Apart from programming, one of the motivations for getting the 8K display is to look at lidar point clouds. For example the desktop background in my post is a lidar map of Bernal Hill in San Francisco, which I've here downsampled to only 13006 x 7991 px for your convenience [1].
Admittedly, when I bought it at first, I didn't realize there would be so many random issues, as manufacturers all advertised their gear as "8K Ready" even in 2021. As I incrementally fixed the problems, I decided to document my journey in this blog post.
btw I posted this in the past but it got caught by the spam filter and disappeared [2], not sure how to appeal that when it happens. Thanks ingve for posting it again!
I had the Dell 8k monitor you mentioned, the picture quality was great but it died after a few years not long after the warranty expired (a gut punch at the purchase price) and they said too bad so sad... ok that's fine but I will never buy another Dell product again. It was released too early to have proper displayport support and I had to use a custom nvidia-driver X11 config to make it mostly work as two monitors. And there is basically no way to use that kind of DPI without scaling.
I replaced it with an LG 43UN700 which is a 43" 4K display that I use unscaled and although the LCD panel is vastly inferior I love the thing especially at the price point (under $700). I hope manufacturers continue to support this niche of large singular flat displays because they are fantastic for coding, data viewing/visualization and pitch hit at content consumption as your article states although this one would be no good for gaming. And getting a "monitor" or "professional display" firmware load means a lot less problems than a Smart TV load.
I had a similar experience with Dell after they wanted the price of a new laptop for a replacement laptop battery. This was for the Dell Studio back when battery packs were made to be swappable by simply sliding a latch.
After that phone call to customer support, I made a similar vow to never buy another Dell product. These days, I use a Framework laptop.
You may want to look at the Samsung 5K monitor. It can often be had for $700. The sharpness of text is beautiful, especially if you're using a mac since it's optimized at 218ppi to avoid scaling. But, it might be smaller than you want. Apple also makes one that is nearly identical, except for the price.
PS - I have seen Dell go downhill as well. I returned the last Dell laptop I bought. My wife was sitting next to me on the couch and her macbook had full wifi bars while the dell had one bar. I did some research and they were using a pretty cheap wifi controller and maybe also had poor antenna design. I ordered a ThinkPad for the same price and it was great.
That's surprising given that Dell usually offers very good warranty on their monitors, at least to consumers. Was this a bussiness (B2B) purchase perhaps?
In the early 4k era, whenever I saw a TV used as a monitor, the eye strain was high. It was too bright, too contrasty, and generally, the picture was not great for using for things like programming. In addition, many TVs would do not-so-great things to the picture, the worst being digitally sharpening the image (which resulted in e.g. a halo effect around small text).
This might not bother some people, but it bothers me a lot.
How are you finding the display compares to a real monitor? How do I buy TVs which I know won't do this sort of thing?
Many (most?) current TVs has either a game or PC mode which can be set on your HDMI to disable these "improvements".
I think this is primarily driven by console gamers to the benefits of PC users. Our needs align here.
If you check rtings.com they usually evaluate how good the TVs are as a monitor.
You might still have issues with local dimming etc. But that is the price of cheap. Better models works really good today.
I am using a really cheapo LG 43" 4K as a monitor. Properly adjusted it is usable. Would I like better? Yes. But it is worth the trade off. And there are only a few options for a "proper" 4K monitor at 43". I find that a little strange as it hits the sweet spot around 110ppi. I used to used dual monitors but I much prefer a (I know: comically) large screen.
Only real annoyance I have is that it does not turn off automatically like a real monitor using DPMS. This means that I have to turn it on using a button. It will turn off after 15 min if there is no signal. Like in the olden days.
Fortunately, modern TVs can disable the sharpening and contrast/saturation enhancements. Since I do a lot of photography and image processing, I am also extremely sensitive to oversharpened halos, so I was a bit worried about that at first --- but fortunately, that is 100% nonexistent once I applied the appropriate settings on my Samsung QN800A. See pics: [1] [2]
I also detest the miniled HDR that they have going on, which can cause bright things to glow, so I disabled that. Unfortunately my QN800A still have a bit of "full screen HDR", namely, that the whole screen may uniformly dim if it detects that the scene is dark. This means that sometimes when you have a black screen with a single cursor on it, it gets dark, and it becomes hard to see the cursor. This doesn't affect normal usage though, when the screen is at a constant brightness.
I am using a 43 inch 4k monitor so I am allin on big screen real estate. But I find that even with a quarter of your screen area, I struggle to read the corners of the screen, the bottom is often obstructed by whatever is lying on my desk, and I had to make the mouse cursor bigger as I kept losing it. I doubt that an even bigger screen would be practical. I do have two 43in monitors side by side but the other one is more like a secondary screen for playing movies or "storing windows", it's too far from the eye to be useful as a primary monitor for reading and writing.
32" being (IMHO) too small and 43" too large, I have invested in a rare (and relatively expensive) 38" 4K monitor (Asus/ROG Swift PG38UQ, ~1000€ when I bought it, hasn't gone down much since), and until now I can only say good things about it. It's big enough to use without scaling (except for a few websites with tiny font size), but small enough so you can have a reasonable distance between the bottom and the desk and still see all four corners without craning your head around too much. It has a fixed foot (only the vertical angle is adjustable), and I originally thought I would have to buy an extra fully adjustable monitor stand, but so far I'm happy with the "default" settings. I'm not getting another one because of space limitations (and spouse tolerance issues), but compared to the two WUXGA monitors I had before, it's already almost four times as much screen space, so that should be enough for the foreseeable future.
I had a similar experience using a 43" 4K TV as my monitor, it was an OLED so the picture was absolutely beautiful but I'd end up only using the 32" in the middle of the display. I'm now using a 32" 4K display on my desk which is about the sweet spot for me, lots of real estate, and I can see all of it.
I also have a 43" 4K monitor, and I find myself being in the same position as you. The left/right edges are difficult to see. I don't have the issue with the mouse, but I also doubt whether a larger screen would be useful to me. As it is there's a corner that gets unused because it's just out of "eye shot" if that's a phrase. It is now, I guess :D
I use glasses (myopia) and can kind of tolerate the edges of my 32" 4k monitor, but I can't fathom craning my neck all the way up to the edges of a 55"+ display. Not to mention font sizes.
I have fairly bad eyesight with both myopia and astigmatism (-5 sph, -2 cyl) and I wear glasses. I got glasses with 1.71 index lenses, which I greatly prefer over the more common 1.74 index lenses due to the higher Abbe number, resulting in less chromatic aberration.
