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The past few years have seen the introduction of a host of stunning ultrawide computer monitors. They are designed to give discriminating office users, content creators, and gamers a more spacious, immersive view, delivering eye-popping visuals or simply extra room to work. Ultrawides, defined by their extra width relative to their height, come in panel sizes up to 49 inches (measured diagonally). This extra horizontal screen space can be beneficial in different ways across the professional, gaming, and productivity worlds.

Is there an ultrawide monitor in your future? Perhaps, but you'll want to understand the nuances of these big, bold panels before diving in, as they're a considerable investment—in both dollars and desk space. Read on for a breakdown of our current top, tested ultrawide models in a variety of categories, followed by a guide to what to look for to land the right big panel for you.

Ready to shop for an ultrawide display? The first fundamental to understand is aspect ratio—the relationship between a screen's horizontal and vertical pixel count, i.e., monitor width and height.

The two most common ultrawide aspect ratios are 21:9 and 32:9. The latter is a more extreme example, more than three times as wide as it is tall. Monitors with a 32:9 aspect ratio are sometimes called “super wide” or “super ultrawide.” We see them, however, as a subset of the ultrawide class, and we use the term ultrawide for both 32:9 and 21:9 displays.

Though the current ultrawide wave is the most radical expression, computer monitors have gotten progressively wider relative to their height over the decades. Around the turn of the millennium, many monitors had a boxier 4:3 aspect ratio, which originally came from motion pictures (it's the standard aspect ratio of 35mm film). Around 2005, monitors with a slightly wider 16:10 aspect ratio came into vogue, but their popularity was short-lived (although 16:10 laptops are now booming). Within five years the desktop standard became a 16:9 ratio—the dimensions of a high-definition television (HDTV) image.

The 16:9 ratio remains the most popular today. Familiar resolutions such as 720p (1,280 by 720 pixels), 1080p (1,920 by 1,080), 1440p/QHD (2,560 by 1,440), and 4K or UHD (3,840 by 2,160) all have a 16:9 aspect ratio. The first 21:9 monitors appeared in 2012, and 32:9 displays in 2017.

In addition to their unique aspect ratios, ultrawide monitors are, as you could guess, physically wide. Most have diagonal screen sizes of 34, 43, or 49 inches. The 49-inch models tend to really pack in the pixels, with native resolutions of either 5,120 by 1,440 or 3,840 by 1,080 pixels at a 32:9 aspect ratio. Most ultrawide monitors, especially the biggest ones, have large, often V-shaped stands to support their weight and keep their wide chassis balanced.

The Best Ultrawide Monitors for Business

Ultrawide business monitors are a boon to multitaskers. Why? For starters, they let you open multiple full-size application windows on the same screen. A few manufacturers, Dell among them, include software to help you split the giant screen into neatly arranged windows. That software can go beyond what Windows' built-in tiling, snapping, and auto-resize features can do.

These panels are also a good substitute for multi-monitor arrays. A 32:9 monitor is twice the width of a 16:9 monitor with the same vertical pixel count. A 49-inch ultrawide with 32:9 aspect ratio gives you a screen size equivalent to two 27-inch monitors put side by side. (Remember again that screen size is measured diagonally, not left to right.) 

Generally, ultrawide business displays have an abundance of ports: at least one HDMI and one DisplayPort input, both upstream and downstream USB ports, and USB Type-C ports are typical. With many newer ultrawide business monitors, the USB-C port can transfer data as well as the video signal (the latter using the DisplayPort over USB protocol), while simultaneously powering or charging the laptop from which it's displaying the image (if applicable).

A few monitors in this class can also make use of a USB-C port for a virtual keyboard/video/mouse (KVM) switch. Such a feature lets you control two computers connected to the monitor via a single keyboard and mouse, as long as one computer is connected via the USB-C port. Users doing render work or data processing on a second PC might be attracted to this unusual, space-saving feature.

Many ultrawide business monitors have curved screens, although their degree of curvature tends to be milder than those of curved gaming displays. More on that in a moment.

Widescreen Artistry: Ultrawide Monitors for Content Creators and Gamers

In the professional-content-creator arena, graphic artists and photographers can benefit from extra screen width. They can open and work with two or more images (or several versions of the same photo or illustration) side by side. Ultrawides often let photo or video editors look at their source material in full resolution, while allowing enough screen space alongside it for palettes, toolbars, or timelines to coexist without requiring resizing or shuffling.

