I tried to replace my triple monitors with one giant screen. I failed
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Summary
I’m finishing up my review of the Alienware AW3926QW , a massive 39-inch, 5K/2K OLED gaming monitor. With that resolution, it’s almost exactly the same amount of pixels as my triple-monitor desktop setup. So I tried to use it alone for a week. And I failed. That’s not to say it’s a bad monitor. But pure pixels, even on a large display, aren’t the same as actual utility. Pixels aren’t the whole picture To explain why this didn’t work for me, I need to talk about my normal setup. After 20 years using triple monitors, I’m kind of an addict . For the last five years I’ve used a 34-inch, 1440p ultrawide as my primary central monitor, and two 27-inch 1440p monitors on either side. I generally have a focused writing window on the primary left, a relevant source on the primary right. On my right monitor is Slack for talking to my coworkers, plus a social media feed. On my left is a secondary source or a video window, and smaller tools, like my standing timer . All of this is flexible and variable, of course. Things move around as necessary. And my setup when I’m gaming looks much different. But in general, I have a lot of information spread around in a horizontal line, with highly categorized zones. It usually looks something like this, and indeed, looks pretty close to that as I’m writing now. Michael Crider/Foundry Switching to the Alienware with the same desktop PC for a week, I knew I’d need to make an adjustment. A little napkin math says that 5120×2160 pixels is approximately the same amount of digital space as a QHD-QHD ultrawide-QHD array, 11.06 million pixels versus 12.3 million. But despite having roughly equivalent pixels, it’s narrower and taller. So in order to match my usual far more horizontal setup I’d need to do some rearranging. That should be possible, in absolute terms. And it was. But that screen is also smaller in absolute terms — the pixel density of 5K2K at 39 inches is 142 pixels per inch, versus about 110 ppi for my monitors. As I said in my triple-monitor newsletter, density is extremely important for user comfort, and you need to find a size for windows and text that work for you. I couldn’t make it work on the Alienware, at least not in my usual setup. I had to take things down to just one central, primary workspace, with two narrower zones on either side. Here, let me unplug my monitors and pop it over to my secondary desk, and take a screenshot of me writing this very article to show you. Sometimes I used two side-by-side windows instead, if the narrow content on the left just didn’t work out. Michael Crider/Foundry That severely hampered my workflow during the day, though it was a lot easier to deal with when I was just browsing or gaming on my own time. I just need more horizontal space, and I couldn’t make use of the extra pixels vertically, since I’m used to laying out text that’s easily scrollable or static videos. It’s possible that I could adapt to it in time, especially if I added on a secondary monitor. But as a full replacement, it just didn’t work. I should add that none of this makes the Alienware a bad monitor. As I said, it’s fantastic. The thing is jaw-dropping for gaming, and the new panel makes text much more comfy to read than older OLEDs, too. My eyes basically melted playing some Star Wars Galactic Racer . I’d say that if you want incredible visuals at a big size, it’s about as big as a single gaming screen can usefully get for a regular desktop space. And someone with a different workflow might have no problems at all. It just isn’t a single-screen replacement for my setup. Can I go even bigger? Could a single monitor, maybe a much larger one, handle that job? There are definitely screens that can approximate my triple-monitor setup. Dell also makes a 52-inch Ultrasharp monitor that’s designed for massive multitasking . That one is “6K,” 6144×2560. It’s not explicitly for gaming, but with a 120hz IPS panel, it meets all my needs. Still, now I know that I really can’t use all that vertical pixel space, so it’s not an ideal match. Matthew Smith / Foundry The one that immediately sprung to my mind is Samsung’s 57-inch Odyssey Neo G9 , which is double 4K, 7680×2160. As it happens, that’s almost exactly the same width as my current monitors, 54.9 inches, only a little less horizontal resolution and far more vertical (8450×1440). I think I could make that work, just thanks to the pure shape of that wide screen. But I’m not tempted, at least at the moment. Samsung is still using a relatively old VA panel for that big, big monitor, not fast IPS or newer OLED. So it lacks the color accuracy I need for photo work . Samsung In fact I’ve been waiting years for Samsung to make an OLED in this size and resolution, specifically because I think it’s the only thing that could tempt me into a single-screen solution. My personal budgeting thanks you, Samsung, for withholding that choice from me — a gaming-grade OLED at that size might stretch towards $2,500 or $3,000. Indeed, the Dell Ultrasharp I mentioned is in that price range, too. But even if I could find a super-nice panel like the one in the Alienware, at the size I need for my ridiculous multitasking setup, I don’t think I would buy it. As wonderful as it would be to look at my desk and have an unbroken screen literally as far as my eye could see, I’d be terrified, especially with how many hours I put in here. All my monitor eggs in one basket In addition to the visual and mental space I get across three physical screens, there’s a bit of financial security there, too. I paid $200 each for my side monitors about five years ago, and the panels are already starting to wear out. I can replace either of them without too much bother. I bought a used 34-inch OLED two years ago for about $600, and it succumbed to some pretty bad panel burn quickly — my gamble of a purchase didn’t work out. I replaced it with a cheapo Innocn monitor, which is still a fast IPS panel that can handle my games and text, for…about $200. HUANUO So even when I had the nicer OLED, a failure of any one component of my triple-monitor setup was annoying, but not disastrous. And that $200-$600-$200 setup with my used OLED was about the same price as the Alienware 39-incher. At double the price (at least) with a single point of failure, I’d feel awfully nervous putting 8 to 12 hours a day, five days a week onto that pricey screen. I hope this little exercise has given you some insight into changes you might make to your setup. It’s always worth thinking about how you use your hardware, not just what it’s capable of, when planning out new purchases.
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