Ultra wide monitors - work and play
Ultra wide monitors - work and play
Author
Discussion

Scabutz

Original Poster:

8,855 posts

110 months

Wednesday 10th November 2021
quotequote all
Currently my WFH and Flight Sim setup uses two wide screen 21" monitors.

Thinking of replacing them with an ultra wide monitor 49" monitor. Might keep one monitor and have it vertical for other st.

I'm sure that will be good for the flight sim, but what are they like for work? Windows 10 will let you dock windows left and right, but does it look st? Is there software that will let you easily dock 3 windows, left right and centre?

Probably should go in a shop and look but I CBA.

768

20,713 posts

126 months

Wednesday 10th November 2021
quotequote all
I'm not a Windows user, but there's probably keyboard shortcuts to do that, and tiling window managers otherwise. I don't tend to move my windows around too much personally.

eltawater

3,534 posts

209 months

Wednesday 10th November 2021
quotequote all
You'll be wanting Microsoft Powertoys Fancy Zones.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys...

It's what I use to "split" a 27" wide vertical screen into two square zones stacked on top of each other.

LordFlathead

9,646 posts

288 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
I have a 49" Ultrawide and am using the licensed version of Display Fusion. You will need a degree in computer science to work everything out but technical support is great and there is nothing you cannot do with it. It's scriptable too.

https://www.displayfusion.com/Help/?Version=9.8.0....

BobToc

2,031 posts

147 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
Not quite at 49”, but I love my 37” and will be going for the Samsung in the near future. I find it brilliant for work and play.

paulrockliffe

16,600 posts

257 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
eltawater said:
You'll be wanting Microsoft Powertoys Fancy Zones.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys...

It's what I use to "split" a 27" wide vertical screen into two square zones stacked on top of each other.
It's good, you also get this functionality integrated in Windows 11 which is pretty good. Hold the mouse over the Maximise/Minimise button and it gives you a choice of layouts to minimise to, then lets you pick the other apps to from into the layout.

TameRacingDriver

20,596 posts

302 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
As long as your machine can drive it, then you should like it. It's a 32:9 monitor so having split screen windows will simply be like having 2x 16:9 screens moved together, but without the bezel in the centre.

For different window layouts, I second the Powertoys suggestion if you're using Windows 10. Fancyzones will allow you to have 3 almost square windows alongside each other, just slightly wider than tall, which is ideal, or other combinations.

Again, as said, Windows 11 has this baked in which is handy. Another nice feature of 11 is being able to centre taskbar icons, which you will want to do on a monitor that size, but you can use TaskbarX on Windows 10 which does the same. With Win11 however, there are compromises: you lose the ability to "never combine" and "display labels". You also lose toolbars or the ability to move the taskbar to the left or right hand side, which you may find to be a pain. The start menu is also a lot more basic.

Make sure it's a 1440p at least, 1080p isn't really cutting the mustard on a screen like that. Personally, I wouldn't bother keeping the other screen for documents personally, there's not likely to be much need as the screen you're looking at is so wide. You can if you like, but for me most people seem to just buy as many screens as they can because they're a bit nerdy laugh Even my single 21:9 screen and laptop screen to the right is enough for me to be very productive (I do development and data analytics FYI) so I think if I had a 32:9 screen @ 49" I'd probably just use it exclusively. I have thought about it, but it's definitely a frivolous purchase for me right now biggrin

Scabutz

Original Poster:

8,855 posts

110 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
Thanks all. I'm a massive nerd after 20 years in IT. Good point about the rig being up to drive it. No worries on that with my laptop as it has an RtX2060 6gb but my work laptop is ste. I can use my laptop for most things as I only need the VPN for database access and now I'm in management I don't need that very often.

I've been considering upgrading to Windows 11 so might do that.

Need to find a nice screen now. I'm a bit of a Samsung fan boy, phone TVs, fridge so might start there.

devnull

3,869 posts

187 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
You’ll want the odyssey G9 then. 49” 5120x1440 240Hz.

I have one, but the 1440 vertical res isn’t as crisp as I’d like it to be.

Scabutz

Original Poster:

8,855 posts

110 months

Thursday 11th November 2021
quotequote all
fk yeah. That makes me tumesecent. That's what I want. Bonus comes in month and then it's going to be monitor city.

Lucas Ayde

4,161 posts

198 months

Friday 12th November 2021
quotequote all
Scabutz said:
Currently my WFH and Flight Sim setup uses two wide screen 21" monitors.

Thinking of replacing them with an ultra wide monitor 49" monitor. Might keep one monitor and have it vertical for other st.

I'm sure that will be good for the flight sim, but what are they like for work? Windows 10 will let you dock windows left and right, but does it look st? Is there software that will let you easily dock 3 windows, left right and centre?

Probably should go in a shop and look but I CBA.
As mentioned elsewhere, Power Toys 'Fancy Zones' is pretty good for managing Windows windows and free.

A surprising amount of new games (plus even some older ones) will support up to 32:9 and 5120x1440 which something like the G9 offers. Games which utlise 32:9 generally look stunning. You will need a decent GPU though to push a good framerate, as that is about 90% of the pixels of a 4k display.

With a G9 you'll need to use Nvidia Control Panel to get non 32:9 games to behave nicely - I have found that the G9 tends to try to stretch all input signals to fit the full screen. You can make non-native res screens open with the aspect raio controlled by scaling the picture inside a 32:9 screen which sorts that issue.

stabilio

618 posts

201 months

Saturday 13th November 2021
quotequote all
I have the first gen Samsung 49" G9 (120hz) and its pretty good.
1st time you see it, you'll be shocked at the curve on it (and the size!) but it doesn't take long to get used it.
I dont game much at all but when I do, it looks very impressive with my 3090 card.