Choosing The Right Monitor to Maximise Productivity

To maximise productivity, choosing the right tools for a particular job is paramount. While higher-performance system upgrades are often a preferred solution to boost productivity, for many users a more powerful system may not help much at all.

Users that spend most of their workday entrenched in email, Word documents or PowerPoint, don’t typically place a heavy enough load on a modern computer system to achieve any meaningful time-savings during every-day use after a typical system upgrade.

A user’s monitor, keyboard, and mouse, can have a significant impact on productivity and comfort.

Are You Making Productivity Trade Offs?

When users are forced to be productive on relatively small, single laptop displays, with cramped laptop keyboards and touchpads, they often must make undesirable trade-offs that may hinder productivity.

For example, users may have to bounce between open applications and windows or shrink their application windows to fit alongside each other on a small laptop display, which often necessitates additional task-switching, scrolling and sub-optimal ergonomic conditions.

These trade-offs are mitigated when larger or multiple external monitors and input devices (i.e., a full-sized keyboard and mouse) are connected, which enable easier simultaneous viewing and navigation of multiple application windows. Ideal placement and positioning of the monitors can also alleviate potential ergonomic issues and facilitate a more comfortable working environment.

Dell Technologies: High Resolution External Monitor Productivity Study

With these considerations in mind, Dell Technologies set out to measure the potential productivity benefits of attaching an external monitor(s) and a full-sized keyboard and mouse to a laptop, to augment and expand a user’s digital workspace.

All the participants in the study achieved meaningful and significant productivity gains with the external monitor configurations. The added screen real-estate and increased pixel resolutions, in conjunction with the ergonomic benefits of the full-sized keyboard and mouse and adjustable monitor positions, resulted in significant time savings for all participants across all the external monitor configurations that were tested.

The mean results showed that as the screen size and resolution of the external monitor is increased so too is productivity.

Click here to read the full report from Dell Technologies.

The Many Benefits of a Single, Large Monitor

Though the total screen area and number of pixels available in a dual-monitor configuration may be like a single, larger monitor, a single external monitor configuration offers a myriad of advantages.

For example, the installation of a single monitor requires fewer cables and the mounting of only a single stand. Positioning a single monitor is also easier, without the need to align bezels or contend with differing heights or tilts. A single monitor and stand will also consume less desktop space.

Perhaps most important, there is nothing to obstruct a user’s field of view with a single monitor and there are no issues with differing colour output or brightness. With dual monitors, adjacent bezels bisect the usable screen area and any differences in the monitors’ colour calibration, uniformity or brightness will make images appear differently when moved from screen to screen.

Dual and multi-monitor configurations are an excellent way to enhance a user’s experience and boost productivity with multiple desktop instances, but when possible, opting for a single, large monitor may be optimal depending on end user requirements and use cases.

Additional Productivity and Ergonomic Benefits

In addition to the measurable time savings afforded by incorporating an external monitor (or monitors) into a user’s workflow, adding external monitors and proper input devices to a laptop offers numerous ancillary benefits.

The larger, properly spaced keys, in conjunction with the ability to position the input devices and monitors in optimal locations, has obvious comfort and ergonomic benefits. Fine-tuning the monitor’s height and tilt further enhance comfort and improve usability. In their totality, all the ergonomic benefits may result in less fatigue, an enhanced user experience, and increased overall comfort, which would likely boost worker productivity and morale in the long term as well.

Choosing the Right Monitor

Below we look at the top 5 main considerations when choosing a monitor.

1. Screen size
Monitor screen size uses a diagonal measurement in inches, like TVs. You’ll need to choose a monitor that fits the related desk space and that provides a large enough screen for the user. Larger screens provide more space for enhanced productivity and multi-tasking in one place. Smaller screens are perfect for day-to-day tasks like email or browsing the internet.

Below is an overview of the various monitor sizes that you can find, along with their respective best use cases.

• 23” and under
  o Budget friendly market, perfect for day-to-day tasks.
  o Can be used for: email, internet browsing, document editing
• 24” – 27”
  o Multimedia features for both personal and work
  o Can be used for: email, video conferencing, streaming movies
• 28” – 32”
  o Larger viewing area for graphics-intensive content
  o Can be used for: content creation, slideshows, reviewing larger files
• 34” – 38”
  o Clearer images and more space to get things done
  o Can be used for: video/photo editing, presentations, data analysis
• 40” and above
  o Can be used instead of using two or more monitors, a larger screen that offers one wide and fluid desktop space
  o Can be used for: content creation, multi-tasking
• Curved monitors
  o Offer reduced eye movement across the screen for a more immersive experience
  o Can be used for: collaboration, multi-tasking, gaming

2. Resolution
Monitor resolution depicts how clearly a monitor can show visual content by showing how many pixels it has in width x height format. For example, a 1920 x 1080 resolution means the width has 1,920 pixels and the height has 1,080 pixels. The higher the monitor resolution, the more pixels, the clearer the picture will be displayed.

3. Refresh rate
The number of times per second that your monitor screen refreshes the image being displayed on your screen. Refresh rate is measured in hertz (Hz) and ranges from 60Hz up to 240Hz. The higher the refresh rate, the smoother your image will be.

If a monitor has a 60Hz refresh rate, this means that the picture on a screen would refresh 60 times per second.

Here are a few examples of how different refresh rates can be used:

• 60 Hz – Creating spreadsheets, streaming movies, or music
  144 Hz – PC gaming, photo sharing, video editing
  240 Hz – Competitive, eSports, and FPS gaming

4. Response time
This refers to how much time it takes for monitor pixels to change from one colour to another. Response time is measured in milliseconds and is as fast as 0.5ms. Unlike refresh rate, you want a lower response time – the lower the millisecond, the faster the screen can change an image.

5. Cables and connections
Lastly, it’s important to check the monitor ports and the cables needed to connect to your computer and other devices like docks, computer speakers, mice, and keyboard to ensure everything is compatible. If the port on your monitor doesn’t match the port on your computer, you’ll need an adapter or special cable.

Additional considerations/features:

• Panel type (LCD, VA, OLED, etc)
• Brightness
• Colour display
• Viewing angle/adjustability
• Integrated speakers or cameras
• Built-in USB hub
• Curved screen

#1 Monitor Company for 8 Consecutive Years

As the #1 monitor company for 8 consecutive years, Dell Technologies offers the industry’s most advanced displays technologies and design, with key features to help optimise productivity, collaboration, reliability, and screen performance.

Stott Hoare is your local Dell Technologies partner for business, education, and government. Leverage our platinum partnership to enjoy competitive pricing, streamlined procurement and local services and support.

Click here to explore Dell’s comprehensive monitor portfolio.

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