Many ultrawide gaming monitors are available as well. Not every gamer or game will benefit from an ultrawide panel, but they're particularly suited for racing games, flight simulators, and other genres that give players a panoramic vista or reward gamers by letting them see areas in their peripheral vision.

As mentioned, many gaming-focused models employ a curved screen to provide for a more immersive experience. A common curvature for gaming monitors is 1800R, which means that if you were to place enough monitors side by side to form a circle it would have a radius of 1,800mm (1.8 meters). The higher the curvature number, the gentler or shallower the curve. Conversely, the lower the number, the more drastically curved the panel; we've seen monitors with curvature as extreme as 800R.

Naturally, ultrawide gaming monitors have many features common to all gaming displays. Leading-edge models tend to have high refresh rates (up to 500Hz or more) and employ adaptive sync technologies like Nvidia's G-Sync or AMD's FreeSync. Ordinary productivity panels tend to refresh at a 60Hz rate, the norm for mainstream monitors. A higher refresh rate lets fast-twitch gamers enjoy smoother, more reactive play when the attached PC and graphics card can push consistent frame rates in excess of 60 frames per second (fps).

Serious esports players often optimize their systems to run at ultra-high refresh rates to gain an edge in hyper-competitive titles. (Much more on that in our roundup of the best gaming monitors.) However, you'll need a graphics card capable of pushing frames at the high resolution that top ultrawide gaming monitors support. In esports competition, sticking to a relatively modest 1080p resolution for the sake of a faster frame rate is actually an advantage. Gaming ultrawides also present some more caveats we'll get into below.

Some ultrawide gaming monitors flaunt RGB lighting schemes with embedded mood lighting on the back or around the sides, and many use the mini-joystick controls now found on other gaming (and some general-purpose) displays instead of buttons to manipulate onscreen settings. Port-wise, nearly all have DisplayPort and HDMI inputs and most have USB-C input as well.

Ultrawide Monitors: Some Caveats to Consider

So is bigger always better? Not really. For starters, you'll need plenty of desk space to accommodate an ultrawide monitor.

These monitors' panoramic screens, especially at the 43- to 49-inch sizes, may be simply too large for a typical desk. Take measurements before diving in. You'll also probably want to enlist a friend to help you move the heavy monitor into place. Carrying an ultrawide monitor is a bit like carrying a beam of lumber; if you're not careful, the front and back may start to wag back and forth.

Gamers have additional potential concerns. Depending on the specific game and your playing style, ultrawide monitors can be a boon or a hindrance for multiplayer gaming. The panels can deliver benefits in many MOBAs, battle royale titles, and real-time-strategy (RTS) games. But hardcore esports competitors may actually want a smaller, more focused view of the proceedings without, say, being distracted by enemies that appear suddenly at the periphery of the screen. Some esports pros strongly prefer a compact 16:9 monitor to keep the action in the primary field of view.

Also bear in mind that most new AAA games will work fine on screens with 21:9 and usually 32:9 aspect ratios, but some older games may not support them. As a result, games may appear in a smaller window with large black bars at the sides (like movie letterboxing turned sideways), or even worse with the game image stretched across the whole panel and distorted. It's best to check the game publisher's support pages or relevant forums if you have any doubts or are married to a particular older game.

Most of all, ultrawide monitors tend to be pricey, though part of that is simply their size—once you get above 32 inches, most displays of all kinds are ultrawides. Models in the 34-to-35-inch range run from a bit above $400 for basic, general-purpose screens (or bare-bones gaming panels) to more than $2,000 for a fully tricked-out gaming monitor. Most 34- or 35-inch monitors, however, cost less than $1,000, while 49-inch models run from about $700 to $1,600.

So, What's the Best Ultrawide Monitor to Buy?

Ultrawide monitors are not for everyone, but if you do want a display with an immensely spacious screen, whether for gaming, digital content creation, viewing ginormous spreadsheets, or comparing several versions of a photo or illustration, you have plenty of good models to choose from. We've tested a whole passel of panels; our favorites for different usage cases are summarized below. Check them out and click through for deep-dive reviews of each to learn more.