Anyway, I use browsers at 150% scaling usually, although the text is finer on my terminals. I don't use any scaling for UI elements and terminals. Using the i3 tiling window manager, I put more commonly used terminals on the bottom half of the screen since I find that the top half does require more neck craning.
I had a 55" TV as my main display in 2022. Had it about a foot away from my face. It takes a few days, but your brain and body get used to the size.
I just bought a 39" ultrawide and for the first few days I thought "oh dear, I have to keep turning to see the whole thing," but I've not even thought about it for a couple of weeks now, so I guess I'm acclimated.
You don't maximize windows except to watch videos at that size. It's more like having multiple monitors with fluid borders. You focus as needed, leaving the rest in your peripheral vision. That said I did miss maximizing windows to focus on tasks.
Nice to see other people doing the same thing I do, albeit with a 4k OLED instead. I am waiting for an 8k OLED at an affordable price but it seems I will have to continue waiting.
What brand and model of desk do you have? I have a 48" TV but I sit rather close so it probably takes up the same field of view as your 65".
As to your last paragraph, if you email hn@ycombinator.com and explain the situation, they'll sort you out and sometimes put you into a second chance pool, as it's called.
In case you're wondering whether this works on a Mac, like I did, I found this source[0]. In short, you need an M2 Pro or better, and may need to edit a plist file to get it to work.
A tad surprised that curvature isn't discussed? With such a massive screen, the distance from your eye to the middle of the screen, and eye to the corners, are very different - unless you sit far away. Your eyes thus need to change focus all the time. That's AFAIK why those ultra wide screens are curved - and I find that the more curve they have (smaller radius), the better it is. With such a massive screen, I guess it would be best if it was part of a sphere! (Curved both ways)
I recently acquired a 43" 4K monitor for programming - a very boring Philips monitor, used at 100% scale. I hated it at first, but after a month I loved it.
2160p actual 'workspace' resolution at this distance (2 feet?) and size (43") seems close to a practical limit for typical use I thought, requiring with this measly 43" still a little bit of occasional head movement to see the top right corner. I noticed a tendency to sit slightly to the left of centre on this monitor, to avoid distortion and maintain clarity with what I'm focusing on (e.g. code/windows, not reference materials). Because of this I suspect at this distance a 43" with a slight curve would be optimal, at least for me.
What I wanted to ask you:
- What is your 'workspace' resolution? Is it something like 6K? I'm guessing your scaling is either 125% or 150%? Your PPI should be around 135, mine 102.
- Are you actually sat perfectly centre? I was wondering this because I keep noticing I tend to gradually shift my keyboard to the left over a day. Maybe this is years of 1440p + side portrait monitor use, I'm not sure, but eventually I accepted that I prefer slightly to the left (odd because my side portrait was on the left...)
- Do you think a curved monitor at this size/distance would improve the ergonomics? I imagine you must get a bit of a neck workout.
After getting this monitor, I'm pretty much sold on single screens again - but I had to switch my window management from keyboard-based tiling shortcuts to 'hold CTRL and move mouse' window management (BetterTouchTool on MacOS), with a tendency to stack up windows messily. I tried custom resize snap zones with BetterSnapTool - but I don't use them. I think that was the biggest challenge to switch from multi monitor to large format. It's a huge benefit to have everything in your context on one screen, but had to rethink how windows get moved around. Now I'm used to it, I want CTRL/SHIFT + mousemove modifiers on every system to deal with windows.
Also related, I bought a 4K tv last weekend for another system to use as a monitor, but found that the gaps between the pixels were unexpectedly large, creating a strange optical effect at close distance, making it unusable (but so close). There might be something different about the screen outer layer (on most TVs?) that polarizes light in a way better suited for distance viewing, but clearly not all TVs have this issue.
The power is not so bad, especially compared to the graphics cards you would want to use (and I use my GPU as a tow warmer). Samsung 8k specifically comes with low power presets which are probably usable in this scenario. Of course with so many more pixels in 8k than in 4k there is need for more power but the EU regulation allows selling them if they also support an eco mode.
I am old enough to recall 100W as the typical single light bulb and I still use an electric tea kettle that touches the multi kW range daily.
Yeah it does emit a bit of heat. I think around one or two hundred watts? I haven't measured it directly. I have a mini split air conditioner in my home office.
What zoom (if any) do you typically run at? For instance, a 200% zoom would give you an effective resolution of 4K, but with much sharper and smoother text and rendered graphics.
I tried this a couple of years ago and had to ditch the TV because of too much input lag.
You mention input lag only once where you say:
> Although this post is mostly focused on productivity, most if not all 8K TVs can be run in 4K at 120 Hz. Modern TVs have decent input lag in the ballpark of 10 ms and may support FreeSync.
Have you measure this, or where do you get this number from?
The TV I bought was also advertised as low-latency, but I found it too high in practice (when typing in code, or scrolling, and waiting for the screen to update).
I don't know many Linux users doing 4k+ at 144hz. I am wondering if you do any screen capture or desktop recording, and if so what software you use and what your experience is like? I cannot reliably capture 4k/144hz with my setup but my desktop environment is still on X11. I tried KDE/Wayland and had a better experience, but run into other bugs based on their integration.
Just curious how your experience with sway has been. I installed it but wasn't expecting to come with no config at all and didn't really want to be bothered setting it up just to test screen recording.
The issue with X11 is that even if you record (using any software) it causes the display refresh rate to artificially drop and its a very bad experience overall when you run at 4k144hz. Ultimately, the future is wayland but I am a little surprised how slow it has been for everyone to integrate it into their software.
Its slow because there is no singular Wayland just 12 different waylands that diverge because the primary standard is underspecified and took 16 years for people to agree on functionality people agreed was needed in 1999.
What you really need to match is the angular resolution in microradians from your eye. You can make any screen smaller by sitting farther back. That said, I do wish my TV was only 42". I guess if you really want the ppi to be exactly the same as a 27" 5K screen, then 27 * 7680 / 5120 = 40.5".
Do you use macOS with this and if yes, do you often share your screen? I find large monitor unusable for screen sharing on macOS in general as it will share a lot of blank space and the window you want to share, making the window minuscule for anyone that does not have an 8k monitor like you.
Interesting. Time to buy a new tv or monitor for programming. Wonder which resolution and size to go. Use 4K 27 for programming and a super wide for my fs2020.
