Monitors for working from home

Soldato
Joined
26 Aug 2004
Posts
7,571
Location
London
As it looks like I'll be working from home semi-permanently, I've been given a budget by my work to upgrade my WFH setup. I'm wanting to spend a maximum of £600 of it on the monitor(s).

I don't use my computer for gaming, media consumption - basically anything but work. For work, I'm pretty much in spreadsheets or coding so colour accuracy and response times aren't particularly important to me. There's a lot of multi-tasking and collaborative work though, so I've always got a bunch of windows open. All of which has led me to think that I should probably get a pair of 1440p monitors in the largest size that fits in my budget. I'll be connecting them to a Macbook Pro so if they have USB-C that's a bonus, but it's certainly not a deciding factor.

At the moment I have the 15 inch Macbook Pro screen itself, a 22inch 1680x1050 display and a 24 inch 1080p display - both of which I'd be looking to retire.

Options I'm considering are:
  1. 2x Dell P3221D (32inch, 1440p USB-C monitors, 60hz, 350 lumens, 1000:1 contrast ratio), which at £344 take me a bit over budget
  2. 2x AOC Q3279VWFD8 (32inch, 1440p, 75hz, 250 lumens, 1200:1 contrast ratio). which at £215 come in well under budget
  3. 2x ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD (32inch, 1440p, older model, 75hz, 250 lumens, 1200:1 contrast ratio, but seems pretty well-reviewed) at £199 feels like a bargain
  4. 2x Samsung LU32J590UQUXEN (31.5 inch, 4k, 60hz, 270 lumens, 3001:1 contrast ratio) - at £330, like the Dell, it pushes me slightly over budget, but gets me 4k for clearer text and/or a huge number of pixels to play with.
Thoughts?
 
Associate
Joined
29 Oct 2002
Posts
698
I've been working from home for ~6 months, and find 4k just too small for reading emails etc, you'd be better of with 1080/1440 resolutions. Personally, even the 1440 (2k) screen I have is a bit compact for easy reading, tho I'm using 27" as opposed to 32", I think you might still struggle. My missus tried the 4k screen (28") and complained it gave her eye strain, ended up giving her a 24" 1080 screen and she's over the moon. All my screens are 27" (2 x 1080P flanking a 1440P)

Edit 2k/4k FAB for videos etc, but not so much for writing documents / reading emails, just to clarify :)
 
Last edited:
Soldato
OP
Joined
26 Aug 2004
Posts
7,571
Location
London
Wouldn't turning software scaling on a 4k monitor provide for as large text/UI, but crisper text than a 1440p screen could provide?
 
Associate
Joined
29 Oct 2002
Posts
698
Wouldn't turning software scaling on a 4k monitor provide for as large text/UI, but crisper text than a 1440p screen could provide?

Quite possibly, but sadly it's a work PC she was using and everything massively locked down, it was easier to just replace the screen in this instance. For me, scaling etc not an options as I was also using the 2k screen for "other" stuff ;) not work related...
 
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