As someone who wears corrective lenses for astigmatism, I can guarantee that what you perceive as a straight line, assuming you are human, is not, until your brain corrects it and signals 'straight line' to you.

It takes a day or so for your brain to get used to any consistent distortion and totally disregard it.

This is just pointless complaining... A bigger complaint with curved screens is: crazy reflections.

I like my curved ultra-wide. I didn't at first, but my brain has very noticeably adapted to where curved things on it appear straight just fine. I noticed this when I went back to the office after a few weeks absence, where I have a regular flat pancake screen in 16:9, and straight text looked CURVED in the opposite direction!

Brains are weird.

TFA doesn't mention the size of their monitor, or the ratio of it, or the distance they typically sit from their monitor, or the horizontal placement (relative to their eyeballs), or the type of work they're doing.

I'd also expect a mention of the amount of curve they are upset about.

There's a few varieties, the 1500R and the 1800R were the most common two when I was shopping last year, in the AU domestic market. Those numbers refer to how the monitor might fit on an imagined circle's radius (measured in millimetres, naturally). So an 1800R is a gentler curve than a 1500R.

I find UW's beyond about 34" are mostly more comfortable in an 1800R for 'office work' activities (not including CAD, photo / image manipulation, etc) and gaming.

(I actually have a 43" flat, in 16:9, it sits about a metre from my eyeballs, and I usually aim for my eyes to be about 1/3 the way from the top of the screen. After several months with this, I now feel a gentle curve on this would be a bit more ergonomic.)

Different people have different preferences.

I suspect a bunch of smaller manufacturers would have more success with their products if there was an easy way to try them out for a week or two. Buying hardware sight-unseen incurs a heavy risk penalty. Buying it after seeing it in a store for ten minutes is some reduction, but not a lot.

How many people would spend $250 on a split ergo ortho keyboard having never touched anything other than a laptop or maybe a mushy $12 pack-in included with their Dell at work?

What's the appropriate solution other than inflating the price even more to cover a generous return policy?

I might buy a Keyboard.io or a Moonlander... but there's a pretty high risk I won't love it. These things can be subtle: I quite like the X-Bows Knight I'm typing on now, and can't stand the Keychron Q10 which, by all rights, I ought to find about as comfortable.

Was there actually more to this posting and it got cut off? I'm not seeing why this is a practical issue. I'm partial to large displays with a more traditional aspect ratio, but using ultrawides, including curved ones occasionally isn't annoying to me. What really grinds my gears is that one coworker who doggedly insists on sharing his full desktop every single damned time which makes text nearly unreadable on anything other than another ultrawide.

I don't mind curved screens, but what I do mind is that so many wide / curved screens have such low vertical resolution. 1440px is just so little space.

For the investment of one image, maybe a second image might have made your point. I don't like curved displays either, but I observe many widescreen photos offer a distorted view of the scene taken on a large flat monitor, since the lens is a compromise as is printing on flat media, and so the image as presented from a wide-angle is NOT accurate, any more than a curved screen of a 55mm lens would be. The problem here is horses-for-courses: if you have a wide curved screen then you should ask your digital devices to render images as if they are being displayed on a curved surface, not as if they are flat.

Anamorphic lenses should be projected/presented on curved surfaces and packages like Hugin will render images which should look pretty good on a curved surface of a known radius, assembled from sets of non-curved flat images put together in a panorama. Or apps like Bimostitch on android, which looks to use the same algorithms.

I don't like curved screens because I haven't learned to rotate my head the way needed to deal with content on the edge. I like dual monitors in a V more than a single wide-screen because they can be independently desktop-panned, only some widescreens do this (by s/w rendering it as two heads)

For some work (Audacity - audio editing, and related video work) a wide screen is fantastic. Horses for courses.

I don't like straight displays, things at the corners are a different size than things in the middle, because they are further from my head. On curved displays, objects on different areas of the screen are the same size as they originally appeared.