Btw I would use two different glass when I use it as tv or playing fs2020/4 vs when I sit close to use it as programming station.
hey, i asked you on the other thread as well (the imac one) but this was my question
—-
Hey, I have a similar setup (https://kayg.org/uses) where I use a LG C148 as my primary TV and monitor. I do all work on it, however I am unable to use tiling window managers as you recommend because I always struggle to see windows / text that is placed above my eye-level.
For that reason, I prefer to use manual window management solutions instead.
I am curious how do you deal with that problem, one big TV user to another? or do you not have that problem at all?
thanks!
I did this same thing with a 50" 4k TV ... I get and it does work .... My biggest issue is the tv brightness levels even at low were waaaaaaay too bright... I was using LCD ... Is oled better for this????
> There is also a Dell UP3218K, but it costs the same as an 8K TV and is much smaller and has many problems. So I do not recommend it unless you really don’t have the desk space. Sitting further back from a bigger screen provides the same field of view as sitting close to a smaller display, and may have less eye strain.
I've recently swapped out my dumb TV with a smart TV. The choice to go smart after clinging on to my dumb TV + old-school Chromecast was only motivated by advances in display tech. In retrospect the smart TV is a considerably worse experience UX-wise than the dumb TV + Chromecast. The built-in Chromecast in the new TV requires the TV to be logged into accounts for all the "apps" that the TV has. I can no longer just cast something from any device connected to my network and have it "just work" like it did before.
I know in this case you're working with HDMI and hopefully have managed to set the TV up to just display an HDMI output on bootup, but did you run into any of these infuriating "smart" TV things?
I was previously working at a lidar company and now I am working at a robotics company providing calibration and localization software to customers using a combination of lidars, cameras, and other sensors.
You COMPLETELY missed the elephant in the room : 8K TVs have really, really massive CPUs that waste a TON of power (150-200w for the CPU, 300-400w for the TV, often!) Think 8 cores of the fastest arm 64-bit processors available plus extra hardware accelerators! They need this extra processing power to handle the 8K television load, such as upscaling and color transforms - which never happen when you are using them as a monitor!
So, 8K TVs are a big energy-suck! There's a reason why European regulations banned 100% of 8K TVs until the manufacturers undoubtedly paid for a loophole, and now 8K TVs in Europe are shipped in a super-power-saver mode where they consume just barely below the maximum standard amount of power (90w) ... but nobody leaves them in this mode because they look horrible and dim!
If everybody were to upgrade to an 8K TV tomorrow, then I think it would throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...
Anecdotally my house draws 0.4 kW when idle and 0.6-0.7 kW when both my 8K screen and my computer are on. Since my computer draws 0.1-0.2 kW, I surmise that the QN800A doesn't draw 300-400 W total --- maybe 100-200 W.
I run my screen on a brightness setting of 21 (out of 50) which is still quite legible during the day next to a window.
Also, I have solar panels for my house (which is why I'm able to see the total power usage of my house).
That's a facially absurd statement. Just on the numbers:
The US consumes 500 gigawatts on average, or 5000 watts per household.
So if every household bought an 8K TV, turned it on literally 100% of the time, and didn't reduce their use of their old TV, it would represent a 10% increase in power consumption.
The carbon emissions from residential power generation have approximately halved in the past 20 years. So even with the wildest assumptions, it doesn't "throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...".
> You COMPLETELY missed the elephant in the room : 8K TVs have really, really massive CPUs that waste a TON of power (150-200w for the CPU, 300-400w for the TV, often!)
RTINGS measured the Samsung QN800A as consuming 139W typical, with a peak of 429W.
Your numbers aren't even close to accurate. 8K TVs do not have 200W CPUs inside. The entire Samsung QN800A uses less power during normal operation than you're claiming the CPU does. You do not need as much power as a mid-range GPU to move pixels from HDMI to a display.
> There's a reason why European regulations banned 100% of 8K TVs
This is also incorrect. European regulations required the default settings, out of the box, to hit a certain energy target.
So large TVs in Europe (8K or otherwise) need to come with their brightness turned down by default. You open the box, set it up, and then turn the brightness to the setting you want.
> until the manufacturers undoubtedly paid for a loophole
This is unfounded conspiracy theory that is also incorrect. Nobody paid for a loophole. The original law was written for out-of-the-box settings. Manufacturers complied with the law. No bribes or conspiracies.
> If everybody were to upgrade to an 8K TV tomorrow, then I think it would throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...
The Samsung QN800A 8K TV the author uses, even on high settings, uses incrementally more power than other big screen TVs. The difference is about equal to an old incandescent lightbulb or two. Even if everyone on Earth swapped their TV for a 65" 8K TV tomorrow (lol) it would not set back 20 years of global warming.
This comment is so full of incorrect information and exaggerations that I can't believe it's one of the more upvoted comments here.
To be fair it's not the energy that you're concerned with; it's the source of that energy.
Private jets can't run off nuclear power grids. Also the real problem-child of emissions is not America. China has a billion more people, what are their TVs like?
> The bezels and gaps in between the monitors introduce distractions and one is limited in how one may arrange terminals and windows across multiple displays.
To me, the segmentation is a feature. It lets me offload information density and focus. For example, I commonly have an editor on one screen, a browser on the second, and something like a chat app, terminal, etc on the laptop screen.
Nobody's stopping you from segmenting one big monitor into different regions; and you get to choose how big those regions are from day to day rather than being forced into it.
They tend to be relatively poorly handled by the software, at least out of the box.
Every modern major OS now has some level of tiling/splitting on a monitor's edges baked into their window manager by default now. Some can be tweaked to split into smaller subgroups, but that often requires less well tested/polished options (some apps just ignore the hints), or even third party extensions.
That's too much extra work. With multiple monitors you can maximize primary apps while still having manual management of smaller supporting apps on another monitor. You also get more edges for rapid snap to the sides of a monitor.
Although if that big monitor is an OLED, segmenting it into halves or quarters is kind of begging to end up with a line burned in down or across the middle eventually.
I have done this in the past using a tilling window manager and it's still better to use different displays. There is something about our monkey brains that makes 'different physical object = do different things' work better than all having it on the same monitor.
I did get it to work for me with thick black bars between the screens, but when you're giving up an inch of screen real estate for every virtual monitor then you might as well get physical ones.
I use a single ultrawide at home and dual-monitors at work.
Initially thought having one monitor experience was more seamless, but I do miss implicit window organizational aspect that dual monitors provide. And screensharing on the ultra-wide is a pain.
