Dell’s 32:9 monitor is extremely wide perfect for multi-taskers

I'm a big fan of curved ultrawide monitors, which took off last year as a stylish alternative to having multiple screens on your desk, giving you heaps of space to work with while making your area feel a futuristic cockpit.

Still, when I heard about Dell's huge 49-inch, 32:9 monitor — to save you doing the maths that's around 1.2 metres wide — I thought it was going too far. I was wrong.

The Dell U4919DW is much too wide to stretch a single window across, but for multitasking it’s amazing.

The U4919DW is an uncannily wide monitor at first glance, but this specific shape makes it just like using two big 27-inch widescreen monitors side-by-side, except there's no bezel breaking things up in the middle. And at a native resolution of 5120 x 1440, that means you can have two windows (or displays from two different devices) each running at the quad-HD resolution of 1440p at the same time.

The Dell software lets you split your screen into several pre-set configurations, so it's easy to switch between two widescreen windows, four big square windows, a series of tall windows perfect for social media feeds or a combination of large and small windows. Whatever you workflow is, odds are you can fit it all onto this screen, and the curviture means it's all an even distance from your face.

If you're using an older computer, graphics card or cables, you might not be able to set your PC to display at the full 5120 x 1440. Luckily the screen features two HDMI inputs as well as DisplayPort and USB-C, so when using my relatively ancient desktop tower I simply ran two HDMI cables and the monitor acted as though it was two monitors side-by-side. The software still let me divide up either screen, so the experience was mostly the same.

Of course having multiple inputs means you can use multiple devices at once too. With a laptop and an Xbox One X both plugged in, I could get a full-sized 1440p image from both at the same time, for example. The on-screen menus are slick and make it simple to mix and match your inputs to create whatever setup you need.

Multi-taskers will also be pleased with how Dell has handled peripherals, as you can effectively connect everything from keyboard and mice to controllers and cameras to the monitor's five USB 3.0 ports and never have to worry about them again. If you connect a laptop via USB-C, you'll get the monitor, all the connected USB devices and charging power (up to 12W) all through the single cable.

Meanwhile the monitor also has two USB 3.0 upstream ports, so if your device doesn't have USB-C you just need to connect a HDMI or DisplayPort for video, and then a single USB cable to access all the peripherals. This makes it neat and tidy to swap out different computers at your work station with just one or two cables, but it also makes it possible to use two computers at once with just one keyboard. You get a full 16:9 display area for each once, and you can set a keyboard shortcut that moves all your USB devices from one computer to the other instantly.

As smart and effortless as all the inputs and cable management is, this isn't going to be a monitor for everyone. For example there isn't enough vertical resolution to get a 4K image, and there's no HDR support, which could be a turn-off if you're looking for a big immersive movie display. Hardcore PC gamers might also be miffed that the refresh rate tops out at 60Hz, and creatives will find there's no colour accuracy certifications beyond a 99 per cent sRGB calibration.

But for workers who multitask between multiple programs and web pages, or even between multiple machines, this could be the ultimate format for an ultrawide monitor.

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