As someone who’s been in the IT space for 10 years, I’ve always been obsessed with my home-office setup. I even dream about it — yes, dream. If it were up to me, I’d change my home-office layout every month, maybe even every week! I’m definitely not a conservative person when it comes to home-office setups — unlike my dad, who’s perfectly happy with a tiny table, a tiny laptop that looks like it time-traveled from 2005, and a cup of tea. That’s all he needs. But me? Oh boy and girl and everyone else, I need more.
I must confess, I’m a total monitor freak, and over time, I’ve just learned to embrace it. You know what they say: the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem… but I’m not planning on recovering.😄
This obsession formed my opinions about certain things — like super ultrawide monitors — and I want to share my observations.
The Ultimate Monitor Setup
The size and number of your monitors really depends on what kind of person you are. I had the chance to try out an impressive setup once — not my own, but a friend’s, who generously let me test it out.
So this was the home-office setup:
- A super ultrawide 49″ monitor as the main screen.
- A wide monitor mounted on top of it.
- A pivot monitor on the side.
- And finally, my laptop’s monitor as an additional screen.
Honestly, I admit this was a bit too much, and the pivot monitor felt completely unnecessary. But I won’t lie — it also kind of felt like I was in a spaceship cockpit, ready to launch myself to the moon!
My Observations
I noticed a few things while using this setup. With the super ultrawide monitor, I felt kind of “tied” to it. I constantly found myself sitting down and testing it out.
I discovered that using PBP (Picture-by-Picture) mode is a game changer. Without it, if you’re watching a video on one side of the screen, you can’t just maximize it there — it centers the video and takes up the whole screen, making you lose whatever was on the other side. This, for me, is the biggest disadvantage of a super ultrawide monitor. Most videos, when maximized, have a 16:9 aspect ratio. This means you end up with black bars on the sides, which I find annoying. I want the video to fill the entire screen, not have unused space filled with black.
I know there are some cool tools that can emulate the effect of splitting a super ultrawide monitor into multiple virtual monitors. These tools don’t require external hardware connections like PBP does but can give you similar functionality. I’ve never tried them though.
A super ultrawide monitor has a 32:9 aspect ratio, so when watching movies, the video sits in the middle, with black bars on the sides. But then again, you’re not buying a super ultrawide monitor for watching movies — or at least, I hope not!
When it comes to productivity, this setup did make me want to sit down at desk more often. But mostly just to marvel at how huge the monitor was. When it comes to the top monitor, looking up at it frequently gave me neck pain. It’s really only useful for apps like Outlook or Teams — not for productive work or watching videos and tutorials.
For video editing, a super ultrawide monitor could be a game changer. But for everything else? I think it’s a bit too much. Your favorite IDE for coding works just fine on a smaller monitor, and having code stretched across a massive screen isn’t as revolutionary as you might think.
What about you? Are you team “one humble screen” or more like “the more, the merrier”? Tell me about your setup — make me feel better (or worse) about my own monitor addiction. 😄
~ Andrea