If your ultrawide is anything like mine, it also has a setting that lets it register as two separate monitors (PIP/PBP mode), which is like having two monitors without the bezel, but with the convenience of "there's an edge" in the middle of your screen when doing regular desktop work.
Does require two cables of course, but if you're driving an ultrawide, you're probably using a graphics card with three or four outputs anyway.
My Samsung ultra wide has side by side mode with two input cables. Screen sharing (and Windows) thinks it’s two monitors but I can stretch windows all the way across both if I want to since it is an extended set
A decent window management tool (e.g. Rectangle.app) should resolve most of your window management issues - set up many drag points to easily divide windows by half, thirds, quarters, sixths, etc.
Most screen share apps should support sharing by window. Also best for privacy (so your viewers don't see the side channel chat notifications pop up).
Also an ultrawide monitor is preferable for spreadsheet warriors.
I will not give up my 49" 21x9 for anything lesser.
Same, I've never liked spanning a window across multiple monitors. The discontinuity of the bezel is a handy mental break. Often I'll have email and teams on one screen and my main item of work on the central screen.
Same. This utility is also multiplied by having a separate set of virtual desktops on each display, which lets one create sets of windows/apps that can be mix-matched between screens, reducing the amount of window-shuffling to almost nothing after initial setup.
This is only possible under macOS and Linux, unfortunately. On Windows virtual desktops are still kind of a weird hack that spans one desktop across all monitors.
Yeah that issue seems weird to me, because I've never found bezels themselves to be that much of a problem. Like sure, less bezel is better. But I have some pretty wide gaps in my work monitors, and I've never found it to be a problem.
This article, and a lot of "productivity" articles, feel like spending a lot of time and effort for marginal-at-best improvements. I don't know their specific workflow, but I'm pretty sure they could get basically the same amount of productivity with a handful of 1080p monitors.
Its not a problem until you want to watch a movie or play a game, then you have a black bar down the middle. Compared with the opposite or just having one screen to split as youd like virtually.
After 15 years of having a desk job I find that I’m more sensitive to the position I sit in. My back feels a lot better if I have a single, regular sized screen right in front of me, instead of having additional screen estate on the sides or below (as with a laptop).
At the same time I use virtual desktops that I can switch with both keyboard and mouse.
The general advice is to have top of monitor at eye level, but it's been wrong advice for me personally. I now put the middle of the monitor at eye level. Keeps my head up and posture better. Leaning back instead of stooping.
The general advice provided to me, and relayed by me is eyes centered @ 2/3th of the screen.
The best advice received and relayed by me regarding posture might surprise you.
If you struggle with posture, stop caring about what other people might think about your posture. Changing/Tweaking posture all the time might look bad, but it also tends to mitigate the effects of being frozen in bad posture(!) The health impact is too significant to ignore.
I do this too, though mostly out of necessity. I use a 27" screen a couple feet away. To get the top of the monitor level with my eyes I'd either have to lower it so the bottom of the monitor was almost flush with the desk (which my current monitor's stand won't do anyway), or get a taller chair/lower my desk, both of which would leave my legs rubbing up against the desk underside and my arms at an uncomfortable angle for typing.
Either I have an abnormally short torso, or that advice was written back when most people were using a 14" display.
Indeed. AIUI your head needs to be back, chin tucked in, which means looking down a bit. If you're looking level or up you're going to be sticking your head out a bit
I'm the same. I use a single 27" 4k monitor and use virtual desktops. The best upgrade for me though was getting a computer prescription for some glasses that I keep on my desk.
Sometimes I think about upgrading to a 5k monitor. The Apple Studio Display looks great, but I'm a Windows user and I'm guessing a lot of the nice features of that display are Mac-only.
There aren't a whole lot of options for 5k monitors. Other than Apple I think there's a Dell, but it's too wide. There's a Samsung but I've been burned by Samsung too many times. There's also an LG 5k monitor but it gets pretty weak reviews.
> The Apple Studio Display looks great, but I'm a Windows user and I'm guessing a lot of the nice features of that display are Mac-only
I can possibly be of some help here. I have a Studio Display, however my work-provided machine is a Dell laptop and so that is what is connected to it most of the time.
Providing your machine can output video via Thunderbolt or USB-C, it will work. That is fairly common these days, though Windows machines capable of driving a 5120x2880 signal can be harder to come across, particularly in the corporate laptop world, though I don't know how much of a concern that is to you.
My last work machine maxed out at 4K which the Studio Display would happily scale up to full screen. I would describe it as substantially sharper than e.g. a 2560x1440 display of equivalent size, but still noticeably less sharp than the full native 5K (obviously). My current machine can do the full 5K, but the performance leaves a lot to be desired (however the thing is a turd anyway, too much corporate security crap bogging it down).
Speakers, camera, and microphone built into the display all work totally fine from Windows. What may be a total non-starter is that you need a Mac or iPad to change the brightness, because there's no physical controls on the display itself and Windows doesn't expose a way to control it. I am lucky/unlucky in that my home office does not get a huge amount of natural light, meaning I've been able to set it to a comfortable brightness from my Mac and then just leave it.
Overall it's a very nice monitor if you can work around the brightness thing. A possibly better contender though is the recent-ish 5K variant of the Asus ProArt[0]. I was using the 1440p version of the same monitor before I got the Studio Display, and I was very happy with it. Good colour reproduction, USB-C Power Delivery for one-cable laptop docking, and a far more adjustable stand than the SD. Worth a look.
I've got the LG 5K and it's been totally dependably kick ass for the 4 years (i think) since I got it (from the Apple Store). Mostly using it on macOS but have used it with Windows and haven't tried with Linux.
There are several 5k to appear next year: Benq, ALogic, maybe somrthing else. There are also chinese noname 5k monitors which use panel rejects of ASD.
Agreed. To each their own, but the obsession with the biggest and/or most possible screens is something that is very hard for me to relate to. As soon as I am regularly craning my neck to see all of my screen real estate, it is no longer a positive in my life. I'm glad these solutions exist for people who enjoy them, but they are definitely not for me.
Same here. I only use and want a single monitor setup. I can alt-tab between windows faster and more comfortably than turning my head to another screen.
Also a dual/multiple setup bothers me for losing the mouse boundaries when it crosses to another screen - I'd rather have the mouse bounded on one screen for faster access to menu bars at the edges.
