I went UltraWide this weekend and never look back

LG 38" UltraWide - 38WK95C, to be precise. This thing is a MONSTER but I really like the productivity it gives me, the nice USB-C laptop charging and display and the beautiful sound the built in speakers produce!

And… I wrote a review of it too, if you are interested to read.

Happy to answer any questions you all might have …

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I bought the Alienware/Dell ultrawide in January and I share your sentiment. It replaced two 24" 16:10 Asus monitors, so productivity didn’t increase, but holy cow is gaming on it my favorite thing ever (until Dragon Quest XI broke my heart with no ultrawide support). It’s also my first foray into 1440p, 120Hz refresh, and G-Sync (which is a beautiful thing). Of course my gtx 1070 can’t push out more than 60 fps with ultra/high settings on most games on this frame hog, lol, but I suppose that gives me some room for growth in the future. Glad to see your delight in discovering the ultrawide life – she is gorgeous.

Big monitor. Tiny keeb. Love it! :slight_smile:

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Indeed. It does take some getting used to and by the third day, it’s feels so natural now. Whenever I am back at work and looking at the small 13" MacBook, I am missing out so much.

Oh, I must recommend this tool:

Video here:

Amazingly useful tool for the OCD in me who always adjust windows size. And with an Ultrawide, this is god-send!

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I got an ultrawide about a year ago, and love it. It came with software to do pretty easy split screening, and panes on my code editors make the excess space so fucking useful cause I can have a middle section that would normally get cut off by two monitors. Also gaming is really nice on such a big screen. Heck even Netflix is nicer on that size.

The LG has such software too and what I REALLY like about the software is that you can set application to trigger certain profiles, so for instance if I am doing Excel or Powerpoint, it will auto trigger Reader mode, which is very dim and then soft colour and if I clicked on iTunes, it triggered the Cinema mode, which automatically set Brightness to 100%.

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Ya know I haven’t tried messing with linking applications to view modes. I just leave it in reader for the most part, but I may try that when I get home. Good looks

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That’s a very nice setup. I play too much overwatch to use a 75Hz monitor, but I envy the ultrawide for productivity

Oh, I must recommend this tool:
https://mizage.com/windivvy/

+1 for Divvy!

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I also love amethyst. It is what I use now, and it is entirely open source.

I dislike the cables from the keyboard and mouse and am thinking wireless. Aside from HHKB BT, what are my options to convert my existing mech keyboards to wireless? And oh, what’s a good wireless mouse that’s not too heavy?

Oh baby… that’s a monitor I could be really happy with :eyes:

Maybe instead of having all wireless mechs, you could have a USB hub right under your monitor so you only need to run 6" or shorter cables from keyboard to hub. With some clever cable mgmt, you can have that cable’s route hide around the base of the monitor and run to the computer along the back edge of your desk.

This is what I’d recommend since it’d probably be a bit easier than going all wireless/BT. You can also still use very short, but nicely made braided cables from the community vendors if you want to add that little bit of flair on your desk.

USB hubs are also great if you need to quickly plug a USB thing in without reaching to your computer.

There is an alternative way for bluetooth though if you are really dedicated to go that path. I’ve been exploring this and it works out alright.

Handheld Scientific sells a USB Bluetooth Module for keyboards which acts as both a Bluetooth adapter and a USB to USB bridge. The issue is that there is no power associated with this BT module. This means to use it, your keyboard plugs into this, and this plugs into an external battery; kinda like a battery bank you’d carry around to keep your phone changed. This means that there is still a cable from your keyboard to this dongle, and then this dongle plugs into a battery on your desk. This will give you BT4.0 and should work with any keyboard.

I wish I could give mouse advice, but unfortunately I cannot. I’ve been eyeing the MX master 2, but not sure if it’s light enough.

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Thanks for your suggestion. In fact, inside the LG monitor is a USB hub. The problem is, this hub has only one upstream port, which is the USB-C port. That means I could connect the keyboard and mouse into the back of the monitor and then run the USB-C cable into the PC (they included a USB-C to USB-A adapter).

I want to use the USB-C to connect my MacBook into the monitor. If I used it as an upstream port to drive the hub, I will not be able to do so - well, technically I still can but that’s like disconnecting the keyboard+mouse from the PC. I don’t understand why they didn’t put a normal USB-upstream instead of using a USB-C.

So, now I am thinking of using a software KVM which LG does provide. That way, I can drive both Mac and PC at the same time.

I didn’t realize buying a monitor can be so complicated :sweat_smile:

I’m thinking of going Ultra Wide too and this tool is like… wow! :+1:

That was surprisingly hard to Google. I’m guessing you mean this? GitHub - ianyh/Amethyst: Automatic tiling window manager for macOS à la xmonad.

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The beauty of this tool is the simplicity and the speed in which the windows resize (in both Windows and Mac, I bought the bundle)

Thanks for the Divvy recommendation, I setup a macropad I had laying around to be the short cuts for window layouts I use the most and got some re-legendable keys to finish it all off (though need to re-print since I actually use a 3x2 layout rather than 3x 3)

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beautiful! I like monitors that can double as entertainment stations. my current monitor is a Dell UltraSharp U2715H, which is fairly no-frills, but works with my macbook air and didnt cost me an arm and a leg. I think if I ever have the space to upgrade, I would opt for an ultrawide though.

That’s slick. Gotta get one of those

Looks really good! Very clean setup :+1: