Using a television as a large second monitor for work

In My Humble Opinion
1

I need a second monitor for my job. A coworker suggested buying a television rather than a monitor. There’s a generous company allowance to buy work from home permanently supplies.

My work computer is a 13 inch MacBook Pro and the second monitor will be used for most of my daily work, but I need to keep the MacBook screen for a couple other tasks so if I got a television, it has to be a true second monitor.

The work definitely isn’t graphics intensive.

Opinions? Is there a better visual display on a computer monitor as opposed to a television. 28 inch is my minimum. I work in the financial markets so there’s a ton of numbers to look at.

2

When I started working from home I bought a Sony 55" 4k TV. Is been my monitor for 8 years now and I love it. To compete with a monitor you’ll need at least 4k resolution and it’s probably best to get a high refresh rate version to.

I primarily use it for CAD, Excel and Word. It really shines with excel since I can display A-Z and 1 through 55 and its all a very readable size. When doing word I’ll typically display at least 2 pages at a time. The other thing I really like is having 4 windows open simultaneously each on a quarter screen but the size of a normal 30" monitor. It makes watching a bunch of stuff or copying really easy or to be completely honest. I can put the baseball game in one corner, my stocks in another and still have dual 30" monitors to work from.

3

Sounds like “Free 4k TV” to me! :grin:

4

I’ve used a 32" TV as my primary monitor for a couple years now, and notice no difference in quality between it and the conventional monitors which I use at work. I don’t think there’s much distinction nowadays.

Now, obviously at 32 inches, my “monitor” is a bit big for viewing the whole screen at the same time, so might not be suitable for all kinds of work. But as it’s only your second monitor, that’s probably not a big concern. So IMO go for it.

5

I don’t need a particularly high resolution or high frame rate, so my current monitor is a 24 inch 1080p TV with a VGA port that cost around 25 bucks used.

6

The actual display used in a TV is the same as a display used in a computer monitor, assuming that they are the same resolution of course.

I use two TVs as computer monitors at home. I’m quite happy with both of them.

A TV may have some additional features such as motion smoothing that you will probably want to turn off if you are using it as a computer monitor.

7

A 4K TV (officially Ultra HD) is 3840 x 2160 pixels in computer monitor terms. You might run into some companies who sell 4096 x 2304 pixel resolution, but also call those ‘4K TVs’.

Either resolution should work fine for a monitor.
(Heck, I was once very happy to upgrade to EGA (640 x 350) from CGA (320 x 200) – such high resolution!)