Is ultra wide still worth considering or is it best to stick with 16:9?

[MekaStrix]

Hi,

 

So basically I was wondering if Ultrawide is still worthy considering. I watched all the Ces videos related to monitors and most of them were 16:9 screens some 1080p at 240hz and some 4k panels at 144hz I was just wondering if ultrawide is still something that is worth it or are they already giving up on it as a standard as I didn't see them mention any 144hz ultrawide unless I missed that?  I'm either going to go with a single ultrawide or go triple 16:9 display.

[Energycore]

I mean, ultrawide is still an awesome experience, so I don't see why not.

[Mr.Humble]

Hi,

 

I'd say it depends on what you'll be using the monitor for. The ultrawide 21:9 is great for productivity and gaming, but some games don't support it properly. The 16:9 is the industry standard, but I would mind the bezels and three monitors wouldn't probably even fit on my desk without an aftermarket stand.

[EunSoo]

Ultrawides are awesome. If you can get one, then go for it. My prefered monitor setup is a 34" 1440p ultrawide and a 27" 1080p/4k 16:9 next to it.

[Mr.Humble]

1 minute ago, SCGazelle said:

Ultrawides are awesome. If you can get one, then go for it. My prefered monitor setup is a 34" 1440p ultrawide and a 27" 1080p/4k 16:9 next to it.

I absolutely love my ultrawide.

[LawrenceBarnes2013]

Not at all, wish i had an UW monitor.

[aisle9]

I have a love/hate relationship with ultrawide. I love it because I have a ton more real estate on the screen and no longer need a second monitor. I hate it because so many games don't support it well (if at all). I love it because the games that do support it tend to support it well, and it looks amazeballs.

 

So two loves to one hate. 8/10 would buy again, but I do sometimes wish I'd gone 16:9 1440p instead.

[shadowbyte]

I love mine, but most games don't.

Cutscenes will almost never run at full res (besides AC unity, funnily enough). Some games, such as Life is Strange, will only run at 1920x1080 with black bars. 

That said, I recommend an ultrawide as a primary, and then a 1080p monitor as a secondary, which is what I'm running right now

[Mike87]

I would buy one if the price difference wasn't that big

[SeanAngelo]

18 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

Hi,

 

So basically I was wondering if Ultrawide is still worthy considering. I watched all the Ces videos related to monitors and most of them were 16:9 screens some 1080p at 240hz and some 4k panels at 144hz I was just wondering if ultrawide is still something that is worth it or are they already giving up on it as a standard as I didn't see them mention any 144hz ultrawide unless I missed that?  I'm either going to go with a single ultrawide or go triple 16:9 display.

yeah, ultrawide is a good way to go. three 16:9 monitors take up too much space and involve a lot of cables.

[jasonvp]

27 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

I was just wondering if ultrawide is still something that is worth it or are they already giving up on it as a standard as I didn't see them mention any 144hz ultrawide unless I missed that?  I'm either going to go with a single ultrawide or go triple 16:9 display.

I can give you my experience, and you can take it "FWIW"; probably less than you paid for it. :-)

 

My primary gaming is FPS.  I'm not keen on third person, and I don't play anything else.  I also use my Windows box for hobby productivity: video editing, etc.

 

Back in the Battlefield 3 days (to give you an idea), I had a triple-panel set up: 3 24" 9 1920x1200 panels with NVidia's Surround Video.  I initially thought BF3 looked phenomenal that way.  But the more I played it, the more I realized that all I was looking at was my center panel.  That's where most of the action happens.  My peripheral vision wasn't accurately picking up anything on the two surround panels because the game wasn't really animating much there.  For whatever reason it just didn't seem to work as well as I was hoping.

 

So I went back to a single 16:9 for gaming, and left the other two panels up to display other stuff.

 

Fast forward to the middle of 2016: I bought one of those Asus 34" curved 3440x1440 GSync panels.  I thought for sure that the slightly extra screen real estate would be used (as compared to the previous Surround), but: that didn't pan out.  I spent most of my time visually locked on the center of the screen and paying nearly no attention to the edges.  So I sold it and went back to my 3-panel (27" 1440p each upgraded) setup, with the game only in the center screen.

