What has more viewable area: two 15 in 3:4 monitors, or 1 22 in 16:9 monitor?

Answer 1

Well, the quoted size of a monitor measures its diagonal.

A 22 inch 16:9 monitor would have dimensions of 19.17 x 10.78
or 207 sq in.

A 15 inch 4:3 monitor would have dimensions of 12 x 9 inches or 108 sq in. So two of them would be 216 sq in. The combined viewing surface would be 24 x 9 inches if you arrange them horizontally, or 12 x 18 inches if arranged vertically. Depends what you want to do with them.

Not much difference in area. But consider that you'll have a single uninterrupted display surface with the 22 incher. I'd go for the 22 inch monitor.

You'll want to be sure you can supply a high enough resolution to the 22 inch monitor, preferably at least 1600 pixels horizontally

Answer 2

The two options are nearly equal in actual physical size (about 216 sq.in. for the two smaller monitors vs. 207 sq.in. for the one bigger one), so you'll probably need to take price into consideration.

I recently started using two monitors at work, and I love it - I can program on one screen and look at the results on the other. The only problem is that Windows only puts the taskbar on one of the monitors, so if I have a lot of windows open, it can be hard to find the button I want. In this respect, I think one big screen would be better.

Answer 3

Typically a 22" wide-screen LCD will have somewhere around a 1680 x 1050 screen resolution. A typical standard resolution 15" LCD will be 1024x768. So the math ends up being:

1680 * 1050 = 1764000 Pixels

1024 * 768 * 2 = 1572864 Pixels

The 22" will actually have more screen real estate. I didn't do the math on physical size though.