Jaap van der Velde
Aug 24, 2017 · 1 min read

Of course I won’t begrudge anyone their own preferences, but I think most of the arguments boil down to personal taste. I do think there’s a limit to the number of monitors that’s reasonably useful, but the optimum for me remains two (although I have three, but only use the third in gaming scenarios).

The main reason is I feel it’s much easier on the eyes to separate certain parts of my single task. For example, having documentation or design documents on one screen (typically white on black with illustrations, or a typical web page) and having IDE and application on the other screen.

These are very different in brightness and contrast. Also,the position on the screen where my eyes need to be to work pleasantly and efficiently, differs very much between the two. Switching between these views on a single monitor feels more tiring and distracting than using my natural capacity to look in more than one place. Also, this allows me to optimize settings on both screen for the tasks I use them for.

Of course, it all depends on having a good physical setup and having enough space to do so.

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