without bezels at trade shows which can be joined seamlessly - but it doesn't appear to be consumer-ready yet. I imagine the alignment is tricky and that the tolerances have to be smaller than a pixel.
"Samsung have touted monitors without bezels at trade shows which can be joined seamlessly [...]"
I have an Asus 27" 1920x1080 that claims extremely thin side and top bezels of just over 1mm. They are - until you switch it on - then you find the black edge of the picture is actually indented by 8mm. So no different in function than a "normal" bezel.
I've worked with a pair of 27" 1920x1080 screens for about 3 years now and love having all that extra screen estate - but I think a pair works better than one big one as apps can easily go full screen on a single monitor. Using Remote Desktop across both screens, the host sees it as one big monitor and you realise how awkward it would be. While you can work around it with the various tile options (I dual boot MacOS and Windows 10) it's still quicker to just maximise a window - and you also void the 3 foot wide menu and task bar problem!
It is useful having one big screen, when you need to maximize a window across the "whole" display, instead of manually stretching it. Likewise not having the black bar in the middle makes a big difference, especially on the placement of windows.
Add to that that most modern OSes can automatically "maximize" to half the screen width, you don't have a real problem with getting 2 windows next to each other.
After a year using one big monitor, I find it awkward going back to 2 smaller displays. I also appreciate the extra vertical resolution on my Dells (3440x1440) over standard 1920x1200, or worse "glorified TV displays" at 1920x1080.
What a ridiculous choice. A gaming monitor is not an HD video monitor. You can't sell a ridiculously large screen like that, market it for gaming but make it for TV viewing.
I have a true gaming monitor : an Acer XB281HK. I'm sitting pretty on 3840 x 2160. THAT is a gaming monitor, and it stands next to a Prolite with "only" 1920 x 1200 that I bought back in 2011.
In 2011 you already had screens with more than 1080 vertical.
What a shameful waste of screen surface.
Greater than 1080 monitors for gaming are a relatively new thing - a lot of gamers don't have to GPU grunt to run games at very high resolution (at high frame rate and high detail settings). I imagine some games benefit more from a very wide monitor (Elite?), and some befit more from high resolution.(Call of Duty?)
"sitting pretty on 3840 x 2160"
Some people actually play games instead of masturbating over high resolution textures.
Back in the day hardcore Quake players ran 320x240 because for actually playing the game frame rate was much more important than resolution.
At the recommended distance between eye and monitor of around 70cm, then a 27" screen is about the perfect size for you to all four corners without moving the head. Consequently for anything larger than that you'll probably want to pin stuff to different parts of the screen so that you only move your head when changing focus. 49" sounds bit like what you see in financial centres where each screen is generally given over to particular data streams.
If you're worried about having to move a mouse a lot then use a graphics tablet which maps any screen area perfectly to the tablet's area, better for the wrist as well.
I have a pair of UHD (3840x2160) Samsung 28-in monitors, which cost around £300 each. They wouldn't do for top-line photo work, and maybe would be a touch draggy for gamers—but for office productivity, large image editing, watching a movie (on the DP-connected; other is HMDI, thus only 30Hz) and really, as many windows as you could possibly want, it seems an excellent setup. And surely good value.*¹
For work-and-preview mode it is an absolute boon. Code here, preview there. Article here, research there. Bunch of CSS in this window, watch the rainbow in that one. Etc etc, you all know the routine. We all have to make do, and some of us remember working satisfactorily with 21-in SVGA CRTs, but for sheer seamless, smooth productivity—o boy, it is good to have this amount of elbow room.
As an experiment I opened a spreadsheet across the two and got BN col-width and 82 rows (allowing the "ribbon" (Libre, not MS) to coexist) while still being able to read the contents without squinting. The latter is important because the resolution is high enough to avoid any graininess or fuzz. (I note with interest that the diagonal width of the two is about 49 inches.)
So once again, I wonder what is the point of very large monitors—curved or otherwise—for serious office work, if they are let down by poor resolution? Screen real estate is lovely, but a lot less so if you can see the pixels.
Maybe some people are massively offended by the bezel, but in truth the eye soon disapparates it. Spreadsheets and project managers—and even maps with latitudes—have an abundance of horizontal lines and other cues that easily defeat any disorientation incurred by the bezel.
