Stop Straining Your Eyes! Discover the Ultimate Monitor Setup for Maximum Productivity
In today’s digital age, most people spend their entire day staring at computer screens. From office workers to creatives, the need for a monitor that meets our unique needs and provides maximum productivity is essential.
It’s easy to overlook the importance of a good monitor setup, but it is a critical aspect of your overall work ecosystem. The right monitor setup not only ensures comfort and reduces eye strain, but it can also have a dramatic impact on your productivity.
In this article, we’ll explore some key factors to consider when looking for the ultimate monitor setup.
Resolution and Screen Size
The size and resolution of your monitor are essential aspects to consider when selecting a display. A larger screen can enable you to work on multiple projects simultaneously, keeping everything from email to editing open without having to close or minimize anything.
In addition, resolution plays a vital role in image clarity — the higher the resolution, the sharper the images will appear. A 4k display offers four times the number of pixels as a standard 1080p screen, resulting in clearer, sharper images that make it easy to see the most delicate details.
Color Accuracy and Contrast
Suppose you frequently work with graphic design, video editing, or digital art. In that case, color accuracy and contrast are crucial considerations when choosing a display. You will want a monitor that offers accurate color reproduction, a high color gamut, and wide viewing angles.
Additionally, monitors that display high-contrast ratios enable you to view images, videos, and graphics that require a dark environment with more incredible clarity.
Ergonomic Design
Spending long hours at your desk can take a toll on your body. Thus, an ergonomic monitor setup will make your workday more comfortable and productive. The ideal screen height, tilt, and position can help you relax your muscles, reduce fatigue, and minimize eye strain.
A monitor arm or adjustable stand is a great option for achieving the ideal ergonomic position. By adjusting the height and tilt, the screen can be positioned to provide a comfortable working posture that reduces the need to turn your head or sacrifice your line of sight.
Moreover, comfortable chairs are an excellent ergonomic addition to your workspace that can help you reduce the risk of pain and fatigue.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the ultimate monitor setup for maximum productivity must meet your unique needs, provide comfort, reduce eye strain, and minimize fatigue. A good display should feature adequate resolution, size, color accuracy, and contrast.
Moreover, ergonomic design and positioning are a critical aspect to ensure you can work for hours without hurting your back, neck, or eyes. With these considerations in mind, you can select the perfect monitor setup that will help you create your best work and enhance your productivity.
Some of us may be able to do all the work we need to on one small screen. But, for others, more display real estate is needed, sometimes far more. Also: OLED vs. LED: What’s the difference and is one better than the other? This guide is designed to help you figure out which monitor layout is best for you, whether that’s an additional secondary (or tertiary) screen, a larger monitor, or a less common monitor aspect ratio. We’ll help you find the best situation for your workflow, budget, and space constraints. And now, a breakdown of the three main types of configurations: multi-monitor setups, big-screen setups, and ultrawide setups. We’ll go over the pros and cons of each, give you a basic idea of what kind of buy-in cost you might be looking at, and advise you on which types of workflows best suit each option. Do I need more vertical or horizontal space? This will help determine several things. First, if vertical space is vital, you can eliminate both ultrawide setups and multi-monitor setups that don’t include at least one portrait-mode display. If maximum horizontal space is most important to you, then the ultrawide category is very likely your best bet from a cost and efficiency perspective. If you require a mix of both, then a hybrid landscape/portrait multi-monitor setup or a single big-screen display is your best bet. How many monitors can my system support? It’s absolutely vital to investigate this before attempting any major changes to your monitor layout. If the answer for your system is one, you’re going to have to stick with either a single ultrawide or a single big-screen display, assuming your system can support 4K resolutions for the latter. If you have the option to connect multiple monitors, then your choices are far more varied. How much desk space do I have? This applies to both the width and depth of your desk. Wider desks may be able to easily accommodate big-screen and dual or even triple-screen setups, but they may not have the depth needed for a curved ultrawide. Similarly, deeper desks can fit an ultrawide with ease while they may struggle with the extra width required by some triple-screen configs. Also: Best standing desks for WFH Your best bet is to carefully go over the dimensions of your prospective displays (with and without stands) and see which would fit best within your available desk space. How much will I need to spend on stands, mounts, or arms for my monitor(s)? Simply put, the larger or more creative your setup gets, the more likely it is you’ll need to buy aftermarket mounting options. Some of these can get quite pricey, especially if you’re looking for options with gas-assisted arms capable of moving the monitors attached to them vertically, as well horizontally. Even some wall mounts designed for 65-inch+ televisions can fail due to the massive leverage induced by the forward edges of their sharply curved display. If you want to save cash, look for monitors that include stands that will suit all of your needs, out of the box. Failing that, consider monitor risers that can add height to make existing stands more adaptable, or experiment with a hybrid approach that uses both default stands and wall or desk-mounted arms. Also: I switched to a 16:18 monitor. Here’s why you should, too Also: How to clean any flat-screen TV or monitor We’d suggest restricting yours to two or three monitors. This gives you the best bang for your buck by balancing screen real estate and available configuration options with the associated costs and hardware needed to run