Same, I switched back to a single 27" screen last year. For me it's better to focus on one thing at a time especially since my eyes aren't the best, and I switch between virtual desktops with F1-F4 (or when I use my mac with the 3-finger swipe gesture).
MacOS also has ctrl+left/right for switching virtual desktops. The gesture can get a bit tedious if you're jumping across multiple desktops in one go. I don't think it's particularly ergonomic either.
I upgraded recently, by buying a friends old Samsung Odyssey G9 49" curved monitor off him (he was emigrating). Before that I had 2 x 27" monitors, a setup I had used for ~10 years.
I honestly think the curve is essential when dealing with such a wide display. The alternative would be - as article states - to set it back a little and have a deeper desk so you can actually see the edge of the screen properly. I don't see the point in having a large screen with high pixel density if the edges are not actually easily visible to me without moving my head or body laterally.
The lack of bezels is great though - I'd definitely agree on that front, having 3 web browsers or editors open side by side suits me really well.
As weird as the aspect ratio can be on a curved ultrawide, I think it's also more natural and ergonomic to keep your head/eyes at a constant height and just move them side to side. With a monitor that has a lot of verticality you're gonna have to tilt your neck back more.
It’s different from person to person!, whether the curve is good or not.
I have a ruler flat 55” OLED TV as main monitor. It’s perfect for me. I’m like… 1-1.5 meters from it where I’m closest to it, haha. The edges are further away. It’s fine! – imo / ime.
(The need for the curve is also subtly different depending on how the panel was made. I tried a flat 43” IPS 4K monitor, expecting IPS to be good. And it wasn’t very good. The IPS features in that panel were large enough to affect viewing angle.)
> It’s different from person to person!, whether the curve is good or not.
The amount of curve also varies a lot between models so there's some nuance even within that. The curve might be as strong as 800R or as weak as 2300R depending on the monitor, where the number corresponds to the radius of the circle the panel follows in millimeters.
Same, though I'm also on 49" (5120x1440). They're selling them for extra cheap on Amazon with extended (36mo) warranties because they're prone to breaking, but I had the Samsung contractors out here this month and they did a great job fixing mine that randomly died one day -- for free! If you're a chill soul, I'd say it's worth the risk.
I sound like a shill, so Samsung plz hmu. $999 for a beautiful OLED monitor that fits a terminal, a browser, and 4 (font size 8...) 100col text editor windows is a gamechanger.
32" Odyssey G7 is the pick for me, I wouldn't mind an upgrade to the 4k version, but the 1440p version is more than good enough.
I also don't see the point in having a screen so big I have to move my head, or contrarily a screen so big that I have to push it back so the pixel density matters much less.
Low response time (i.e. time it takes for a pixel to change color) to reduce ghosting, and a high refresh rate up to 240 Hz.
These monitors are expensive and do not have very high resolution. If you're not a hardcore fast reflex gamer, and you spend a lot of time looking at text, then IMO it's better to buy a higher resolution monitor for less money.
I'm guessing because it allows you to set the Field-of-Vision to be pretty wide?
I mostly play simulation games, particularly flying, and having a wider FoV makes things easier, until you're ready to go to the top step of using VR instead so you also get depth perception and essentially 360 FoV since you can rotate your head.
The proper monitor height is when the top third of the screen is at or slightly below your eye level when seated or standing upright. This positioning helps prevent neck strain and allows for a comfortable viewing angle.
The top third of a large TV will be much higher than that, which will cause long term discomfort.
That's why large monitors have much wider aspect than TVs.
Yep a huge monitor sounds good in theory but you end up with neck and eye strain from panning your head constantly unless you place it so far away that it’s effectively a regular monitor at a regular distance.
Would recommend a black background Vscode theme for an OLED. The black background with red accents looks beautiful, at least on my smaller XPS 15 4k OLED. I use Dobri Next Black with some customizations but it looks good by default as well.
Correct me if I'm wrong - in OLED monitors, a black pixel actually means a powered off pixel. So it's a good idea to use as much as black in static areas to prolong the monitor life.
Maybe if you put what your working on at the top of the screen and only looked at that one thing it would be a problem, but realistically you use a bigger screen the same way you'd use a bigger desk: you dont put what you're working on out of reach, you just have more room for the tools for what you're working on.
Have been sporting a 4K LG CX48 OLED since ~Sept, 2020 best monitor decision ever. I've got two HDMI out cables, 1 going to my gaming rig and the other for my Macbook where I do my work as a developer.
I haven't noticed any burn-in or dead pixels. You need to set it up for success, enable all the burn-in prevention settings the monitor provides (static image darkening, pixel shifting&cleaning). It's also a great idea to do other things such as sleeping the monitor after 1min if inactivity, no screensaver (or just black), black desktop background, hide taskbars, etc
edit: to add, i have the monitor mounted to the wall and about 1" above the height of my desk[1] - this puts the center of the screen directly at eye level
Have you managed to get good text rendering? I still can't find how to get good sub-pixel anti-aliasing working for the text sizes I want to use on my LG 42" OLED.
It's otherwise awesome though, for the type of gaming I do (non-competitive, so stuff like D4 and Cyberpunk) it's completely unmatched.
I just wish it was a little bit better for smashing out code without annoying text fringing that distracts me.
I stole one of these from Best Buy for $500 in march. It’s just so good. I haven’t turned off the local dimming thing with the service remote so that’s still a thing but damn is it such a great monitor. And for gaming cyberpunk at 120hz with hdr melts your face.
According to https://tools.rodrigopolo.com/display_calc/, a 65" 8K like the one in the article is retina at a 26" viewing distance (136 PPI). For reference, a 27" 4K screen has 163 PPI, and is retina at 21" by the same math. A 27" 5K (like the Apple Studio Display) has 218 PPI and is retina at 16".
The DPI of this screen is too low for all the drawbacks. Would rather have crisper text (150+ DPI, 200 preferable) and/or be able to carry it myself. Needs to be about 42" for that.
One of my larger concerns about using TVs as monitors is security - its important to remember that these devices are not just displays.
ACR / Automated Content recognition means that they are also capable network connected framegrabbers and analysers.
If you connect the network to also use it as a TV, if you don't also tick all the right "I do not give you permission" boxes ( and the firmware actually respects these choices ), then your TV will be uploading signatures of everything you watch ( including HDMI inputs ) to the TV manufacturer for them to sell on to advertisers, political parties etc.
While I believe the normal mode of operation is just to upload some kind of image signature / hash, I doubt there is anything that technically or legally stops screenshots being uploaded for "additional analysis".
