What Monitor / resolution do people recommed

[Dan1345]

Hi,

I am looking at replacing my three monitor setup with a single large 43" monitor or a ultra widescreen monitor.  But I cannot decide what combination of screen size resolution works best for mix LabVIEW and text programming and have no chance to try before I buy.

Has anybody been down this path and give me advice, comments. Widescreen or standard 16:9  but large. 4K or 8K.

cheers 

Danny

[Basjong53]

I'm working on a 34" 3440x1440 monitor, which is great. Lot's of screen real-estate and the ultra-wide aspect ratio is perfect for LabVIEW's horizontal data flow. If I were to upgrade, I'd get one step bigger: 38" 3840x1600 would be my ideal size.

The PPI shouldn't be too high as LabVIEW scales very poorly, so I prefer to have Windows scaling on 100%.

[RTSLVU]

I prefer multiple monitors over one huge monitor.

Currently my main monitor is 1920x1200 the other two are 1920x1080.

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

I still have three monitors. In the middle — 30 inch DELL U3011 (2560x1600), and on one side is Dell UltraSharp 2007WFP (1600x1200) and on the other side Eizo RadiForce RX340 (medical, which I need for x-ray images), both are 20 inch and vertical. Pixel pitches of Dells are the same, which is really good. Experiment with one huge monitor (around 40 inch) wasn't successful, very inconvenient, at least for me.

[crossrulz]

I will say that I have a lab setup at another office that uses 2x 4k monitors and each one feels like 2 monitors. I have no clue on the model of the monitors, but it is quite nice to work with. I, unfortunately, am using Python in that program, so I do not have experience using LabVIEW on those monitors.

[Kyle97330]

I prefer multiple monitors over one large one.

One thing to consider:  It is considered best practice in coding style to fit your entire block diagram on one screen.  We have some shared code in our company and one of our members upgraded to some fancy 30" 4K screens and is using them at full resolution while the rest of us use 1080p.  He keeps putting VIs with MASSIVE block diagrams into our shared repo.  Very jarring when we have to open them.

If you have to share VIs with anyone, agree on a block diagram size... probably the smallest of everyone's monitors, then a little smaller.

[Dan1345]

Thanks for all the replies 🙂 , 

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@Kyle97330 wrote:

I prefer multiple monitors over one large one.

One thing to consider:  It is considered best practice in coding style to fit your entire block diagram on one screen.  We have some shared code in our company and one of our members upgraded to some fancy 30" 4K screens and is using them at full resolution while the rest of us use 1080p.  He keeps putting VIs with MASSIVE block diagrams into our shared repo.  Very jarring when we have to open them.

If you have to share VIs with anyone, agree on a block diagram size... probably the smallest of everyone's monitors, then a little smaller.

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A very valid point, I very often need to to see my code on a laptop on site so that help stop me falling into this trap.

[rolfk]

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@Kyle97330 wrote:

He keeps putting VIs with MASSIVE block diagrams into our shared repo.  Very jarring when we have to open them.

If you have to share VIs with anyone, agree on a block diagram size... probably the smallest of everyone's monitors, then a little smaller.

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The “VI must fit on a single screen” is neither a rule to be enforced by a death penalty, nor an invitation to use your 4k or 8k screen to the fullest! 😀

A Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080) is nowadays a good maximum size for a VI diagram, but unless you implement an FPGA VI or a really complex GUI with many separate loops to handle a complex application, there is usually absolutely no need to go to that size at all. Keep your VIs concise and small, use subVIs whenever it makes sense and for that huge GUI with many independent loops working together, consider to invest learning to use some queued message handler framework like DQMH. It doesn’t need to be the Actor Framework, although if you can manage that, you for sure have super powers at your hands 😀.

My work setiup are two 2560 x 1440 monitors with small bezel next to each other and my home setup is one 2560 x 1440 above my 1920 x 1200 laptop.

I selected this laptop for a reason 😀. 4k resolution on a 17” screen makes absolutely no sense when you have to scale everything to still be able to read any text and even then need glasses for that.😀

[Andrey_Dmitriev]

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@rolfk wrote: 4k resolution on a 17” screen makes absolutely no sense when you have to scale everything to still be able to read any text and even then need glasses for that...😀

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... when working with LabVIEW, of course.

I have had in the past a great Dell XPS notebook with 15,6 inch UHD Display (which is over 8 MP — 3840 x 2160). And with touch screen as well! It was really brilliant. There are lot of discussions — do we really need 4K on 15 inch? Yes, it is. The major difference between my workdesk monitor and this one is pixel pitch. My 3 MP 21,2" RadiForce RX340 with 1536 x 2048 resolution have 0.21075 mm pixel pitch which is around 120,5 ppi. I still see pixels and unsharp aliased edges (especially because I have short-sightedness, but on short distance I have really "eagle-eyes", can solder SMDs without magnification glass). Usually I sitting relative close to the monitor with special "weak" glasses. The UHD Monitor on laptop — 282,4 ppi, means 0,09 mm per pixel only. I haven't seen such sharp edges on each letter, and vector graphic was just perfect. But attempts to work with LabVIEW was disaster, because HiDPI is not properly supported. Very sad.

[rolfk]

I guess my physical development has adapted to the LabVIEW programming then. 🤣

I used to need glasses when driving car, not very strong ones but it did help to be able to read traffic signs a bit earlier and not have to suddenly take a left turn on the highway because I almost missed the correct exit. 😁

And while I didn't need any glasses for near sight back then, I still preferred to use a lamp with magnifying glass when soldering SMD, and no they were usually not the sub-mm miniature dots that count as SMD nowadays and that are difficult to distinguish from a speck of dirt. 😁

But age shows and a few years ago I started to need to use screen glasses to not have to constantly squint my eyes to be able to still read on a computer screen. Same for reading glasses when reading a book. 😁 I do however now see sharper in distance without glasses than with.