As an IT Support provider, we are often asked whether it really makes a difference to use a larger monitor or about setting up dual monitors.
The simple answer is “yes,” but which one matters more depends on your specific needs and what kind of work you do.
When you tend to spend most of your day working in one and only one application, a larger monitor usually makes the biggest difference. Graphics and video professionals are key types of workers who benefit most from large monitors; being able to see more of the image at a higher resolution is critical in making the right changes and decisions related to the task at hand.
Setting up dual monitors is useful for those who frequently use more than one application at a time. The IT engineers that work for Landon Technologies, Inc. often need to monitor both a network process and their email client while working on high-priority issues… and using two monitors makes it much easier to handle this.
There are, of course, many people who would benefit from having multiple and large monitors. In general, if you can benefit from multiple monitors, you can also benefit from larger monitors – developers and video editors, in particular, benefit greatly from both.
Of course, we can’t always give everyone the best environment possible, and deciding which approach is most desirable for a particular employee can be confusing. Even though it may be clear which approach works best for one employee, others may have less obvious needs.
Balancing the needs of your employees with your budget is the key factor here. While it’s clearly desirable to give everyone two or three huge monitors, providing IT Support to our clients has frequently involved identifying the most productive way to upgrade both the size and the number of workstations for a company’s needs.
A further note – the simple screen size of the monitor is not the only consideration; most modern monitors have a “native” resolution which is recommended for sustained use, and it’s important to ensure that this resolution is sufficient for the workstation in question. Using other resolutions may be possible, but the image is not as crisp, and using the monitor at other than the native resolution can actually reduce work performance.
Setting up dual monitors to match your employee needs will often result in major productivity gains, particularly because so much of an employee’s workday is spent looking at the computer screen. Once your workforce has been equipped with the right monitor configuration, productivity and employee satisfaction tend to increase drastically.