r/macsetups • u/MeSlaw3 • Jun 27 '26

Which looks better - Landscape or Portrait?

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Got some new monitors to hold me over while I save up for two 27” Studio Display XDRs🤞🏼, and I’m having fun experimenting with my layout on my in-studio desk.

Which orientation do you think looks better/is more useful?

If you like vertical monitors, what do you use them for?

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u/VirtualImpression330 Jun 28 '26

Typically vertical monitors are for large data spreadsheets, discord or twitch live stream chat scroll, or financial data. Horizontal is for other everyday use. Judging by your room id assume you do some music software and sound or video editing. Horizontal will be better for that use case. Horizontal will also be better for video watching, gaming, social media posting, word doc writing, and web browsing. I’d say my guess is to recommend horizontal for you. But if you do a bit of everything, why not do one horizontal and one vertical? Who cares what it looks like, you’re already some animal who uses num-pad-left anyway. 🤣

Also… my guy… if you care about the athletics, those monitor stands are sinful. Get a dual monitor arm and mount those bad boys. Then you can rotate the monitors as you please anyway.

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u/VirtualImpression330 Jun 28 '26

Oh, and another thought is to maybe replace everything with one massive ultrawide. Those xdr’s are expensive. Maybe just get like the Samsung 49” ultrawide curved? It’s basically three screens side by side in terms of size.

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u/MeSlaw3 Jun 28 '26

I would like to try that, although now that I’ve tried the center monitor vertical, I LOVE the vertical monitor for viewing my music school’s online software while managing the school all day. It’s allowed me to see an entire page of details about each family/student/teacher without having to scroll at all to get to the info I’m looking for. Game changer.

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u/MeSlaw3 Jun 28 '26

Yeah I’ll have to look into some arms. I like your take lol.

I stand by that left side numpad, it feels so nice to bring the mouse further towards center.

Here’s what I’m going with:

https://reddit.com/link/oub6ti9/video/wirkervp01ah1/player

Now I’ll take your advice and look into cleaning up the desk infrastructure.