 

What I find works best for me is a 3-panel set up with the game front and center.  That panel is a faster one than the other 2 on the sides; right now mine's a 1440p/144Hz panel while the side panels are 1440p/60Hz.  When I'm working, I work across all three screens.  When it's time to upgrade, I'll replace them with 3 4K panels, with the center one being the faster/higher-refresh one.  Whenever that's a reality.

 

Ultimately, I didn't like the 21:9 aspect ratio, and my guess is that most FPS players won't either.  It seems like a really good idea, but it just doesn't seem to work out quite that way.

 

 

[MekaStrix]

42 minutes ago, jasonvp said:

I can give you my experience, and you can take it "FWIW"; probably less than you paid for it. :-)

 

My primary gaming is FPS.  I'm not keen on third person, and I don't play anything else.  I also use my Windows box for hobby productivity: video editing, etc.

 

Back in the Battlefield 3 days (to give you an idea), I had a triple-panel set up: 3 24" 9 1920x1200 panels with NVidia's Surround Video.  I initially thought BF3 looked phenomenal that way.  But the more I played it, the more I realized that all I was looking at was my center panel.  That's where most of the action happens.  My peripheral vision wasn't accurately picking up anything on the two surround panels because the game wasn't really animating much there.  For whatever reason it just didn't seem to work as well as I was hoping.

 

So I went back to a single 16:9 for gaming, and left the other two panels up to display other stuff.

 

Fast forward to the middle of 2016: I bought one of those Asus 34" curved 3440x1440 GSync panels.  I thought for sure that the slightly extra screen real estate would be used (as compared to the previous Surround), but: that didn't pan out.  I spent most of my time visually locked on the center of the screen and paying nearly no attention to the edges.  So I sold it and went back to my 3-panel (27" 1440p each upgraded) setup, with the game only in the center screen.

 

What I find works best for me is a 3-panel set up with the game front and center.  That panel is a faster one than the other 2 on the sides; right now mine's a 1440p/144Hz panel while the side panels are 1440p/60Hz.  When I'm working, I work across all three screens.  When it's time to upgrade, I'll replace them with 3 4K panels, with the center one being the faster/higher-refresh one.  Whenever that's a reality.

 

Ultimately, I didn't like the 21:9 aspect ratio, and my guess is that most FPS players won't either.  It seems like a really good idea, but it just doesn't seem to work out quite that way.

 

 

This is what I am worried about I have my twitch chat on my secondary screen and OBS and then on my primary screen I use for my games I mostly play Overwatch and Forza Horizon 3. With my current set up I use a 1440p gsync panel and an old hp 1680x1050 panel with massive bezels lol and it gets pretty hot being an older lcd I don't know if using an ultrawide for chat, OBS and a windowed game would work well or not.

[Lays]

28 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

This is what I am worried about I have my twitch chat on my secondary screen and OBS and then on my primary screen I use for my games I mostly play Overwatch and Forza Horizon 3. With my current set up I use a 1440p gsync panel and an old hp 1680x1050 panel with massive bezels lol and it gets pretty hot being an older lcd I don't know if using an ultrawide for chat, OBS and a windowed game would work well or not.

 

I just got an X34 the other day, and I have always played 90% FPS games, it's fantastic, I switched from a 1440p 144hz Swift and I really enjoy it.

 

Forza supports it, overwatch supports it, bf4 supports it, which are my 3 primary games.  BF4's menu goes to 16:9 but that's no big deal IMO.

[MekaStrix]

2 minutes ago, Lays said:

 

I just got an X34 the other day, and I have always played 90% FPS games, it's fantastic, I switched from a 1440p 144hz Swift and I really enjoy it.

 

Forza supports it, overwatch supports it, bf4 supports it, which are my 3 primary games.  BF4's menu goes to 16:9 but that's no big deal IMO.

yeah I would get the pg348q if I got one as I don't like glossy plastic lol and the x34p isn't coming out for a while I currently have the acer xb270hu ips 1440p 144hz gsync and it's good I tried it at 100hz and really can't see a massive difference between that and 144hz so I don't think I would miss the full 144hz however I don't know if 3 24" 1080p monitors would be a better choice for my use case 

[Lays]

Just now, MekaStrix said:

yeah I would get the pg348q if I got one as I don't like glossy plastic lol and the x34p isn't coming out for a while I currently have the acer xb270hu ips 1440p 144hz gsync and it's good I tried it at 100hz and really can't see a massive difference between that and 144hz so I don't think I would miss the full 144hz however I don't know if 3 24" 1080p monitors would be a better choice for my use case 

What do you mean glossy plastic?

