I tried to replace my triple monitors with one giant screen. I failed

I’m finishing up my review of the Alienware AW3926QW, a massive 39-inch, 5K/2K OLED gaming monitor. With that resolution, it’s almost exactly the same amount of pixels as my triple-monitor desktop setup. So I tried to use it alone for a week. And I failed.

That’s not to say it’s a bad monitor. But pure pixels, even on a large display, aren’t the same as actual utility.

Pixels aren’t the whole picture

To explain why this didn’t work for me, I need to talk about my normal setup. After 20 years using triple monitors, I’m kind of an addict. For the last five years I’ve used a 34-inch, 1440p ultrawide as my primary central monitor, and two 27-inch 1440p monitors on either side. I generally have a focused writing window on the primary left, a relevant source on the primary right. On my right monitor is Slack for talking to my coworkers, plus a social media feed. On my left is a secondary source or a video window, and smaller tools, like my standing timer.