them. We’ll cover both dual-monitor setups and triple-monitor arrays below. Layout: Side-by-side This is the most common multi-monitor setup out there: two monitors, usually of similar size, situated next to each other. The obvious benefit is a doubling of the screen, with the option to keep your active work on one monitor with references, Slack chats, Zoom calls, or anything else you like on the secondary monitor. I’ve often run across people who don’t fully understand just how useful this simple extra screen can be. That always changes the first time they spend a day without switching between windows hundreds of times for a single project. The saved time and effort provided by having everything visible at once over the course of an eight-hour shift can be life-changing. Even if you don’t have two similarly sized displays, a larger main display with a smaller secondary screen can be just as useful. Sure, aesthetically pleasing configurations with two perfectly matched monitors separated by tiny bezels might be ideal, but don’t let a vain desire for such a thing stop you from enjoying whichever version of a dual monitor setup would work best for your budget. Layout: Landscape-portrait combos While the most obvious setup that comes to mind might be a simple side-by-side configuration with both monitors in traditional landscape orientation, don’t discount the possibility of putting one of those monitors in a “portrait” format, where its longest dimension is its height. This may add a bit of difficulty if your display’s built-in stand doesn’t support rotation, but it’s well worth the extra cost of an inexpensive desk mount, wall mount, or replacement stand for the right user. That additional vertical space can be incredibly useful for everything from seeing a larger segment of your Spotify playlist, to being able to read entire press releases or articles at once without scrolling, to just stacking two smaller windows vertically. In a world where so much content is produced to be displayed on tall, narrow smartphone screens, you may be shocked at how much better the formatting looks on some of your favorite apps and sites as well. Layout: Side-by-side-by-side landscape displays This is once again the simplest layout in which all three monitors are organized in a landscape configuration across a horizontal space before the user. Setups like this were popularized, in part, by gamers who wanted an immersive experience for genres like flight and racing sims, but they provide a variety of benefits for the most serious-minded and practical worker as well. Once again, those benefits follow the dual-monitor equivalent and expand upon them by adding a third display. Imagine keeping that spreadsheet or document on a primary display while your reference lives on your right display and your Slack chat stays on your left, all three instantly available at a glance. Layout: Triple-monitor setups with a portrait display Another popular orientation for triple monitor layouts is one in which a central display is used in landscape mode while two side displays are oriented in portrait mode. I’ve heard this called everything from a “Tie Fighter” layout (referencing the Star Wars ship’s vertical side-wing orientation) to the emoji-inspired “I=I layout” (mimicking its appearance), to a selection of other configuration names. While this setup (seen in the foreground of the image above) may not have a standardized name, I personally find it to be one of the most useful and versatile. Like the dual-monitor examples with a vertical component, this layout supports a variety of workflows, offering both horizontal and vertical spaces for whichever aspect ratio best supports the window in question. Working on a long spreadsheet? Toss it on a side monitor in portrait mode. Creating a wide banner for your website? Use the central display in landscape.
Bottom line
Revamping your personal monitor setup may not have occurred to you before, or it may be something you thought was too expensive to consider. Hopefully, we’ve shown you just how easy it can be to plan after a little reflection on what your most pressing needs are. With these options in mind, it’s time to start thinking about your budget, designing your workspace, and picking out wallpapers for your new layout. It’ll take a bit of elbow grease, and as much expense as you choose, but when it’s done, you’ll understand a whole new level of WFH comfort you may never have realized was possible. Also: The 10 best large monitors For those who get sweaty just thinking about using a window that wasn’t properly maximized and aligned, there are many, many window management options out there that can make a single, large display just as ideal for windows organization as several smaller displays. Windows and MacOS both include their own, basic window management features. For Windows, it’s simply a matter of dragging the window you choose to an edge or corner and letting the operating system do the rest. For MacOS, a long-click or hover over the green full-screen button on the top left of your window will provide basic options to snap to the left or right side of your current display. It will even provide options to move the window over to compatible Apple devices, such as iPads, via the new MacOS/iOS Universal Control feature. We’ve even created a pair of handy video guides to help you learn how to use the time-saving window management features of Windows 10 and MacOS in just a couple of minutes. Like their big-screen counterparts, ultrawide monitors can require some additional windows management trickery, but generally not as much. This is due to the fact that the screen is being expanded only across the horizontal axis, as opposed to the horizontal and vertical expansion caused by using a large 16:9 display like those mentioned above. Also: The best curved monitors Standard ultrawides (typically 21:9 models) can perform the same duties as a pair of side-by-side displays, while some super ultrawide models like Samsung’s Odyssey G9 lineup can actually replace a triple-display setups by forming nearly a half-circle of screen. This reliance on horizontal space can make ultrawide displays less than ideal for the types of users who were excited by the earlier promises of long spreadsheets and press releases being visible all at once via extra vertical space. However, many users who never find themselves in need of so much Y-axis room see the ultrawide form factor as the perfect balance of convenience, immersion, and space-saving design.
