Displays you spend the day at
The screen is the part somebody looks at for eight hours a day and usually the part that was economised on. This category runs from the monitor on a desk to the commercial display that is on seven days a week in a shop or a hall, two very different devices sitting next to each other in a catalogue.
What falls under it
Four kinds, and the difference is not the diagonal
A commercial display and a monitor look the same and are not.
- Office monitorsFor a desk. What counts is resolution, height adjustment and whether one USB-C cable can reach the laptop. A second screen usually pays for itself within a year in time no longer spent switching between windows.
- Commercial displays and signageFor a shop, a hall or a waiting area. They are built to stay on sixteen hours or more a day, are brighter and may hang in portrait. An office monitor in that spot fails within a year and the warranty does not cover it.
- Large touch displaysFor meeting rooms and classrooms. They often run a whiteboard program themselves, so people can write on them with no computer attached.
- Mounts, arms and accessoriesMonitor arms, wall brackets and floor stands. An arm is the cheapest thing that can be improved about a desk, and the only part that adjusts the height of the screen to the person rather than the other way round.
Where it snags
Three things that only show up afterwards
They rarely appear in a quotation and do decide whether handover goes smoothly.
- The connection to the laptopHow many screens and what resolution a laptop can drive depends on what the device passes over USB-C, not on the dock or the display. That differs per model and can be worked out beforehand, or discovered on rollout day.
- The wall and the weightA sixty-five inch display on a plasterboard wall needs a structure behind it. That is building work with a lead time and not part of a display order.
- The warranty on operating hoursOn commercial displays manufacturers give a warranty tied to the number of hours per day. If the screen is on longer than it was bought for, that lapses silently.
What belongs with this
A display rarely hangs alone.
Screens that match the work
Tell us where the screens will hang and how long they are on each day. You get a proposal chosen on those two things.
Practical IT knowledge in your inbox
New guides on management, security and the workplace, written by the people doing the work. No sales talk, and you can unsubscribe in one click.