Exploring Ultrawide For Programming - Dell U4919DW review vs dual monitor setup

I've been using this 49 inch Ultra wide monitor from Dell for two years now for programming and I'm also using two monitor setup at home office and even three screen setup at the studio that I'm renting so I wanted to compare these three setups for programming I will show you how I use the ultrawide for coding I cover some problems it might have and a little trick to justify its purchase if you think this monitor is for you [Music] a double 49 in each monitor is a beast when it comes to real estate it's the same size as two QHD 27-inch monitors but without that annoying bezel in between them and that really makes all the difference by the way I have nothing to do with Dell I just always like their Ultra sharp monitor series when I started working in this company two years ago I was a bit afraid to order it to be honest I was just thinking in case I don't really like it later I just hate that feeling of being a company Clown again I was also concerned about the viewing angles and its curvature as I've never used the screen of this size and I heard from a friend that this is an issue for some people how they have to move around to see the corners of the screen I personally never noticed that I do that I sit from about one meter from the screen and I do not need to move around to see the corners of the screen if you think this might be the problem just use a tape measure and position your existing screen accordingly and see if you can read all the corners of your existing screen first it has an aspect ratio of 32x9 at a resolution of 5120 by 1440 and I honestly cannot see in the visual pixels when I'm looking at the screen to scaling is not an issue for me and I don't have to zoom in or anything everything is working just as expected it also has an IPS panel meaning that the viewing angles are very good and the glare is also rarely noticeable both things are quite important for me since I use a lot of editors and consoles in the dark mode as I figured that using dark mode is much easier on the eyes when looking at the monitor of this size the monitor stand is okay it doesn't obstruct use of the desk so I never actually need a monitor arm you can keep your phone or Post-its on the stand or whatever you want it has a DisplayPort HDMI and USBC video inputs and a bunch of other USB up and down ports but I never really use them so you will have to read specs online to figure out everything that it can do I know that only one USBC can be used as a video feed and others are there just for expansion and that is great because I do use this monitor as an USB hub and I even have another Hub connected to it I do need to test phones on the PC so I'm plugging them in and out all the time and the monitor has my keyboard my network my mouse and my external Hub and even charges my PC all that over one single USB cable so when I take my PC from the office to a meeting room or to take it home I just unplug one single cable and I'm good to go I know it's a first world problem for sure but it removes all that friction from docking and undocking because before when I had three or four cables I would sometimes think that you know what I won't even take the PC from the office because of that hustle of connecting it all back so coding on this beauty I started by splitting the screen in three equal parts to have most size of my editor and the browser and to be honest I didn't enjoy it that much I started thinking I was the company idiot after all again but when I tried more advanced layouts even though it meant reducing the size and width of the ID and now I use it in most five or six screen configuration and that makes much more sense for me the splitting itself is done by the display Fusion software and I will come back to that later but I have one or multiple consoles here for running the servers and build scripts and whatnot I can monitor for errors that might show up during the build process below that I have the tidal music player open because music keeps me in sync with the universe next I have the code editor about the same width as the maximum line length allowed for our code and sometimes honestly I would have to scroll left or right in the files here or in the long code and if that gets annoying I would just double the editor size with this button here that was added by display Fusion on all windows or I could even change the layout from 5 to 6 screens and that will give me more room for the editor itself I could just hit maximize by holding the shift plus full screen and then use it like I threw away thousands of dollars of company money just to have a huge empty space on my screen next I have the browser or another editor for code referencing when I'm copying something Googling Etc and then I would have the application itself either running in another browser or in emulator and then I would usually have one or even two consoles on the right to monitor what is going on with the application itself and again with these small buttons that appear on every application I can easily change the layout of the monitor to whatever I need and I could even use the keyboard shortcuts but I am a bit too lazy to remember them as I do not switch the layout that often to be honest and some people use window snapping and I tried it a few times but it was never good enough it made little sense to me to split the screen in only two or maybe three screens with display Fusion I can configure different layouts however I wish and I could never set the rules and it will automatically move my screen to predefined Virtual screens but the most useful feature for me is that when I move my application around the windows will snap to allowed places in all full screen mode so moving them around is easy and intuitive I can also turn on and off taskbar per virtual screen per Monitor and to be honest it does have some issues with Windows 11 and I was back and forth with developers and they have improved it quite a lot but I think somehow it was still better on Windows 10. other than these programs and virtual screens I actually maximized Chrome browser when we are sitting in a meeting and it's absolutely awesome when we work in microboards as I can really see much more of the screen then once you start really using it oh boy it's convenient I keep finding new ways of organizing applications based on the task