Since well before the pandemic, I've have dual 28" 4K screens on my desk. When ordering them, I liked the fact that they had the same pixel pitch as my 14" 2K laptop screen. One monitor was like a borderless 2x2 grid of those laptop screens.

I found myself repositioning things so that one is in front of the keyboard as a primary screen and the other is further off to the side as a secondary dumping ground. I found myself neglecting the second display most of the time so it was just a blank background. Eventually, I noticed I wasn't even using the entire primary screen. I favored a sector of it and pushed some windows off to the edges.

Ironically, with work from home, I've started roaming around the house with the laptop instead of staying at my desk. So I'm mostly back to working in a 14" screen with virtual desktops, like I was 20 years ago. I am glad that laptops are starting to have 16:10 again after the long drought of HDTV-derived screens.

Do you... usually read content in a full-screen window on that thing?

I only have a 27" monitor and sit about 2.5 feet away from it and I move my head _slightly_ to focus on different windows. But that's the reason I have a larger monitor, so I can have a bunch of normal-sized windows open at once.

Their point may be about viewing distance.

If the edges of the screen are further from your eyes than the center, the content and text doesn't appear at the same size. If you wear glasses, the edges might even fall out of focus unless you physically move closer.

I like having three columns of code open in my editor, but the left edge of the leftmost column (since code is left-justified) gets pretty far away from my face. Or I need stronger glasses, one of the two.

I think it depends on vision. I have a single 27" 4k monitor with vscode set to about 80% zoom.

But I'm getting older, so I might have to make it a big bigger soon.

I used to use a 40" 4k TV.

Now I use a 38" ultrawide, which is roughly the same width (in pixels and in inches) but doesn't require my head to move up/down as much.

I could imagine using a 52" ultrawide if it were placed further away from me (i.e. deeper desk). The extra pixels would make it effectively a retina display.

I have a 42" 4k TV that I use as a monitor (in gaming mode). Not sure I would want anything shorter than that. (Of course, I have an eye issue, so the side-to-side is even more pronounced for me.

52" at that aspect ratio isn't just wide, it's also >50% taller than a 34" ultrawide.

It's akin to a 55" TV - basically the same width, but only 70% of the height.

I think you would have to sit further back, almost tv watching distance.

And that would strain your eyes or force a bigger font. At that point, you'd be wondering, like me, on why I spent $$ to buy a bigger screen in the first place.

I got an open box lenovo 24 inch QHD monitor for years and it just works solid across windows, mac and various docking stations. I could imagine upgrading to a 27 or 30 inch but beyond that is just too much IMO.

Maybe taller, more square could be of more use than wider.

I have a 57” ultra wide and it absolutely requires you to look around