Would the author of this post have enjoyed or hated seeing a movie in Cinerama? Anyone who has been seated too close to a flat IMAX screen knows that even a flat screen can give a severely distorted viewing experience if you're not in a good viewing position (e.g. if you're seated off-axis and close).

In recent years, curved panels have been a way to compensate for issues created by limited viewing angles offered by LCD screens. If a screen is sufficiently large and the seating position close enough, one could often see a pattern on the screen even when viewing a single solid colour. The choice of screen geometry was a choice between different forms of image distortion. As technology improves and viewing angles become wider and more consistent, we'll probably see curved panels become more niche again.

I use a nice 32" 4k IPS panel for work and it's borderline OK in the corners. However I got a really wide curved screen for a second computer and in that case I really appreciate the shape just because it mitigates the distortion somewhat.

i never thought i'd like a curved display until i got one..now i want to move all my monitors to curved...i guess to each their own!

The eye adjusts to it. Since getting used to a curved monitor, flat monitors now look convex-curved like an old CRT to me when sitting in front of them.

This is only true if the monitor is the size of the CMOS/CCD sensor. Which it pretty much never is.

Not the highest effort blog post. I'm actually a bit curious why it's on the front page though. Accidental engagement bait? :D

I have a 2x 4k ultrawide. The Samsung Oddysey 55(?)inch variant.

Not only is it very bright and legible, the fact that the screen takes up my field of view helps me focus.

And I connect it to my MacBook using two seperate HDMI cables, so it's essentially two seperate monitors without bezels. I think I'll probably keep this monitor for a decade or so: any higher DPI and it doesn't make any difference because you have to size up the text. Any brighter and my eyes will burn out of their sockets.

My ideal coding configuration is 3-4x vertical 32" UHD screens (with the smallest bezels you can get) in a 'curved' formation.

I find that configuration miserable for any hobby activities. I really like a horizontal screen, and curved is nice, but one screen even the ultra wides just isn't enough for work.

Maybe I could imagine a pair of ultra wides in an over/under configuration, but I really like vertical real estate.

> so viewing the image on a flat screen looks exactly the same as how it originally appeared.

What about all the other things you view on your screen?

I used to not like them until I've switched to the 57", 1000R Samsung. I love it.

I have a view of a brick wall, that has a setback, so the left part of the wall is closer than the part to the right. From a certain distance, the setback has six vertical courses aligning with the mortar and on the closer face of the wall every five courses. I wonder how perceptive our visual areas might be with respect to pixels when I see the shattered shadows of LED panel parking lot lights (32 individual point sources) or the strobe at night of headlights. Still, I would like a curved display. Maybe a Las Vegas Eyeball.

This is so true. Glad someone posted about it. But ofcourse, the buyers won't care. They are easily sold with the idea that the far edges of the screen have low angle of view if the screen isn't curved. When people believe myths, sell them myths. When they believe the purpose of computers and phone is to share photos and videos, sell them fb and ig.

Also, for companies buying the curved monitors, the looks of the monitors across the workplace fit nicely into their "modernization" targets. No physics needed.

Curved displays are great if you are near a window or any other light source that causes glare. I switched from flat to curved and there’s no more glare on my display.

Hmm i suppose it's how you use your multi monitor setup too.

I don't have both displays in front of me, I have one mostly in front and one to the left side, which i keep angled more than what a curved display will give me.

Main work in front, reference on left.

I suppose I'd keep a curved ultrawide the same way. Not that I'm thinking of trying one, I like the physical separation that two different monitors provide.

Curved for games makes a lot of sense because it can emulate the 3D camera's Field of View making it more naturally display a wrap around world.

I also do a lot of VR stuff and those lenses are a whole different kind distortion. You get used to it super fast. You can really mess with the perception of visual reality in VR, and the brain is very good at just accepting the new reality and adjusting.

You are serving Menlo font on your website (monospace). This is not an open font. It is Apple IP and is not licensed for being served over the internet.

Although it is a derivative of the FOSS fonts-- Bitstream Vera and DejaVu, Menlo itself is not released with an open license. It's only meant for use with Apple devices.

