I’ve been working with an ugly but functional lopsided two-monitor setup for years, and while it has served me well, I can’t say the new generation of ultra-wide monitors hasn’t tempted me. But the truth is they just aren’t wide enough. Or rather, they weren’t.
Samsung has just blown my mind with a monitor so wide it will serve as a ramp that you can trick off of in the summer. It’s so wide that when it puts on a pair of BVDs they read BOULEVARD. It’s so wide that the Bayeux Tapestry got jealous.
Actually it’s a little less wide than a couple of the monitors Samsung announced at CES — but those had two problems. First, they were 3840×1080. And I just need more vertical pixels than that. Second, they were 49 inches wide. That’s a BIG monitor! Not just big, but with those pixels spread out that far, it’s not going to be sharp at all.
On the other hand, this new one not only adds an extra 120 pixels, bringing it to the far superior 1200 vertical (for a total of 3840×1200), but it is 43 inches corner to corner. Forty-three inches… would that be too big, too small, or would it be…
Just right?!
(Yes, my left monitor is a bit warmer than my right, but it’s not as bad as it looks — that’s a viewing angle issue.)
One of the downsides of a giant monitor is that it can be a pain to separate workspaces or, say, have a movie playing “full screen” on one half while you browse Etsy for vintage kettles on the other. But Samsung has a “picture-by-picture” mode and some other useful features that help with this. So I’m going to give it a shot.
It’s also got 120Hz refresh (though no word on sync tech), a bunch of USB ports, and even a headphone jack. I don’t know why you would want built-in sound on a thing like this, since you clearly are a media freak if you buy it, but they felt the need to add in speakers.
The Samsung C43J89 monitor will cost $900 when it comes out, which admittedly is two or three times what I would normally pay for a monitor — I’m more of a Dell Ultrasharp guy, IPS all the way. But my whole workflow could change when this thing goes on sale.
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