Ultrawide monitor (for development) - flat or curved screen?

Ravi Bhavnani

What do you recommend? /ravi

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Rick York

The wider it is the more it should be curved in my opinion. I have 27-inch monitors and they are flat and that's as wide as I would want to go with a flat monitor. I also have a 34-inch monitor that is curved and it's terrific.

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OriginalGriff

My problem with curved big screens is simple: are they good for your eyes? I'm pretty sure that my eyesight has got worse as a result of decades of screen use, and curved screens mean that for 6~8 hours a day you are focusing at exactly the same distance which can't be good long term for the eye muscles. Can it?

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Slacker007

I have dual 27" Samsung monitors. I like them a lot and I like the setup. I think single screen, 40+ inches are becoming popular these days. I know a couple of devs that have them, curved. They like them a lot.

Mircea Neacsu

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Changing focusing distance is not an exercise that can compensate for the lack of flexibility in your crystallin. Anyway you would need large changes in focusing distance to have any noticeable effect. The small adjustments required by the monitor surface would just stress your eye muscle for no reason. The recommendation of relaxing your eyes periodically by looking out the window is based on the fact that ciliary muscles are in a relaxed state when focusing to infinity. Best is to have a rather fixed focusing distance and good lighting conditions. Good lighting reduces the pupil opening increasing the depth of field (just like in a camera where you go for large diaphragm numbers when you want more depth of field). Not sure how crazy Ravi wants to go with his ultrawide, but I recon that up until 35-37" flat or curve doesn't make any difference. After that, curved ones get the edge.

Mircea

Gary R Wheeler

I bought a new monitor a few months ago. I lost my right eye in a fall year before last, and the 20" monitor I had wasn't working well. I chose a 24" flat model. 24" seems to be the starting point where curved screens are available. I looked at a lot of monitors in the store, including curved ones and even an ultrawide curved model. I think the curved model looked great when playing video or games, but I didn't care for it looking at text. In a standard wide-format, I wouldn't like a curved screen. For ultrawide I might change my mind, but that's probably due to my monocular vision peculiarities more than anything else. I'd definitely go look in the store. Take some text or source code with you to see how it feels. The demos they run on monitors aren't good for judging this sort of usage.

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Andreas Mertens

Funnily enough (not, don't ask) I had an accident with my 43" Sony Bravia flat screen I was using. Was 10 years old, but still pretty nice for 1920x1080. Its flat, and while I thought about a curved screen for this it didn't really seem to matter. It was arms length away, so not like I was doing a lot of head turning from left to right. Ordered a refurbished 43" Samsung tv, quad density, for only a quarter of the price that I paid for the Sony. I think the higher density will be nice, we will see....

Roger Wright

My last monitor was one of those curved thingies (yes, that's a technical term) from Sam's Club, about a 32" I believe. I liked it quite a bit until I discovered that it didn't like the free-flying recoil spring cap from a M1911 .45 ACP pistol any better than its predecessor. I promised its replacement that I would refrain from doing any gunsmithing whilst sitting in front of it.

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5imone

... and if it is big enough to be curved thingie*, which R-size? *I learnt new tech word this morning :)

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Lost User

The further away, the flatter, I would say. Unless it was really wide.

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Ravi Bhavnani

Thanks everyone for your replies. I should have substantiated my question with some background information. I often need to view Visual Studio (often 2 files side by side), an Android emulator and a Zoom window at the same time. I currently use a single 1920 x 1200 monitor at home only because I have limited desk space. At work I have 2 1920 x 1200 flat panels with the option of having a third, but these days I work from home most of the time. I've been asked to select a an ultrawide of my choice, so I want to ensure I do due diligence (reviews can be misleading because they're often sponsored by the manufacturer) before having my company fork out $$ for the device. As I understand it, the value of a curved ultrawide is that it provides better edge-to-edge clarity than a wide flat panel since the distance from the eye is roughly the same throughout the width of monitor. On the flip side, curved monitors provide a less than accurate rendition of extreme detail at the edges and therefore aren't recommend for CAD, design or photographic applications. While curved ultrawides come in a wide array of widths, my desk will allow for a maximum diagonal size of 34", which in my informal testing seems ideal for development. I intend to face the left half of the monitor head on and view the right curved portion from time to time. If I had more desk space, I would just use 2 flat panels, with the one on the right being tilted a bit towards me. I'm leaning towards one of these 3440 x 1440 (21 x 9) monitors which are priced at the lower end of the market:

Again, thanks very much for your input. /ravi

Stepan Hakobyan

I'm using 34inch 1000R curved monitor for a year now, and I love it. Previously I used two monitors, but lots of applications nowadays are optimized for bigger screens rather then two screens (ex. VSCode). Browsing web is weird, many web pages does not optimized for 34inch, so I wrote many custom css scripts for some of the most used ones. It's all good now.

Michael Rockwell 2021

I have used both and I prefer a curved screen. However, a curved screen does take up more desk space. I also like that my monitor has a Thunderbolt connection because it is a much cleaner connection to my PC and it powers my laptop PC. No additional power brick connection is needed freeing up a power outlet and reducing cabling.

CodeZombie62

I have a 55” 4K Toshiba fire tv connected to my laptops. I have the resolution set to 3840x whatever (I’m not sitting in front of it right now) and I normally have the windows sized so each fits in its own quadrant. I also have a 40” Sharp tv setting next to it at 1920x whatever.

mmwlada

Since you have a limit of 34" I would say go with 34" :D I am very happy with my Dell S3220DGF. It is 2K curved monitor, but I think that 4K would work well too on this size as long as it isn't too far away from you. There can be only one.

Gary Wheeler

Ye gods. How far away do you sit from these monsters?

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thewazz

Google 'troy hunt monitor'. You'll find images and blog post(s) about his search. I forget the results.

CodeZombie62

They're both around 3 feet away from me. I mostly look at the lower half of the 55" screen. The 55" monitor was less than $500. By the way, the resolution of the monitors is 3840 x 2160 for the 55" and 1920 x 1080 for the 40".

Lost User

I bought the Dell 32 Curved 4K UHD S3221QS about a month ago and am happy with it. I can fit two instances of VS side by side. I really like the added vertical space compared to my old school 24" monitors.

Cpichols

Do you think you'd have space for 2 monitors if the one on the right were vertical instead of horizontal? I've not tried it, but I know several who prefer their second screen to be vertical.