Your opinion on single or dual monitor setup ?

I used to edit with a dual FHD (1920 x 1200) 24" monitors setup with Avid MC and now recently (and more often so in the future) with DR on a Windows Laptop with a Quadro GPU.
But today, one of my monitors died at a respectable age. Today's monitor offering has changed so dramatically that I won't find a reasonable match for the surviving monitor (DELL U2413).
So basically I have a clean plate....taking into account that I have an FHD external TV/monitor with BMD MiniMonitor I/O, and that desk space is limited, I wonder what would be my best choice today for medium-complexity, amateur editing with DR, mostly still in FHD res.:
- Dual FHD 24" as before
- Single UHD 27 - 32"
- Ultrawide 34+" ?
- other ?

My pockets are not so deep and I'm not editing for a living....

Personally I like the single monitor, 27".

At home I have a 27" benq, I have decklink for color accuracy with a pvma250

I use 3 myself but only because it's my race simulator too.

I set them up as dual monitors across the centre and right hand and then the left monitor as the full screen viewer but only because I can, not because it's necessary.

I used to have two and I much preferred it to one, I could keep track of more things at once.

The UI could be an issue if you use 4k and change the scaling so make sure you get 32" or larger and ultrawides also have issues with UI scaling from what I've seen on the forums.

I, too, prefer two monitors. This may come from the many years using Pro Tools on three.

with dual monitor, one for GUI and one for fullscreen video, I don’t have to hit the fullscreen button, which makes it more comfortable to work. I would like to have a third monitor for scopes/GUI.

How do you connect two monitors to the computer with two RTX 1080 cards for maximum performance? Both monitors to one card, or one monitor to each card? My current setup is the latter.

I was initially against using the dual-monitor setup, but my colorist/partner at work convinced me to try it, and now I'm into it. It's good to have the Lightbox up 100% of the time, plus an expanded version of the Gallery, and both those help me to work faster.



We have a third display for dedicated scopes, and then a fourth display as the main color monitor. Works well for what we do.

I use two GUI monitors, plus the hero display. Dedicated scopes would be nice, but not worth the expense or space for me.

I use 4. No such thing as too many available pixels as far as I'm concerned (assuming available physical space). Using older/mismatched screen(s) for non-color-critical elements (most of the GUI) works just fine w/out shelling out for multiple high-end calibrated displays. (I also use this workstation for many other things besides Resolve.)

One large vs. multiple smaller is a personal preference... personally I like being able to angle multiple ones to my liking vs. being stuck with whatever curve is on the one big one (if any). Plus more arrangement options, plus when it dies you still have other(s) to use. The bigger ones can (typically) be split up into multiple "virtual" displays that the OS sees, so it's possible to use one large screen in "multi monitor" mode eg. to split the DR UI into two parts, which I find more efficient in all cases.

And as my eyesight changes due to age, I'm preferring physically larger monitors w/out greatly increasing their resolution, so I can still keep them well spaced w/out needing glasses.

I use three side-by-side monitors, so you can guess what my answer is going to be...

If you have the Studio version then it's really nice to have the Video Clean Feed visible in full size on its own monitor while you're tweaking effects or making colour adjustments, and being able to put some of the UI elements on a second monitor gives you more room to make fine adjustments to keyframes, colour adjustment windows, etc. with way less need to zoom into and out of viewers, timelines, etc.

I was originally trained on Avid using two monitors, so there is something to be said for that setup.

But to this day I think Windows doesn't do Extended Desktop correctly, and so prefer a single 32" UHD monitor.

Many good comments, thanks !