Big Monitors Improve Productivity: The Facts

January 14th, 2010 by

Study after study has shown that larger monitors and multi-monitor displays increase productivity, especially when doing complex, cognitively loaded tasks .  Research also indicates that large displays can reduce stress.
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You can buy a 24 inch monitor for a couple of hundred bucks.  If you are working off anything smaller than 22 inches, you are wasting time!

A study done by the University of Utah indicates that you would save around 2.7 hours per day when using a 24 inch widescreen monitor in comparison to a 18 inch standard monitor.

My laptop has a 14.1 inch widescreen display!  I upgraded to a 24 inch external display.  I don’t run dual-screens, quite frankly it confuses me.  I have been using my external display for around 3 months now.  The additional freedom provided by the vastly greater work area allows me to open more windows and switch between them easily.  I normal have around 30 browser windows open, along with several other programs.  On my 14 inch screen I can have 7 tabs open in Firefox per browser window.  When using my external display, I can have 19 tabs per window.  This is especially useful when I am doing research for articles and interpreting our monthly reporting (e.g. spreadsheets).

pic_of_my_monitor_and_desk

I like my external display so much that I think I am going to take it with me, when I go on my next holiday; smuggling it in the boot of my car [they won't find out until it's too late; hehehe!].

Lastly, the Utah study indicates that increases in productivity start to decrease, when you go above a 26 inch widescreen display.

Closing Thoughts

I would hazard a guess that once you acclimatize to a large display, you will be able to incrementally increase the size of your monitor and your productivity would increases.  This is because the eye limit has not yet be reached.  I believe that as the peripherals we use to interact with our computer change and improve – and as the actual interface starts to morph – we will be able to make huge leaps in productivity by using massive monitors or total immersion virtual displays.

Do you use a large monitor; do you feel it has improved your productivity?  Are you using a small monitor and possibly have questions about upgrading?  Also, this is the first blog post I have published using footnotes; do you have any suggestions or comments about them?

Don’t know which monitor to buy?  The ASUS VH242H 23.6-Inch Widescreen LCD is very good and costs only $200.  I got one for our office through Amazon.com, but you can buy it from NewEgg.com, PriceGrabber.com, and most other sites.

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About the Author:

Will Franco is the CEO/Founder of jiveSYSTEMS (a video email marketing software and training company). He also runs an online community / membership group called AskFlywheel, in which he teaches cutting-edge online marketing strategies. His mantra at work is "Think-Automate: Do it, Automate it, Delegate it, or Ditch it"


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  • http://www.AlbertaMortgageExperts.com/ Joshua Tagg

    I use 4 separate 17″ displays. In some ways I like it better than one or two very large displays because it gives me completely separate space for my different applications. One for outlook, two for separate firefox windows (each with multiple tabs) and one for whatever else I am using (photoshop, dreamweaver, acrobat, word etc). Oh yeah– and I am not even a computer techy really — I am a mortgage broker! On a 24 inch screen I would still have to overlap.

    I do however agree — if all you have is one small monitor — you can’t accomplish any sort of multitasking. While ALT-TAB is great for toggling windows to have them all readily visible at once is far superior.

  • http://www.AlbertaMortgageExperts.com/ Joshua Tagg

    I use 4 separate 17″ displays. In some ways I like it better than one or two very large displays because it gives me completely separate space for my different applications. One for outlook, two for separate firefox windows (each with multiple tabs) and one for whatever else I am using (photoshop, dreamweaver, acrobat, word etc). Oh yeah– and I am not even a computer techy really — I am a mortgage broker! On a 24 inch screen I would still have to overlap.

    I do however agree — if all you have is one small monitor — you can't accomplish any sort of multitasking. While ALT-TAB is great for toggling windows to have them all readily visible at once is far superior.