I'd suggest changing to one of the many high quality FOSS fonts available online.

Since I'm not actually looking at images, instead I'm looking at text, I love my 4k 32" 16:9 curved display. I typically have 2 vertical windows open on it, so since I do more work on the edge rather than the center, the curve does help me see my work just a bit clearer than otherwise.

It's subtle, but it feels weird when I look at a flat display now

I have a 32 inch flat display and I actually do think it would have been better with a bit of a curve. It would help keep the distance of all points of the screen from me more consistent. If I sat another couple feet back from the display, then I think the flat screen would make more sense because the relative difference in distance would be smaller.

Once upon a time there were these places called “retail stores” where you could go look at actual products and even try them out before buying them.

Alas.

Over the years I've gifted a few nice keyboards to people and their immediate response has often been "why didn't I get a proper mechanical keyboard sooner!"

They had only used cheap plastic or laptop keyboards until then and never saw a keyboard as a tool to invest in for their profession (which often required plenty of typing).

I bought a Moonlander two years ago and the price (plus shipping to Europe) did really hurt. I also had to spend a lot of time into the complex configuration of the individual key mapping. And to learn the mapping.

It was absolutely worth it and I would do it again. I love that the keys aren’t staggered like on a typical keyboard — which I find rather silly — but instead are perfectly aligned in straight columns. And the thumb keys. And the configurable chords (yes, chords, that's nerdcore). And much more.

I'm not sure where you're based, but don't you have consumer protections that allow you to return goods you regret buying? I know that even in places with good return regulations, there are exceptions, but where I live, I could buy a monitor from Amazon to try it out, and if I don't like it, just return it within the 30 days and buy another one. I assumed it was like this in most of the western world? Maybe I'm a bit naive.

I know a bunch of people who do this for cloth shopping (which isn't a great idea considering everything else except themselves, obviously), where they don't know exactly what size will fit them, so they buy the same dress in 2-3 sizes, try them out at home then return the ones that didn't fit.

I was very uncertain when I bought my KINESIS keyboard. It really really helps my wrist pain though. If it hadn't have worked I probably would've returned it to Amazon after a week or two.

> a mushy $12 pack-in included with their Dell at work

For what they are, the standard Dell keyboards are quite nice.

It's a cost thing, ultrawide has always been expensive relative to how much extra area you get, and pushing the resolution up compounds that. 5120x2160 (extended 4K) panels do exist but they cost a fortune.

I just recently picked up a 32 inch curved 1440p screen and it's awful, for that size I should have realized I needed a 4k. Text is horribly pixelated and when looking dead on it feels like the aspect ratio is closer to 4:3 or something. Coming from an ultra wide 1440p I'm really disappointed.

My holy grail of computer monitors is an 8k 55" curved screen. Not a shorty, but a full 55" or 65" 16:9 (or similar) screen with 7680 x 4320 resolution, but curved.

I currently have three 4k 32" screens in portrait arranged in a sort of curved configuration. I love it, except for the bezels. It's something like this: https://i.sstatic.net/YocaE.jpg

I was almost ready to purchase a flat 8k 55" TV for my workstation, but decided to try a flat 4k 55" TV I already had, and the flatness just ruined it for me. I need a slight curve when using such a large surface area only a few feet from my eyes. I guess I'll have to stick with my three 4k monitors for now.

For a 34 incher, 1440px is perfect, and so is a 34 incher. A higher resolution renders text too small to read, and a larger monitor has one moving their head around instead of just their eyes.

Of course, they are not ideal for the graphical work that the author implies, but they can't be beat for productivity work imho.

> 1440px is just so little space.

1440px tall on a common 13 tall ultrawide is 107 PPI.

In my mind > 100 PPI is pretty much perfect for most tasks. Or are you talking about physical size?

I found the LG 38GL950G-B to be a good compromise with a resolution of 3840x1600 that I purchased back in 2020.

Easy solution: Reorient the monitor in portrait mode. /s

I'd go absolutely apeshit over a 4:3 dome curved screen.