[MekaStrix]

1 minute ago, Lays said:

What do you mean glossy plastic?

on the back of the x34 is glossy isn't it?

[Lays]

Just now, MekaStrix said:

on the back of the x34 is glossy isn't it?

Yes the back..  Do you stare at the back of your monitor? Lol

[MekaStrix]

Just now, Lays said:

Yes the back..  Do you stare at the back of your monitor? Lol

no but dust is more noticeable on glossy stuff and my desk is positioned so the back of the monitor is visible in the room

[Paradine Sage]

Gaming wise it's mostly a personal preference thing. Productivity and work wise? You can pry my ultrawide from my cold dead hands, perhaps the best thousand bucks I spent in a good long while. I should probably say that I'm using the ASUS PG348Q (Asus version of the x34), not sure how I would like a 1080p ultrawide.

[MekaStrix]

9 hours ago, Paradine Sage said:

Gaming wise it's mostly a personal preference thing. Productivity and work wise? You can pry my ultrawide from my cold dead hands, perhaps the best thousand bucks I spent in a good long while. I should probably say that I'm using the ASUS PG348Q (Asus version of the x34), not sure how I would like a 1080p ultrawide.

I wouldn't get a 1080p ultrawide, if I go ultrawide it would be the 3440x1440 ones but I was wondering how one of those would compare to triple 1080p 16:9 monitors for productivity 

[treeroy]

completely depends on what you're using it for. for productivity it's good, as there's potentially more space, but if you're using it for gaming, it will have little use in most games.

 

Also in my opinion only get an ultrawide if you can afford the one at the same size as a 16:9 you would otherwise be buying. e.g. if you would otherwise get a 16:9 at 1440p vs ultrawide 1080p, then 1440p is still better. or if you were gonna get a 27" 16:9 vs a 29" 21:9 then I would get the 16:9

[treeroy]

48 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

I wouldn't get a 1080p ultrawide, if I go ultrawide it would be the 3440x1440 ones but I was wondering how one of those would compare to triple 1080p 16:9 monitors for productivity 

a triple-1080p setup is double the width of 1x 1440p uw. For productivity, there is no competition, go for the three monitors. And that's without even considering that putting them on physically separate screens means you can place different programs in different positions, which you can't really do on a single screen, it's much more manoeuvrable.

[Paradine Sage]

5 hours ago, MekaStrix said:

I wouldn't get a 1080p ultrawide, if I go ultrawide it would be the 3440x1440 ones but I was wondering how one of those would compare to triple 1080p 16:9 monitors for productivity 

I personally still like having a second monitor simply because of the ability to better organize what you are doing but if I had to choose between just one ultradwide or two 27" monitors then I would take the ultrawide unless I really needed the extra screen space.

 

My setup is a 27", a 34", and a 27" with one of the 27"s being fed by a second computer while the other two are fed by my primary rig.

 

----

The advantage of the ultrawide is that you can easily have three fully usable windows open and can cut down on horizontal excel scrolling without having to wrap it over multiple screens. I will often do an excel spreadsheet two to three inches high across the entire top of my monitor, a web browser, a word processor, and a third window all on the screen at the same time and have zero issues with things looking cramped.

 

Basically, I count an Ultrawide as slightly superior to two 27" displays for general productivity but slightly inferior to three of them (assuming that you actually regularly use that much screen space).

[MekaStrix]

6 hours ago, treeroy said:

a triple-1080p setup is double the width of 1x 1440p uw. For productivity, there is no competition, go for the three monitors. And that's without even considering that putting them on physically separate screens means you can place different programs in different positions, which you can't really do on a single screen, it's much more manoeuvrable.

It would pretty much be between three MG248Q TN monitors although they are very good TN panels and I personally not bothered as long as it's not VA lol or one PG348Q IPS Monitor also Gsync doesn't bother me much either I don't use it on my current 144hz monitor even though I have it as I don't see a lot of difference at 60hz it makes a difference but most the time im in the upper 80+ fps so Gsync doesn't really do much for me.