Background - I am a lawyer who focuses on compliance issues and transactional work. I have bad eyesight (-10.5 contacts). I have to read a lot of documents, edit, compare them. My day is tightly managed and I like to have OmniFocus and Outlook Calendar up at all times.
Prior Monitor Set Up - I have previously used 2 27” monitors (non 4K). I have used a single 4K Wide Panel screen before (Dell U3417W).
Likes/Dislikes - The dual monitor set up was good in that I could keep OmniFocus and my calendar on one screen and edit in the other. Though to see the document the best and to edit it (and see comments on the side) it was difficult to get all to fit in the 27”. That lead me to the Dell. I liked the width but I could never get used to the vertical viewing range which felt cramped. Also to be able to see it clearly for text I had to scale which seemed to defeat the reason to have 4K.
Budget - Short of the big Apple monitor my budget is flexible (say up to $2,000) for any set up as Macsparky says, it’s how I “pay for my shoes.”
Confession - I enjoy using tech. After trying to figure out ppi, OLED, WQHD, resolutionss, and all that I give up and can’t expand more brain power on it.
Desk - Monitor will be on my desk. The way the desk is set up it can be placed from 6” to 3’ from where I sit.
Any thoughts on set ups or monitors anyone would suggest I look in to?
At native 3840x2160, the 43" LG has a PPI of 102, so things are slightly larger than your Dell, with a whopping 2160 pixels of vertical space.
At 1920x1080, the 43" LG has a PPI of just 51, which could not be easier to read.
For reference, before everything was miniaturized with laptops and smartphones, user interfaces like macOS’ were originally designed to be comfortable at 72 PPI.
For half the price you could buy an 8K television; for document review it would work fine. however the smallest 8K TV is about 55 inches so you might need to place the monitor a bit further back than you are used to currently
For what it’s worth, my current setup has two 5K monitors and two 4K monitors; I am thinking of changing my main (and perhaps only) monitor to one of the above options but I am not sure which one yet. I wouldn’t say I have “bad eyes” but I have typical middle age presbyopia and cannot read any monitor without glasses.
Have you considered a dual widescreen monitor setup with one in landscape and one in portrait? I know some programmers that worked that way because they could see more code on the screen at a time.
I was going to say this exact same thing. It’s bad for having to do side-by-side comparisons with things, but great if you have a huge scrolling mass of text or something you need to be able to look at.
Have you considered using an iPad to read documents? The screen resolution is very high and you can bring it closer to your face if you need to. I do most of my reading on the iPad.
