InDesign on 5K/49-inch monitor?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Is anyone using ID on a 5K/dual QHD/49-inch monitor? I'm thinking about replacing my aging 3-monitor spread with one, with a Samsung CRG9 as the likely candidate.

Any experiences (especially under Win10/11) with ID or the whole CC suite solicited.

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[Creamer Training]

I use it with multiple 4K monitors. (The physical size shouldn't matter--or so I'm told.) Everything works as I would expect. I think it has more to do with your GPU and drivers. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

No, I have that as well, have run a three-monitor spread for years. (Well, a bit more of a mix; my alternate plan is considering a second 4K monitor to replace an HD one.)

I am more concerned with how ID and the Adobe apps handle vastly larger screen size. Most of us remember apps and games and even OSes that simply couldn't handle more than XXXX pixels of width or height, or did so very badly. The Samsung hardware and drivers support fairly flexible screen virtualization — you can even run two different systems on the same monitor and they will split the available space at 16:9 ratios — but I really can't afford to have any CC tools not handle 32:9 space gracefully.

Video card support is rather overrated as well. Most of the opinion comes from gamers to whom anything less than 144fps refresh rate at 4K is "unplayable." (I caught one comment that, to my surprise, told me my card wasn't good for anything more than something like 1600x1200. I run all three monitors including a 4K from it with zero issues... including some gaming at ratcheted-up settings.) Relatively modest cards can run 5k monitors, just not at screaming data rates for full-immersion combat gaming.

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[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

The short anwer: ID and all the other Adobe apps work just fine on ultrawide monitors, at least under Win11. I was even able to repurpose my 27" 4K as a secondary screen above the big guy.

It's worth noting that everything works fine using a fairly modest older video card/GPU as well. While anyone considering a 5K/ultrawide should make sure their card can handle the screen dimension (mostly the 5100+ pixel width), don't believe the claims that only the latest and most muscular cards can handle it. (And yes, I do play games on the new monitor as well; no problems other than dialing down some of the extreme settings.)

This is a huge — literally — improvement over a three-monitor setup. Worth considering for publishing/graphics and especially ID/video productivity.

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