About two years ago, virtually the only monitors sold were standard (4:3 ratio) monitors. These days, it seems like you can’t get anything but widescreen, though some SD monitors are still available. When looking to buy a new monitor, it’s common to wonder whether or not to get a WS or SD monitor. This article will provide a brief primer on the pros and cons of widescreen monitors.

Widescreen:

Pros:

• Better for watching videos. This is the primary advantage of widescreen monitors - most movies are in 16:9 ratio, and widescreen monitors are in 16:10. This makes the windowboxing, as the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen are called, much less noticable
• It’s easier to open multiple windows up side by side - this can be really handy when web editing, comparing two texts, doing research, or photoshopping.

Cons:

• Less for the inches. As the number of inches a monitor is listed as (15″, 17″, etc”) is determined by the distance from one corner of the screen to another, Widescreen monitors have less actual real estate listed inch. This isn’t a huge deal, but it’s something to keep in mind when shopping for monitors. There’s a reason that 22″ WS is significantly cheaper than that 22″ SD.
• More Scrolling. As you get less vertical space, you’re gonna have to scroll more when reading webpages. This is much more noticeable on smaller monitors, on wide screen monitors under 20″ or so, you often won’t be able to fit a full page of text.
• Windowboxing on SD movies. If you happen to have a lot of video in SD, usually from TV shows or home made movies, you’ll get the same sort of windowboxing you get from SD with WS video, just on the left and right instead of top and bottom. This is something to keep in mind if you have a lot of video already in the 4:3 format.

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