My perfect monitor, probably unaffordable this decade, will be maybe 60 inches wide, 15-16 inches high, deeply curved to preserve unchanging viewing distance at 24-inches-to-eyeball, with at least 9600 pixels horizontally. I'm not a gamer or photo professional so for affordability I'd happily settle for 60Hz and merely adequate colour representation. It will have a Magic Angle control or similar so that, without much tiltabilty, I can optimise it for my particular desk height/seat/head combo.
Yeah, I know: it'll still cost a fortune.
*¹ I confess: I reused the 23-in HD Sammie displaced by Monitor#2 and it is also connected up, via DVI, and shows me the clutter I don't want on my main screens: CCTV around the house, desktop utils, couple of Internet-of-Shyte device interfaces, music player etc. That's about as much abuse of my cervical spine as I feel ok with ...
the VESA mounting specifications? Do away with the stand, how does it work with integrated desk mounted supports?
No VESA mount available for it ... see here, good look at the rear ...
https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/49--chg90-qled-gaming-monitor-lc49hg90dmnxza/
BTW, El Reg, retical refresh rate is important, especially for gaming ... 144hz is bare minimum, these days ...
Agreed. Personally I find 60Hz fine for gaming (with v-sync to prevent any tearing) and instead prefer the extra height of a 16:10 screen - more world on the screen with less space taken up by the HUD.
As it is, although it might be possible at a push to tell the difference between 60Hz and 100-120Hz, I'd love to see anyone who could play two machines (in a blind test) and spot the difference between 120Hz and 144Hz.
The nouveau driver is crap with DP, it would most probably display at 1200x800 or something stupid and stretch the shit out of it ... you need a 4.9 kernel or higher, have to download the edid from the display and add a kernel parameter for it to work ... the nvidia driver should just work, though .... not sure about the AMD drivers ... I only have nvidia cards here ... I hate nvidia as much as Linus (if I run Linux it's for open source, not to be inconvenienced by a mighty download with a nice fat binary blob I dunno what it's doing), but AMD cards are excessively expensive and there are no real alternatives to those two ... to be fair, I hate broadcom as well, for the exact same reasons ....
So, I gave in and use the nvidia driver on the box with the DP-connected screen ... I would love to help fix nouveau ....
Many years ago (~2000) I opted for a Matrox G550 card just to be able to run two CRT monitors side by side. Since that time I have gone from dual monitor setups to my current triple-monitor setup with a total desktop resolution of 7,680 times 1440 pixels.
Having a central monitor is really nice for one's main content/editor/document, with the two other monitors for having documentation, references, simulation outputs, IRC windows, etc. on them. It's also great to have a single VHDL simulation's traces span across all three monitors to get that crucial overview when doing debugging.
The fun thing with using three monitors, and trying to use all three DisplayPort outputs on one's GPU (GTX 980 Ti), is that one discovers that three DP outputs is more of a gimmick, as regularly one of the monitors will desync because the DP hardware cannot keep up. Switching one DP output to HDMI fixed that. Using a single monitor would be nice there, but I like having the separation between the displays.
When doing drawing (drawing tablets), it's nice to have the tablet's surface not mapped to one massively wide monitor, but just to the center one.
That said, I have been tempted to try to play some games spanned across my entire desktop surface. Just because I can :)
I've been on the same journey, these days I have a Iiyama 40" 4K primary, and a cheap Acer 28" 4K secondary, rotated to portrait orientation. The secondary display gets terminals, chat, logs, and whatever I'm currently targeting (browsers, VM's, emulators) leaving the primary free for acres of lovely (and unlovely) code. A 40" screen, while not being quite as cool as 3 monitors, is very nice for games too and requires no fiddling to get it to work.
Wanna go 4K? Then do it properly: get a 43" LG43UD79-B or the equivalent of the same size. 3840x2160 of pure bliss, look it up!
A proper monitor - none of that using a TV as a computer monitor nonsense - this is the *perfect* size to use 4K at 100% scaling in Windows. The major advantage of a 4K monitor - at least for me as a developer - is screen real estate, so I never really understood those buying a sub-30" 4K monitor only to be forced to run it at 150% or 200% DPI on the Windows Desktop because otherwise the text is too small to read. Might as well buy a 1080p or 2560x1600 monitor in the first place and save a LOT of money.
Of course, going 43" means you need a REALLY BIG desk... and a very powerful GPU if you also play the occasional game (and no, despite all the noise, we are not quite there yet for native 4K, not even the mighty 1080ti is truly up to it - perhaps with the upcoming Volta/Ampere, if nVidia ever gets tired of making money with the crypto miners and finally decides to release it).
