What’s your preferred work monitor setup?
Lately I’ve been experimenting with different desktop monitor setups, primarily for productivity-focused work as a systems engineer (coding, writing docs, Slack, email, terminals, etc.). Over the past few years, I’ve rotated through:
• 3× 24” 1080p monitors
• 2× 24” 1080p monitors + laptop display
• 1× 32” 4K monitor + laptop display
• 1× 32” 4K monitor
• Laptop display only (on a stand)
Surprisingly, I’ve found that I feel the most focused and productive when I use only my laptop display and rely on Alt-Tab to switch between apps.
With larger monitors or multiple displays I start to feel scattered. It almost turns into sensory overload, and my focus drops off.
Has anyone else experienced this? Do you find that larger or multiple monitors decrease your productivity? What setup works best for you?
2x 27“ 1440p monitors side by side in landscape is the sweet spot for me. One as my primary monitor I am centered in front of, the second one to the side for referencing stuff.
I tried various methods over the years but I keep coming back to this. Sometimes the reference monitor gets used in portrait mode but that is rare.
For me it is the opposite as you experience. If I need to keep switching to reference things it distracts me and pulls me out of focus. If I just need to turn my head a little I keep my focus.
I'm in software development and have gone through a couple different multi-monitor setups and landed on a single monitor as well. Currently using a single 27" 1080p (had a 30" 4k which tipped and broke and haven't minded the smaller/lower res). I plug my monitor into my laptop and close the lid of the laptop. Part of my motivation is I work out of the office a couple times a week with just my laptop and I like my workflows to be the same between office and out. I also didn't find any extra productivity or enjoyment in multi-monitor setups.
Couple things that I find necessary for this to work for me:
I think I'd definitely use a second monitor if the virtual desktops/hotkeys weren't setup. It took a bit of getting used to but the more regimented I am in keeping apps in their "correct" virtual desktop the less time I spend lost among windows or hunting for what exactly is playing music etc.
Ultrawides are ultimate for productivity. Having the real estate of two screens in one means proper side by side work.
I have a 38" 3840*1600 Curved Ultrawide connected to my work laptop. The laptop's smaller screen is useful for communication software like Teams, while having multiple programs or browsers with tabs open next to each other at regular size on the UW is prime.
Recently adapted to a 5k2k ultra wide OLED. I've seen the light and I'm never going back.
Most people don't want to go back after using UWs. I've been a proponent of them for a very long time now.
My current screen is a 2016 model and although it's fine, the recent leaps in monitor tech makes it a little obsolete, but I can't rightfully justify an upgrade just yet. In fact I have two of those that I just simply don't have the desk space for since my main monitor is a 32" 4K OLED screen.
I'd love to upgrade the UW to something with a higher refresh rate. It's jarring when the 4k screen is 240hz and the UW is 75hz.
I increasingly find more is better in terms of number of screens and total screen area.
In ye olden days I had the single CRT monitor, then later on I (not sure when) I bought a 43 inch black friday TV and that became my monitor and sound (it had what I thought of at the time as fairly good sound, and what I now recognize as only adequate for anything that isn't quality music listening time).
At some point during my residential telecom contracting days, a customer tipped me a small 19 inch flatscreen TV and for a while I kept it in the van as a test TV, but later hooked it up as a 2nd monitor and found that even though my primary was big, I liked having the additional space.
Years later I bought another 43 inch black friday TV, this time a 4K because I wanted the upgrade for certain imaging and video analysis. Hard to tell if you're getting a better take with your 4K microscope camera if you don't have a 4K monitor to view the take or recordings on. At that point I decided I wanted to keep my original 43 inch and rotated it to portrait view on my right side (the 19 inch is on the left) and that was my setup for more than a year.
Recently I added a Dell 24 inch above my primary monitor, but I don't use it often because I need to tilt my head up to use it. If my chair had a headrest and it was comfortable for me (I have a ponytail which makes headrests difficult) then I think it would be fine, but as it is it isn't great. My current plan is to move the 24 inch to the bottom left side and elevate my old 19 inch just above that.
Video showing current setup.
3x27”
In the office I only have two monitors at max so comms have to share with the ide monitor. Basically every app runs maximised - on my personal desktop I use tiling more but my employer provided work machine is a Mac and the features and shortcuts are too limited. Sometimes I only have one monitor or only the laptop display due to the hot desking setup. I find that such a impediment as to discourage working on the office
I think this is the sweet spot for general office work mixed with gaming. While occasionally I'll yearn for a widescreen main for gaming, it's great having side monitors for Discord, random videos and for work one almost always is fullscreen email, main with task at hand, and the third for reference needs or side video. 2560x1440 really is nice for the extra vertical space for documents.