Note that this is incredibly lucrative for the manufacturers, so their incentives are minimally aligned with protecting our privacy or security here.
Also with the advances in local AI processing it seems realistic that the image analysis gets much more powerful and suddenly you have something like Microsoft's Recall but in your monitor/TV (and used _solely_ for profiling and not your benefit).
Readit News
Apart from programming, one of the motivations for getting the 8K display is to look at lidar point clouds. For example the desktop background in my post is a lidar map of Bernal Hill in San Francisco, which I've here downsampled to only 13006 x 7991 px for your convenience [1].
Admittedly, when I bought it at first, I didn't realize there would be so many random issues, as manufacturers all advertised their gear as "8K Ready" even in 2021. As I incrementally fixed the problems, I decided to document my journey in this blog post.
btw I posted this in the past but it got caught by the spam filter and disappeared [2], not sure how to appeal that when it happens. Thanks ingve for posting it again!
[1] https://pics.dllu.net/file/dllu-lidar/tldr_707_all_c_fine_50... (13006 x 7991 px)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41102135
I replaced it with an LG 43UN700 which is a 43" 4K display that I use unscaled and although the LCD panel is vastly inferior I love the thing especially at the price point (under $700). I hope manufacturers continue to support this niche of large singular flat displays because they are fantastic for coding, data viewing/visualization and pitch hit at content consumption as your article states although this one would be no good for gaming. And getting a "monitor" or "professional display" firmware load means a lot less problems than a Smart TV load.
After that phone call to customer support, I made a similar vow to never buy another Dell product. These days, I use a Framework laptop.
PS - I have seen Dell go downhill as well. I returned the last Dell laptop I bought. My wife was sitting next to me on the couch and her macbook had full wifi bars while the dell had one bar. I did some research and they were using a pretty cheap wifi controller and maybe also had poor antenna design. I ordered a ThinkPad for the same price and it was great.
In the early 4k era, whenever I saw a TV used as a monitor, the eye strain was high. It was too bright, too contrasty, and generally, the picture was not great for using for things like programming. In addition, many TVs would do not-so-great things to the picture, the worst being digitally sharpening the image (which resulted in e.g. a halo effect around small text).
This might not bother some people, but it bothers me a lot.
How are you finding the display compares to a real monitor? How do I buy TVs which I know won't do this sort of thing?
I think this is primarily driven by console gamers to the benefits of PC users. Our needs align here.
If you check rtings.com they usually evaluate how good the TVs are as a monitor.
You might still have issues with local dimming etc. But that is the price of cheap. Better models works really good today.
I am using a really cheapo LG 43" 4K as a monitor. Properly adjusted it is usable. Would I like better? Yes. But it is worth the trade off. And there are only a few options for a "proper" 4K monitor at 43". I find that a little strange as it hits the sweet spot around 110ppi. I used to used dual monitors but I much prefer a (I know: comically) large screen. Only real annoyance I have is that it does not turn off automatically like a real monitor using DPMS. This means that I have to turn it on using a button. It will turn off after 15 min if there is no signal. Like in the olden days.
I also detest the miniled HDR that they have going on, which can cause bright things to glow, so I disabled that. Unfortunately my QN800A still have a bit of "full screen HDR", namely, that the whole screen may uniformly dim if it detects that the scene is dark. This means that sometimes when you have a black screen with a single cursor on it, it gets dark, and it becomes hard to see the cursor. This doesn't affect normal usage though, when the screen is at a constant brightness.
[1] https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-36-11_DSCF2616_11f836ca2100...
[2] https://i.dllu.net/2024-10-30-09-37-18_DSCF2617_eeab771f780f...
Pixel density impacts the distance you need to be from the monitor to avoid eyestrain
I use glasses (myopia) and can kind of tolerate the edges of my 32" 4k monitor, but I can't fathom craning my neck all the way up to the edges of a 55"+ display. Not to mention font sizes.
Anyway, I use browsers at 150% scaling usually, although the text is finer on my terminals. I don't use any scaling for UI elements and terminals. Using the i3 tiling window manager, I put more commonly used terminals on the bottom half of the screen since I find that the top half does require more neck craning.
I'm 184 cm tall.
I just bought a 39" ultrawide and for the first few days I thought "oh dear, I have to keep turning to see the whole thing," but I've not even thought about it for a couple of weeks now, so I guess I'm acclimated.
YMMV.
IIRC, some monitors have curved surfaces. Maybe that feature would help you?
What brand and model of desk do you have? I have a 48" TV but I sit rather close so it probably takes up the same field of view as your 65".
As to your last paragraph, if you email hn@ycombinator.com and explain the situation, they'll sort you out and sometimes put you into a second chance pool, as it's called.
I got the black laminate desktop in a custom 75" x 42" dimension so the whole thing cost me almost $2000.
[1] https://www.upliftdesk.com/uplift-4-leg-standing-desk-v2-v2-...
[0] https://scottstuff.net/posts/2023/10/10/samsung-8k/
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236
2160p actual 'workspace' resolution at this distance (2 feet?) and size (43") seems close to a practical limit for typical use I thought, requiring with this measly 43" still a little bit of occasional head movement to see the top right corner. I noticed a tendency to sit slightly to the left of centre on this monitor, to avoid distortion and maintain clarity with what I'm focusing on (e.g. code/windows, not reference materials). Because of this I suspect at this distance a 43" with a slight curve would be optimal, at least for me.
What I wanted to ask you:
- What is your 'workspace' resolution? Is it something like 6K? I'm guessing your scaling is either 125% or 150%? Your PPI should be around 135, mine 102.
- Are you actually sat perfectly centre? I was wondering this because I keep noticing I tend to gradually shift my keyboard to the left over a day. Maybe this is years of 1440p + side portrait monitor use, I'm not sure, but eventually I accepted that I prefer slightly to the left (odd because my side portrait was on the left...)
- Do you think a curved monitor at this size/distance would improve the ergonomics? I imagine you must get a bit of a neck workout.
After getting this monitor, I'm pretty much sold on single screens again - but I had to switch my window management from keyboard-based tiling shortcuts to 'hold CTRL and move mouse' window management (BetterTouchTool on MacOS), with a tendency to stack up windows messily. I tried custom resize snap zones with BetterSnapTool - but I don't use them. I think that was the biggest challenge to switch from multi monitor to large format. It's a huge benefit to have everything in your context on one screen, but had to rethink how windows get moved around. Now I'm used to it, I want CTRL/SHIFT + mousemove modifiers on every system to deal with windows.