Oh, and you know how much that 43" 4K LG costs? Less than $700. Yep, you read that right.
I really don't get, what seems to be, an increasing trend to go with tv size screens for monitors. It just seems silly, you are using a higher screen resolution, but the dpi sucks. Perfect for me (sat at a desk) are 27" 2560x1440 either actual, or hdpi (so 5K). I have a 4K LG screen which I have set to display as 2560x1440. With proper handling hdpi screens provide nice crisp fonts generally, but you do not lose the extra real estate where needed, all the pixels are still there, the program just needs to treat that area as 1x instead of 2x. The only area I see a large tv like screen making some sense is gaming or video.
@ Tom 38 > In the UK it costs £749, or around $1030. So no.
Wow. I'm in Portugal and just got mine a few weeks ago for less than 700 Euros. How much does a 32" 4K Acer Predator cost in the UK, for comparison? Here they are above 1,000 Euros, for instance, so quite a lot more expensive for a much smaller size.
@ Anonymous Coward > I really don't get, what seems to be, an increasing trend to go with tv size screens for monitors.
Simple: at anything much smaller than 43" on a 4K monitor, text size on the Windows desktop at 100% DPI is just too small to read. So people are forced to raise the Windows DPI to 150% or even 200% to be able to even read the text, thus turning what is a 4K monitor (3840x2160) into the equivalent of a 2560x1440 or 1920x1080 monitor. Pixel density is still there, so things will look a bit sharper, but screen resolution (i.e.; available screen real estate) will be halved. Might as well get a native 2560x1440 or 1920x1080 monitor in that case, no?
As I stated, I am a developer, so for me the biggest advantage of 4K resolutions is the added screen real estate. But more screen real estate means nothing if I can't actually READ the bloody text in whatever I am working on. ;)
Going from a 30" 2560x1600 to a 43" 3840x2160 was perfect for me: text retained the same relative size. In fact, I had been waiting a long time for 4K monitors to go above 32".
This said, there ARE drawbacks: you need a HUGE desk, which, luckily, I already had. Also, even with a huge desk a computer monitor will typically sit much closer to you than a TV, so yes, that will induce a bit of strain on your neck - you now have a huge area right in front of your nose to scan, so unlike smaller sized monitors you will actually need to look up and down. Think of it as going to the gym, though: eventually your neck muscles strengthen and you will get used to it. :)
I hope. lol :P
"One of the benefits of using multiple monitors"
Another benefit is the ability to drop back down to a (n-1) setup if one of the screens/cables/video ports goes on the blink.
Yes, I can see the allure of having a seamless display like this, but the drawbacks (single point of failure, requirement for a single video card capable of driving such a huge display, inflexibility of where you can locate the thing etc.) far outweigh the benefits IMO even before you consider the huge price premium you're having to pay.
It's curved so that an icon on the edge of the screen is roughly the same distance from your eyes as an icon in the centre.
I've not used one, but I hear more positive noises about curved monitors (typically single user) than I do about curved TVs (multiple viewers can't all be in the sweet spot, greater distance from viewers reduces the curved effect)
merge the screens of completely different machines into a seamless whole?
So you could have a laptop and tower-attached screen on the same desk and move the mouse pointer from the large screen to the laptop screen AS IF THEY WERE EMBEDDED IN THE SAME PHYSPACE. Then you would use the same keyboard to work on one machine and the other. Instead of being continually challenged to move your massive Plinkett-tier arms around.
merge the screens of completely different machines into a seamless whole?
Not quite a seamless whole, but I use a piece of software called Synergy, which allows me to link different machines together, so my main machine has 2 monitors, one 27" widescreen immediately in front of me, and one 19" widescreen on my right, and then I have another machine with a single monitor which is on my left. Using Synergy, I can move the mouse pointer all the way from the left hand screen to the right hand screen.
When the cursor is on the left hand screen, then mouse and keyboard commands go to one machine, and when the cursor is on the centre or right hand screen mouse and keyboard commands go to the other machine. I can move files from one machine's desktop to the other just using drag and drop.
I only became aware of this screen yesterday and it took me about three minutes to decide to pre-order one from Scan. £1160 though. I've stayed drunk since. not sure i want to face what I have done. I currently have 3 37" monitors on my rather large desk. This will free up some real estate at least. I don't care about the 1080 as it will be gaming only, well mostly.
