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Horizontally positioned or vertically positioned monitor(s)?

I am investigating getting a second monitor, and the majority monitor available these days are available in only in the landscape format. I am thinking about a two monitor setup, where one of them is in landscape format (my right hand monitor) and one is in portrait format (middle monitor).

Does anyone have a similar setup and how have you found it?

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How do you have a "middle monitor" in a 2 monitor set up. – Steve Haigh Aug 25 '11 at 11:56
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@Steve Haigh: What I have: no monitor on the left, one in the middle, one on the right. I find it easier to have one monitor straight ahead and one at an angle than two monitors, both at a smaller angle. – Piskvor Aug 25 '11 at 12:07
Ah, OK. So a central monitor and one to the right. I get you. – Steve Haigh Aug 25 '11 at 12:11
My middle monitor is the one straight in front of me. I would have this in portrait orientation. – tehnyit Aug 25 '11 at 17:11

marked as duplicate by Walter, Mark Trapp Aug 25 '11 at 17:17

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7 Answers

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I ran this setup for a while and liked it as an idea and would still be using it now if I could. The reason it wasn't as perfect as it could have been was that they were cheap monitors with shallow vertical viewing angles. This is fine in landscape mode, but when the monitor is rotated 90 degrees there's a very definite change in contrast between the left and right half of the screen which caused eyestrain and was generally annoying. I believe if you have decent quality monitors this would not be an issue.

The final nail in the coffin came when we started using linux more and the graphics card setup was a nightmare to get running in a normal 2 monitor mode, let alone with one screen rotated.

It was a perfect setup for having code in the portrait monitor and something else in the other monitor.

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+1 I have tried coding in portrait mode, and using it in something like vim was pretty sweet. For there tasks, such as a editing a document or doing a UML diagram, it is marginal. – tehnyit Aug 25 '11 at 13:16
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i have only one 27'' monitor and thats enough. A half year ago i used additonal 17'' monitor with vertical mode, and i was used eye drops, because 2 monitors was very hardy for my eyes.

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+1 That was my experience also. – Tim Krueger Aug 25 '11 at 12:41
Once I started wearing my glasses to reduce glare I found my eye strain problems resolved themselves. – Stephen Aug 25 '11 at 12:51
i never wear glasses, it's just 27'' monitor enough – RusAlex Aug 25 '11 at 13:34
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I have this setup, with a 20" wide monitor in portrait mode, and a 23" wide in landscape mode. I tried a 23" in portraitmode as well, but found it to be to high for comfortable viewing angel.

IF you decide to go for a portrait monitor, make sure you choose one with good viewing angels (an IPS panel preferably), because most monitor will dramatically lose color and screw up the contrast when viewed from down below (from the left in portrait on 90 degrees clockwise rotation).

You might even suffer from color bleeding on the pixels if you have a bad panel, so be sure to test it thoroughly before purchasing your screens.

I really like it a lot, when programming and logfile reviewing a portrait mode is excellent. As an example, I have almost 100 lines of code visible at the same time in visual studio, and equally the same in my text editor. Even on my fullHD 23" I only get around 60 rows so that is approx 65% more lines.

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+1 for considering the optics of the monitor. Someone told me that a monitor is a highly calibrated optical instrument. – tehnyit Aug 25 '11 at 14:11
the 23" in portrait gets really blurry and some color bleeding as well, so I would say that's a good assumption. I think it's a cheap TN-panel, and I think the 20" is an IPS. – jishi Aug 25 '11 at 14:15
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I think this is more a question of your graphics adapter and drivers than the monitor itself. Some allow for such a switch (in Windows mostly 'advanced settings' somewhere in the desktop configuration.). All the monitor needs is an option to rotate it physically.

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I tried it a couple of times and found it intensely annoying, you can't "pan" the mouse between the 2 very smoothly - sometimes you hit the edge of the screen where the dimensions don't match up and sometimes the pointer glides across just fine. This is of course to be expected (unless your portrait monitor was very small so the heights matched), but even so I could never get used to it. If you persevere perhaps your muscle memory could get over this.

A colleague fixed that issue by running with them both in portrait, he switched back pretty quickly, it just did not work well with a lot of applications (it worked, the apps don't fail but it doesn't look good).

Regardless of whether or not you use portrait mode you should still invest in a second monitor if you have the ability to do so. These days my only dilemma is whether or not to get a 3rd monitor. 2 is standard for me.

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Good point about application support. I think the majority of apps that I have have better support in landscape mode. – tehnyit Aug 25 '11 at 12:42
You'll find apps should work, but the layout will be sub optimal in some cases - e.g. toolbars wrapping, very narrow sub windows in some cases etc. – Steve Haigh Aug 25 '11 at 12:58
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I tried it for a while, but if you're using widescreen monitors, I found the horizontal space in portrait mode to be too narrow.

IMO, unless you're using at least a 26" monitor, it's just not worth it.

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I use a combination of set ups in my daily routine.

At work I have a laptop with an external monitor. The external is in portrait mode while the laptop is (perhaps obviously) in landscape. I find myself doing all my editing and a lot of my reading on my portrait external. The only irritation I have in this set up is that I can't reliably type on the laptop if I put it in portrait mode also :-)

At home I use a multi monitor configuration and have the monitors on bases that allow them to be reoriented to either mode depending on the task at hand. For gaming, watching most videos or other situations that feel more natural in the 16:9 landscape mode I can easily adjust the whole set up whether that means turning 1 monitor or multiples.

Knowing the screen orientation keyboard shortcuts in Windows makes this scenario a lot easier. Even the short cut for sending windows to a monitor in a certain direction helps.

Bottom line, if you're looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, you'll probably go with landscape or portrait and stick with it. If your usage is somewhat like mine where you are doing many different tasks with dynamic requirements a stand that allows you to shuffle between orientations might work well.

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