Also related, I bought a 4K tv last weekend for another system to use as a monitor, but found that the gaps between the pixels were unexpectedly large, creating a strange optical effect at close distance, making it unusable (but so close). There might be something different about the screen outer layer (on most TVs?) that polarizes light in a way better suited for distance viewing, but clearly not all TVs have this issue.
I am old enough to recall 100W as the typical single light bulb and I still use an electric tea kettle that touches the multi kW range daily.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/eu-8k-tv-ban-goes-into-effect...
You mention input lag only once where you say:
> Although this post is mostly focused on productivity, most if not all 8K TVs can be run in 4K at 120 Hz. Modern TVs have decent input lag in the ballpark of 10 ms and may support FreeSync.
Have you measure this, or where do you get this number from?
The TV I bought was also advertised as low-latency, but I found it too high in practice (when typing in code, or scrolling, and waiting for the screen to update).
Just curious how your experience with sway has been. I installed it but wasn't expecting to come with no config at all and didn't really want to be bothered setting it up just to test screen recording.
The issue with X11 is that even if you record (using any software) it causes the display refresh rate to artificially drop and its a very bad experience overall when you run at 4k144hz. Ultimately, the future is wayland but I am a little surprised how slow it has been for everyone to integrate it into their software.
Admittedly it’s a macOS issue.
Btw I would use two different glass when I use it as tv or playing fs2020/4 vs when I sit close to use it as programming station.
—-
Hey, I have a similar setup (https://kayg.org/uses) where I use a LG C148 as my primary TV and monitor. I do all work on it, however I am unable to use tiling window managers as you recommend because I always struggle to see windows / text that is placed above my eye-level. For that reason, I prefer to use manual window management solutions instead. I am curious how do you deal with that problem, one big TV user to another? or do you not have that problem at all? thanks!
but you should be able to adjust brightness on either the TV or your OS (or both)
> There is also a Dell UP3218K, but it costs the same as an 8K TV and is much smaller and has many problems. So I do not recommend it unless you really don’t have the desk space. Sitting further back from a bigger screen provides the same field of view as sitting close to a smaller display, and may have less eye strain.
I know in this case you're working with HDMI and hopefully have managed to set the TV up to just display an HDMI output on bootup, but did you run into any of these infuriating "smart" TV things?
So, 8K TVs are a big energy-suck! There's a reason why European regulations banned 100% of 8K TVs until the manufacturers undoubtedly paid for a loophole, and now 8K TVs in Europe are shipped in a super-power-saver mode where they consume just barely below the maximum standard amount of power (90w) ... but nobody leaves them in this mode because they look horrible and dim!
If everybody were to upgrade to an 8K TV tomorrow, then I think it would throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...
I run my screen on a brightness setting of 21 (out of 50) which is still quite legible during the day next to a window.
Also, I have solar panels for my house (which is why I'm able to see the total power usage of my house).
The US consumes 500 gigawatts on average, or 5000 watts per household.
So if every household bought an 8K TV, turned it on literally 100% of the time, and didn't reduce their use of their old TV, it would represent a 10% increase in power consumption.
The carbon emissions from residential power generation have approximately halved in the past 20 years. So even with the wildest assumptions, it doesn't "throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...".
E.g. let's say I drive 10 miles a day to get to the office vs use an 8k TV at home?
If I go out of my way to work from home, would I be ethically ok to use 8k monitor?
Back of the napkin it seems like 8k monitor would be 10x better than driving to the office?
RTINGS measured the Samsung QN800A as consuming 139W typical, with a peak of 429W.
Your numbers aren't even close to accurate. 8K TVs do not have 200W CPUs inside. The entire Samsung QN800A uses less power during normal operation than you're claiming the CPU does. You do not need as much power as a mid-range GPU to move pixels from HDMI to a display.
> There's a reason why European regulations banned 100% of 8K TVs
This is also incorrect. European regulations required the default settings, out of the box, to hit a certain energy target.
So large TVs in Europe (8K or otherwise) need to come with their brightness turned down by default. You open the box, set it up, and then turn the brightness to the setting you want.
> until the manufacturers undoubtedly paid for a loophole
This is unfounded conspiracy theory that is also incorrect. Nobody paid for a loophole. The original law was written for out-of-the-box settings. Manufacturers complied with the law. No bribes or conspiracies.
> If everybody were to upgrade to an 8K TV tomorrow, then I think it would throw away all the progress we've made on Global Warming for the past 20 years ...
The Samsung QN800A 8K TV the author uses, even on high settings, uses incrementally more power than other big screen TVs. The difference is about equal to an old incandescent lightbulb or two. Even if everyone on Earth swapped their TV for a 65" 8K TV tomorrow (lol) it would not set back 20 years of global warming.
This comment is so full of incorrect information and exaggerations that I can't believe it's one of the more upvoted comments here.
Private jets can't run off nuclear power grids. Also the real problem-child of emissions is not America. China has a billion more people, what are their TVs like?
The average American household uses about 29 kilowatts of power per day (29,000 megawatts).
The difference between using a 4K screen and 8k screen for 8 hours a day is about 100 megawatts difference.
I wouldn't get over excited about something increasing overall energy usage ~2.5%.
To me, the segmentation is a feature. It lets me offload information density and focus. For example, I commonly have an editor on one screen, a browser on the second, and something like a chat app, terminal, etc on the laptop screen.
Every modern major OS now has some level of tiling/splitting on a monitor's edges baked into their window manager by default now. Some can be tweaked to split into smaller subgroups, but that often requires less well tested/polished options (some apps just ignore the hints), or even third party extensions.
Some discussions over here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ultrawidemasterrace/
Continuously micro-manage the layout of individual application windows your window manager is a form of procrastination.
Back to work!
I did get it to work for me with thick black bars between the screens, but when you're giving up an inch of screen real estate for every virtual monitor then you might as well get physical ones.
Initially thought having one monitor experience was more seamless, but I do miss implicit window organizational aspect that dual monitors provide. And screensharing on the ultra-wide is a pain.
Does require two cables of course, but if you're driving an ultrawide, you're probably using a graphics card with three or four outputs anyway.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon...
Most screen share apps should support sharing by window. Also best for privacy (so your viewers don't see the side channel chat notifications pop up).
Also an ultrawide monitor is preferable for spreadsheet warriors.
I will not give up my 49" 21x9 for anything lesser.