That is just too much screen for my needs, with a barely passable resolution. I like having screen real estate, but having multiple monitors works just fine. The legs of that thing intruding into the desk so much would also annoy the heck out of me. I like having my desk free so I can clutter it with other (but moveable) stuff.
I have a giant 3840x2160 monitor with the same dot pitch as a normal 1920x1080 monitor. All the stuff that would normally get tossed onto a second monitor can go in the corners of this one. I've tried full-screen coding but I have to sit at the left side of the monitor and roll my chair sideways to read long lines. RAW photo editing is amazing. Fixed-width websites like Facebook and The Reg read like cash register receipts.
Yup, just exchanged 3x1280x1024 for a 3840x2164
Love the clarity of the big screen but I miss the simplicity of just snapping from one screen to another.
And if I set the screen font-size to something readable without a microscope most of my older apps get very confused…think I need to add one of the old screens back into the mix.
And Synergy1 is excellent, while Synergy2 feels like alpha-code.
Mac
After Samsung's past slyness is, what's the TV like regarding Privacy Control? Not buying a Smart TV ever if I can help it. Such a pity that despite Snowden / Schrems headline news, few firms have actually jumped on the Privacy train!
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https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/if-you-have-a-smart-tv-take-a-closer-look-at-your-privacy-settings.html
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/09/internet-of-things-smart-devices-spying-surveillance-us-government
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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/04/smart_tvs_satellites_and_billboards_all_hacked_in_ukrainian_war/
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I have this 49" at home and it's amazing for driving games with 144hz and Quantum Dot colour and no motion blur. I also play BF1 and I can't fault the monitor at all. FIFA 18 is incredible on it. You can basically see the whole pitch. It has FreeSync2, but I have an NVidia card and Samsung also has 4 channel backlight strobing technology to reduce motion blur so it looks like a 1ms monitor with the fastest setting turned on. I can't see the strobing. I don't notice lag or tearing and I don't miss my old G-Sync 1440 for games. For me, the experience playing games in 3840x1080 on a seemless 2x 27" is better than 2560x1440 from my graphics card. Better than everything else I seen with friends. It's just really immersive and I don't notice pixel size playing games. But if you want 2560x1440, there's also the cheaper CHG70 as an alternative if you like the idea of great colour, deep blacks and a really fast panel.
Perhaps what this monitor needs to go with it is a chair with power rotate so as you move the mouse sideways, the entire chair rotates to keep your point of view centred on the mouse.
Yes, I did work on powered gun turret traverse aligned to the sight once upon a time, why do you ask?
Older Thinkpad W701 (16GB) and newer P71 (64GB).
I feel at the center of universe when I have all these on (as well as multi VMs, remote access).
Still, the weak link at the center of all this capability is sitting in my chair.
And the operative link are all the external services that are monitoring our traffic.
Here in Australia I used a UHD 40 inch TV 3840*2160, bought from the local cheapo department store (Big W) for AUD$520... i can set all my work all round on the screen. lesser stuff to the edges and the important stuff on the centre. Going into work is a downgrade 2 x 23" monitors.......
I have owned this monitor since around Christmas.
I had been running 3 x 1080p monitors previously. the loss of effectively 1 screen was noticeable in gaming, but the loss of bezels is completely awesome! Never mind the higher fps, freesync and better image/color accuracy.
There was a getting used to it factor, but this is so worth while. The samsung software allows you to parcel up the screen in several different smaller 'screens' if you want, or when running productivity software, this is EXACTLY like having 2 27" 1080p screens side by side.
Gaming my favorite game World of warships, or even a PUBG match is simply the most immersible and incredible experience one can achieve gaming today. I love it and strongly recommend this screen for anyone who can find it on sale (downside is the price - do NOT pat MSRP - it goes on significant sale frequently I have found)
Good hunting!
Karandar
Has me thinking of people comparing their anatomy to each other, or at least bragging about it. Sure my monitor isn't that big, but for most things it really doesn't need to be.
My last job, I used a very nice iMac that allowed me to have a nice 50 lines with 80 characters on each nicely displayed on the monitor. For programming that is pretty good, and a long way from the 24x80 CRT terminals I used many moons ago.
I guess for the most part it is all relative. Lots of people want "bigger" even if they don't use it. In fact those that want it the most are usually the ones who don't actually use the big expanses of screen real estate (like many PHB's).
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