In 2016 I bought a $700 40in curved 4k monitor for my job at Amazon. It's funny they probably spent over $1500 on a laptop I almost never used but did not want to pay for a decent monitor.
I really don't get the curved monitors for working. They're fine if you're playing a video game or watching a movie in the dark at home, I guess, but wouldn't want one for other uses.
They are wider than is comfortable to view at once from the short distance many office desks offer, especially if they're on a flex arm that eats up more space. They seem optimally designed to ensure that you'll have glare on your screen no matter how you position it in any kind of well lit environment. They don't offer the window management affordances that having separate screens do, or they have some weird software kludges to do similar.
The main advantage of a curved monitor is that the viewing angle is closer to 90 deg which can help with colour uniformity.
That being said, I think you are mostly thinking about the aspect ratio of ultra-wide monitors in general. It's a matter of preference, but I will take an ultra wide (>= 40in) any day over two regular 16/9 monitors. I end up having my main window in the middle 40% with two other windows on the side at 30%.
They seem optimally designed to ensure that you'll have glare on your screen no matter how you position it in any kind of well lit environment.
I guess the workaround (with any monitor, really) is to ensure that the light sources are not behind you.
Ultrawide curved are amazing. Put your main activity in the middle since there's no screen bezel and enjoy your neck-pain-free work hours. 2 monitors force you to usually have one on the left, one on the right and always face your head towards either.
Also, it's fine to have side activities on the side, but you usually won't be looking at those all the time, so they shouldn't cause any strain.
Yes, this. At work, I have side-by-side 32" 4K monitors. At home, I have a 59" curved 7680x2160 monitor that is the same size as the two work monitors combined. My home setup is much more ergonomic than work. Beyond your point about angles being bad with two monitors, pretty often I have three things open that are wider than 1920 pixels worth of content. At home, each can be 2560 pixels wide. At work, I can either have bezels in the middle of one or shrink two of them. And the fairly aggressive curve at home means pixels are close to the same angular size.
Ultrawides for me are awesome. Got the laptop on a riser on the left for email/teams. If you use a window manager like powertoys on windows or rectangles on mac you can get a config that utilizes the screen.
Do a decent amount of full stack work and like having vscode on the left like 80% then stack two terminals on the right.
They also have weird and uncomfortable acoustic effects. The one I have at work forms a perfect parabola to precisely reflect and focus my own breathing sounds straight into my ear canals. It's incredibly distracting so I have to always sit off-center to it
I cannot disagree more strongly. In the correct setup, there is always a tangent line between all parts of the screen as you swivel your neck horizontally. I did not have that without an ultrawide and it led to various neck muscle issues that I regret
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In 2016 I bought a $700 40in curved 4k monitor for my job at Amazon. It's funny they probably spent over $1500 on a laptop I almost never used but did not want to pay for a decent monitor.
I really don't get the curved monitors for working. They're fine if you're playing a video game or watching a movie in the dark at home, I guess, but wouldn't want one for other uses.
They are wider than is comfortable to view at once from the short distance many office desks offer, especially if they're on a flex arm that eats up more space. They seem optimally designed to ensure that you'll have glare on your screen no matter how you position it in any kind of well lit environment. They don't offer the window management affordances that having separate screens do, or they have some weird software kludges to do similar.
The main advantage of a curved monitor is that the viewing angle is closer to 90 deg which can help with colour uniformity.
That being said, I think you are mostly thinking about the aspect ratio of ultra-wide monitors in general. It's a matter of preference, but I will take an ultra wide (>= 40in) any day over two regular 16/9 monitors. I end up having my main window in the middle 40% with two other windows on the side at 30%.
I guess the workaround (with any monitor, really) is to ensure that the light sources are not behind you.
Ultrawide curved are amazing. Put your main activity in the middle since there's no screen bezel and enjoy your neck-pain-free work hours. 2 monitors force you to usually have one on the left, one on the right and always face your head towards either.
Also, it's fine to have side activities on the side, but you usually won't be looking at those all the time, so they shouldn't cause any strain.
Yes, this. At work, I have side-by-side 32" 4K monitors. At home, I have a 59" curved 7680x2160 monitor that is the same size as the two work monitors combined. My home setup is much more ergonomic than work. Beyond your point about angles being bad with two monitors, pretty often I have three things open that are wider than 1920 pixels worth of content. At home, each can be 2560 pixels wide. At work, I can either have bezels in the middle of one or shrink two of them. And the fairly aggressive curve at home means pixels are close to the same angular size.
Offices are notoriously bad at optimizing that kind of thing.
Ultrawides for me are awesome. Got the laptop on a riser on the left for email/teams. If you use a window manager like powertoys on windows or rectangles on mac you can get a config that utilizes the screen.
Do a decent amount of full stack work and like having vscode on the left like 80% then stack two terminals on the right.
They also have weird and uncomfortable acoustic effects. The one I have at work forms a perfect parabola to precisely reflect and focus my own breathing sounds straight into my ear canals. It's incredibly distracting so I have to always sit off-center to it
At work we have dozens of curved monitors by Dell. Not once have I seen glare on them.
But once you have figured out the window management stuff, they do offer better ergonomics! (And you don't have to daisy-chain monitors, etc.)
They pair really nicely with a column-oriented WM like Niri or PaperWM!
I have a curved 3840x1600 ultrawide and it’s basically perfect.
First, it wasn't an ultrawide.
Second, I used my own custom window manager on Windows: https://github.com/StackWM/
Which is why you don't code fullscreen.
I cannot disagree more strongly. In the correct setup, there is always a tangent line between all parts of the screen as you swivel your neck horizontally. I did not have that without an ultrawide and it led to various neck muscle issues that I regret