4k60 worth over 1440p165 for Text/Productivity?

[imcaspar]

Hey,

I am in the market for a new monitor right now.

My use will be 75% Productivity/Text and 25% gaming.

 

I either consider a 1440p monitor at 165 Hz (maybe ultrawide at 120Hz) or a 4k60; both IPS.

 

The Question would be whether people here who have a direct comparison would say resolution is worth the downgrade in refresh rate when it comes to productivity?

 

Thx;

Caspar

[TheKDub]

A high refresh rate such as 165hz won't help you for productivity. Having roughly 2.25x the number of pixels on screen will help, assuming you're doing enough that you could make use of them.

[FlappyBoobs]

If you want productivity, then there is no choice but to get an ultrawide. The only people that don't recommend an ultrawide for work are people that have not used an ultrawide in work. They are game changers. 

[mariushm]

It depends on actual size of the panel.

A 4K 60Hz on a 27" would suck for productivity/text.  If it's 32-40" however, it's another story.

 

If you're doing web design or have to read a lot of text, you should also consider that you could have a 3440x1440 monitor rotated by 90 degrees on the side, or even two such monitors, one on each side of your main monitor.

This way, you'd have 1440 px wide screen, and very long vertically, 3440 pixels ... if you're a web developer you'd appreciate seeing your web pages and being able to view them at various resolutions like 1024px wide, 1280px wide and so on...

if you have to type a lot of text, or read PDF documents, again 1440px wide would be good ... it's proven that it's not productive or fast to read very long paragraphs, that's why newspapers usually resort to multiple columns. So with a narrow resolution like 1440px, you can have a pdf viewer maximized and fill the whole screen, instead of having 2-3 separate viewers or windows tiled horizontally and the viewer won't stretch the rows of text too much in 1440px

 

I have two 24" monitors (they're so old they're TN with fluorescent backlight) but I love them, wouldn't go back to a single monitor unless it's 4K and 32"+ because I love the "real estate" i get with these 2 monitors.

[imcaspar]

39 minutes ago, FlappyBoobs said:

If you want productivity, then there is no choice but to get an ultrawide. The only people that don't recommend an ultrawide for work are people that have not used an ultrawide in work. They are game changers. 

Ultrawides at 2160p are extremely overpriced tho, so only 1440p is an option. And on a 1440p screen you only have 75% of the space you get with 4k...

[FlappyBoobs]

5 hours ago, caspar! said:

Ultrawides at 2160p are extremely overpriced tho, so only 1440p is an option. And on a 1440p screen you only have 75% of the space you get with 4k...

I'm a developer and have access to both, the ultra wide feels like it has more space than 4k, mainly because I have to scale things up to read clearly with the 4k screen. 

 

It's the stretched aspect ratio that makes the real difference to productivity, you have to get used to not running fullscreen, but I haven't experienced a more "dude you HAVE to try this" moment than trying to explain why ultra wide is so good to work on.