> four unique FHD partitions via Internal Multi-Stream Transport (iMST) when connected to a single PC
That's nice for people to organize their windows without needing to figure out a tiling window manager. If only it was 8K instead of 4K...
[1] https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-43-4k-usb-c-...
Personally, I'd love an 8k which could act as two 4k in the middle, and two vertical 1920x4320 sides.
I use vertical monitors for documents, documentation, and word-processing.
This is only possible under macOS and Linux, unfortunately. On Windows virtual desktops are still kind of a weird hack that spans one desktop across all monitors.
This article, and a lot of "productivity" articles, feel like spending a lot of time and effort for marginal-at-best improvements. I don't know their specific workflow, but I'm pretty sure they could get basically the same amount of productivity with a handful of 1080p monitors.
At the same time I use virtual desktops that I can switch with both keyboard and mouse.
Either I have an abnormally short torso, or that advice was written back when most people were using a 14" display.
Sometimes I think about upgrading to a 5k monitor. The Apple Studio Display looks great, but I'm a Windows user and I'm guessing a lot of the nice features of that display are Mac-only.
There aren't a whole lot of options for 5k monitors. Other than Apple I think there's a Dell, but it's too wide. There's a Samsung but I've been burned by Samsung too many times. There's also an LG 5k monitor but it gets pretty weak reviews.
I can possibly be of some help here. I have a Studio Display, however my work-provided machine is a Dell laptop and so that is what is connected to it most of the time.
Providing your machine can output video via Thunderbolt or USB-C, it will work. That is fairly common these days, though Windows machines capable of driving a 5120x2880 signal can be harder to come across, particularly in the corporate laptop world, though I don't know how much of a concern that is to you.
My last work machine maxed out at 4K which the Studio Display would happily scale up to full screen. I would describe it as substantially sharper than e.g. a 2560x1440 display of equivalent size, but still noticeably less sharp than the full native 5K (obviously). My current machine can do the full 5K, but the performance leaves a lot to be desired (however the thing is a turd anyway, too much corporate security crap bogging it down).
Speakers, camera, and microphone built into the display all work totally fine from Windows. What may be a total non-starter is that you need a Mac or iPad to change the brightness, because there's no physical controls on the display itself and Windows doesn't expose a way to control it. I am lucky/unlucky in that my home office does not get a huge amount of natural light, meaning I've been able to set it to a comfortable brightness from my Mac and then just leave it.
Overall it's a very nice monitor if you can work around the brightness thing. A possibly better contender though is the recent-ish 5K variant of the Asus ProArt[0]. I was using the 1440p version of the same monitor before I got the Studio Display, and I was very happy with it. Good colour reproduction, USB-C Power Delivery for one-cable laptop docking, and a far more adjustable stand than the SD. Worth a look.
[0] https://www.asus.com/displays-desktops/monitors/proart/proar...
Also a dual/multiple setup bothers me for losing the mouse boundaries when it crosses to another screen - I'd rather have the mouse bounded on one screen for faster access to menu bars at the edges.
Now I put a monitor directly in front of me, and a secondary monitor on the side. No more neck pain.
I honestly think the curve is essential when dealing with such a wide display. The alternative would be - as article states - to set it back a little and have a deeper desk so you can actually see the edge of the screen properly. I don't see the point in having a large screen with high pixel density if the edges are not actually easily visible to me without moving my head or body laterally.
The lack of bezels is great though - I'd definitely agree on that front, having 3 web browsers or editors open side by side suits me really well.
I have a ruler flat 55” OLED TV as main monitor. It’s perfect for me. I’m like… 1-1.5 meters from it where I’m closest to it, haha. The edges are further away. It’s fine! – imo / ime.
(The need for the curve is also subtly different depending on how the panel was made. I tried a flat 43” IPS 4K monitor, expecting IPS to be good. And it wasn’t very good. The IPS features in that panel were large enough to affect viewing angle.)
The amount of curve also varies a lot between models so there's some nuance even within that. The curve might be as strong as 800R or as weak as 2300R depending on the monitor, where the number corresponds to the radius of the circle the panel follows in millimeters.
Got it on a Samsung sale for ~$1500 IIRC, one of the best upgrades I'd ever done.
I sound like a shill, so Samsung plz hmu. $999 for a beautiful OLED monitor that fits a terminal, a browser, and 4 (font size 8...) 100col text editor windows is a gamechanger.
I also don't see the point in having a screen so big I have to move my head, or contrarily a screen so big that I have to push it back so the pixel density matters much less.
These monitors are expensive and do not have very high resolution. If you're not a hardcore fast reflex gamer, and you spend a lot of time looking at text, then IMO it's better to buy a higher resolution monitor for less money.
I mostly play simulation games, particularly flying, and having a wider FoV makes things easier, until you're ready to go to the top step of using VR instead so you also get depth perception and essentially 360 FoV since you can rotate your head.
The proper monitor height is when the top third of the screen is at or slightly below your eye level when seated or standing upright. This positioning helps prevent neck strain and allows for a comfortable viewing angle.
The top third of a large TV will be much higher than that, which will cause long term discomfort.
That's why large monitors have much wider aspect than TVs.
I haven't noticed any burn-in or dead pixels. You need to set it up for success, enable all the burn-in prevention settings the monitor provides (static image darkening, pixel shifting&cleaning). It's also a great idea to do other things such as sleeping the monitor after 1min if inactivity, no screensaver (or just black), black desktop background, hide taskbars, etc
edit: to add, i have the monitor mounted to the wall and about 1" above the height of my desk[1] - this puts the center of the screen directly at eye level
[1] - https://i.postimg.cc/nhqvM4Yz/62395566614-66-C9-BCAA-367-C-4...
It's otherwise awesome though, for the type of gaming I do (non-competitive, so stuff like D4 and Cyberpunk) it's completely unmatched.
I just wish it was a little bit better for smashing out code without annoying text fringing that distracts me.
If you connect the network to also use it as a TV, if you don't also tick all the right "I do not give you permission" boxes ( and the firmware actually respects these choices ), then your TV will be uploading signatures of everything you watch ( including HDMI inputs ) to the TV manufacturer for them to sell on to advertisers, political parties etc.
While I believe the normal mode of operation is just to upload some kind of image signature / hash, I doubt there is anything that technically or legally stops screenshots being uploaded for "additional analysis".
Note that this is incredibly lucrative for the manufacturers, so their incentives are minimally aligned with protecting our privacy or security here.
https://boingboing.net/2021/11/18/tv-manufacturer-makes-more...