Many swear by the productivity boost of a dual-monitor setup, but is it truly essential? While having extra screen space might seem like a no-brainer, it often introduces more complexity than convenience.
1
More Monitors Means More Money
The very first consideration most people have when deciding on adding another monitor is the purchase price. Monitors with more advanced features like OLED, larger resolutions, or higher refresh rates can be quite expensive.
While the costly Apple’s Pro Display XDR is priced at a jaw-dropping $4999, even more standard monitors can add up in price. I spent around $600 getting two ASUS ProArt 27” 4K displays, and though they have been useful, $600 is still a substantial amount of money. Beyond that, it’s easy to make mistakes and waste money purchasing the wrong monitor.
On top of the extra cost, additional monitors take up additional desk space. My desk is bolted into my room’s corner walls, so I can’t use monitor arms to reduce this spatial impact. Consequently, I’ve had to make tough choices about what tech I can actually manage to fit on my desk, as well as accept that I will usually have a general base of clutter due to the lack of space for better organizers and boxes.
My experience may seem a fringe case, as most people don’t have desks bolted into walls, but many people also don’t use monitor arms to clear desk space even if they have the ability to. Even for folks who use monitor arms, the arm and monitor still take up space, albeit not the horizontal space of your desk surface. In any case, more monitors mean less available desk space.
3
Additional Screens Can Cause Lag
In addition to extra desk space, additional monitors take up more system bandwidth, which is one of several major considerations if purchasing a monitor for your laptop. Simply having an extra monitor makes only a marginal difference, but the way most people use additional monitors can cause major system strain.
By having more screens, you tend to have more applications open at once compared to using only one monitor.
The classic example of YouTube video or Twitch stream on one monitor while gaming on another means your system’s resources are dedicated to both tasks simultaneously. In my experience, playing resource-intensive games with a video running generally leads to reduced frame rates and lag in the video.
Similarly, even if I’m using multiple monitors for an intentional, productive use case like editing a video on one screen while browsing for stock footage on my MacBook’s monitor, my system is still slower than if I just did one of those tasks at a time on one display. My MacBook lags less when I don’t connect to extra monitors since there are fewer screens to render and fewer applications running simultaneously.
While we often use additional displays for multitasking between apps, most modern operating systems have fantastic tools for multiple virtual desktops. Mac users are likely most familiar with this, using three-finger swipes on the trackpad to switch between desktops and organize applications, but Windows 11 has these features too.
Virtual desktops allow for quickly switching between multiple windows and applications without the need for additional physical monitors.
When I have to get work done on my MacBook while on the go, very few tasks are any more difficult than when my MacBook is docked at my desk with two extra monitors.
Using multiple desktops and quick trackpad gestures, I can get the task of stock footage browsing while video editing done just as quickly as doing so across multiple monitors—possibly more quickly due to the decreased system strain of not using additional displays.
Some tasks are still best done when you can physically see multiple displays, but many tasks are just as convenient with virtual desktops instead of extra monitors.
5
Multiple Monitors Split My Attention
No matter how many monitors you have, you can only really pay attention to one of them at a time. Having more things open and visible across multiple monitors makes losing focus that much easier. An empty second monitor invites opening a YouTube video as background noise, but background noise can easily become the primary focus.
As much as I enjoy using my setup, I and many others have found major drawbacks to focus when using multiple monitors. If I have a video open while gaming, I often find that my gaming performance suffers on top of being unable to recall much of what was in the video.
Hence, when I need to focus most, I usually unplug my laptop from my two extra displays and head to a cafe or the library to focus.
Extra monitors have their utility for many tasks, but they come at the cost of taking up space: financially, physically, systematically, and mentally. I urge those considering a second monitor to try virtual desktop tools first and plan exactly how you’ll use that second or third display!