At the office I use a single 27" 2k monitor and my 15.6" 1080p laptop monitor. At home I just use 2 27" 2k monitors (foolishly different brands, so I had to spend a lot of time calibrating the colours to feel the same). More than enough real estate to look at code and spreadsheets.
||--
(arrayed circumferentially around a nintety-degree corner desk, with coplanar portrait displays serving as a single unit, effectively triple-head)
...i believe that they're all 2560x1440, but the two portait displays are smaller (and thus greater pixel density) than the landscape pair, nearly a square form-factor when used together for displaying two-page document spreads; i use the larger displays for technical drawings and miscellaneous windows...
...while i'd prefer a pair of curved 4K displays, or even better a single 8K curved display, curved televisions are tough to find these days and my current arrangement works well-enough for general productivity...
At home I use only 1 4K 32" monitor and I find it great. At work I have a smaller 4K monitor (27"), so I add my laptop screen on a laptop stand. Mostly I just keep Teams there.
If I am stuck with the awfulness that is windows, any multiples of monitors have to use the same display scaling. There are so many visual annoyances and bugs that come from mixed scaling sizes. This usually rules out the laptop+external monitor, since laptops usually have 150%+ scaling. Or at least the laptops I have been given for work. So clamshell mode it is.
My monitors need to be as high resolution as I can get it. Size doesn’t really matter, but it needs to be large enough to not need to scale up the display to read things. My previous roles have been analyst type roles, so a ton of looking at spreadsheets. With spreadsheets, you literally just need as many pixels as you can get. I would keep asking my work for higher resolution monitors, and they would keep sending larger monitors that were still 1080p. That literally just makes things worse. I ended up buying my own cheap 4k monitors.
So my current setup is 2x 4k 27" monitors, just because I invested in those at my last job. I like the idea of a single 5k or 6k large monitor, but I don’t have the money for that right now.
I've settled on a single monitor solution, a 46" 4K display. I've got hotkeys setup (I'm on Ubuntu) that let me pop a window into each quarter and half screen vertically or horizontally, and usually have 3 virtual desktops on the go. Its basically like having 4x 1080p displays, but with no borders and more flexibility.
Usually my 1st desktop is all web browser windows, usually a couple in top left and right with email and monitoring dashboards and a larger window in the middle on top. If I'm on a video call I'll generally put it in a largish window in the middle.
2nd desktop is usually "development", generally split into 4x quarter displays, often with larger editor windows I Alt-tab to the front and fill the bottom half of the screen.
3rd desktop is usually "live/production" server shells, again usually 4x quarter displays.
I've been running this setup for a few years now and I'm generally happy with it.
I usually go between two different setups, purely just because I don't have an assigned desk at my office and that means I'm not always guaranteed a monitor. On the days I do get a monitor, I usually have my monitor stacked above my laptop screen. I'll tilt my laptop screen back quite a bit to reach my eyes and I'll adjust the monitor to be just at my eye level. I usually put my main work on the big monitor and have my emails/chats on the laptop screen.
Similar to you, I do find myself sometimes being less productive with all the available screen real estate when I do have an extra monitor. On the days I have a monitor, I'll have a million windows open and I'm constantly context switching between things, slowing me down in the long run. However, on the days I have only my laptop, I tend to focus my work into only a few windows and I find it easier to get things done. That being said, I do prefer the days I have a monitor due to the better ergonomics. I believe my company allows me to order a laptop stand to improve my ergonomics but I haven't really cared too much just yet (I know I'll regret that in a few years).
I've also never really found too much value in multiple virtual desktops either. I tried that for a while, especially on the days where I only have my laptop screen. But, for some reason, "out of sight, out of mind" really hit me and I'd often forget that I have multiple virtual desktops with windows I need. I'm more productive with just alt-tab and tiled windows.
In the past several years I've gone through the following configurations:
For productivity moving to two ultrawides was helpful, but going larger on my primary monitor hasn't been that helpful. The oled TV was good for gaming, but not great for text clarity and window management. Even after trying for a while, I haven't managed to make good use of the extra height of the 4k monitor. It's mostly the width that helps in most cases for me. So, I think two stacked 1440p ultrawides are probably the sweet spot in terms of having a large amount of area without overspending.