on hand and and I really like that I can see them all having all programs visible at the same time has saved me quite some time sometimes an error while developing would occur in some console somewhere behind all programs where I work and I could use 10 or 20 minutes to find out what's going on because I forgot to check some of the consoles that's actually hiding somewhere in the background so I actually think I do make less mistakes and less errors with this screen because I have the overview of all the process at all the time so how does it compare to two or three monitor setup for years I was the altam person and one screen was just enough for me I could just switch between applications very very fast and I never missed on anything but that is before I knew any better I then started to use two screens at work and I would use one for email or code reference and then at home I switched the other screen to be vertical and that was a bit better for some tasks and right now I use three screens at the office Studio that I'm renting and compared to both 2 and 3 screen setup the ergonomics of ultra wide are actually better at least for me I think it's because the screen is centered and right in front of me and I'm even using the entire screen on both sides of the head because it centered the feel much more natural to use and after a few days you forget how big it is it just feels like a regular screen I only get reminded of its size when somebody new comes in and sees it for the first time and then gets jealous about it and that really boosts my self-esteem as I feel like I'm somebody important or even a better person than everybody else with two screens I would look at one screen ninety percent of the time and then I would just turn my head a lot in one direction to see the second screen so my neck would turn only to one side and never to the other with three screens this is a bit less of an issue but in both cases I would have maximum two to three Windows available at the same time never five six or seven is ahead now and the vertical configuration for a second screen is a bit better for me and because I can split the vertical screen in several and when kovid made us work from home the most annoying thing for me work related was probably not having this screen available and now that I've been using ultrawide for years using two or three screens somehow feels like a downgrade because when I sit in front of this beauty I feel like I'm really doing something important so it's actually quite inspiring to use it every day and if you really like it here's how you can justify it you can say that some guy on the internet that guides me said that you will probably gain or save 20 minutes a day in productivity that's about 80 hours a year times your salary as a developer and this monitor pays for itself the very first year probably the other four years you will use it are pure earnings in time saving you will also make less errors because you have a better overview of the entire process in front of your academic lens and not to mention that you will really like sitting in front of it but not always perfect though I mentioned that I use this screen with one cable to a laptop and it works but it's a Dell almost most expensive screen and it's a Dell laptop and the screen cannot power it to be fair this laptop requires a lot of power everything worked for me it's just that the PC complaints sometimes that the charger is not original because monitor provides 90 watts to the PC while the original charger for this PC is 130 Watts so your mileage might vary most regular PCS are charged just fine with 90 Watts picking off wrong PC this PC gets its fans spinning quite a lot when working with the screen it is enough that I play some video on YouTube and it will become quite noisy so I think it's struggling a bit with all this resolution but again this is a huge monitor so not a monitor problem but definitely a thing to consider if you have a bit weaker PC how are you going to power all of these pixels also without a monitor arm which are ridiculously expensive for a screen of this size placing speakers on a desk uh well it gets a bit creative it works at the end but it's not the best and because it's huge did I mention that it's huge before it is a bit tricky to share your screen in meetings I would usually share my laptop screen that otherwise I use for chats or emails because if you share the entire screen nobody else can see what's going on because huge also the price is not small it is about 1200 US dollars when we ordered it two years ago and that is pretty much the price of three good quality monitors so if you already have some expensive monitors I'm not sure how much is it worth upgrading financially wise again I'm definitely buying one for my home office in near future as at home I would also use it for gaming video and photo editing a starting and some of my many many hobbies so I can definitely see benefits for having it and seeing a lot of things on the screen at the same time and also consider where are you going to place it as it takes a huge part of the desk I have this motorized desk that is very stable so when it's raised I do not get any wobbling but if your desk is a bit wobbly you will definitely notice it on this monitor having all that said I would do it all over again I do not regret ordering it and using it as this screen is just beautiful for programming and once you start splitting the screens and really using all of its pixels you really get all the benefits of it and you can watch how the rest of my work day in Norwegian startup looks like by clicking on this video on the screen or in the description made a mistake the rules have changed and I am your boss now Mr Alex remember when you complained how I easily drift away in meetings foreign

Channel: Applicable Programming

Views: 24,662

Keywords: lg ultrawide monitor, ultrawide, ultrawide for productivity, ultrawide for programming, ultrawide gaming, ultrawide monitor gaming, ultrawide monitor setup, ultrawide vs 4k for programming, ultrawide vs dual monitor, ultrawide vs dual monitor for programming, ultrawide vs dual monitors, dual monitor setup vs ultrawide, ultrawide monitor for web developer, best ultrawide for coding, ultrawide vs 4k, software developer setup, software engineer desk setup, dell u4919dw

Id: urj-lLfQSEY

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2023