Single 30" vs Dual 24" Displays

I'd like to hear some of you weigh in on the alternatives, since they cost roughly the same.

Pros for the Single 30 inch approach:
- Centered, massive, wow factor.

Pros for the Dual 24 inch approach
- More overall screen real estate, flexibility, geeky kinda cool factor.

Anybody ever try a stacked setup with the dual 24 inchers? I'm not so sure how I feel about scanning that far horizontally.

For serious editors do you find their are working advantages for one approach over the other?

and before you suggest it, dual 30 inch is just too much. I don't know where I'd find the desk space or the funds for it...
 
I think having 2 monitors would improve your productivity much more than 1 monitor, regardless of size. It's great to have multiple programs running on the desktop at once. As for editing, I'm not what you might call a "serious editor", but it's great to have the Vegas UI on one screen and a full-screen live preview on the other. It's really hard to go back to a single screen after having 2!
 
2x24 for sure. Being able to run a couple of programs and see both at once is the greatest thing ever. When I'm editing I usually use one monitor for my preview and maybe the project folders and then I can have a whole monitor for the timeline and effects controls and audio panel. In After Effects I usually will stretch the timeline across both monitors. The possibilities are endless. Most of my computers have two 20" widescreens. One has 20" non-wides and its my favorite just because of the extra height I get. Have dual 24's would just be massive. I dock my laptop on one 24 and its big enough for most lightweight work and still has a good amount of "wow factor" and its just one 24. Sure the single 30 would be bigger, but I think you'll get even more "wow" out of 2 24's. Thats alot of screen.

As far as stacking vertically I just couldnt get used to it. Tried it for a while but everything I seem to do wants to be horizontal. 2 24's is alot of width, but scoot them back a bit and I think you'll be fine. I prefer to have my monitors back as far as I can get them. Getting a couple of feet between me and the screen seems to fatigue my eyes less. I could be crazy though... :)

If your budget allows I'd look at a stand too. I use several models from peerless and love them. So nice to get both monitors up in the air and get the angles just right. They have quite a few different configs available depending what you really need.
 
I personally would go for the dual 24". Its always useful having the second monitor there. Theres so much more you can do... I also have a slightly smaller tv monitor which I use for preview purposes, which means I can have my timeline stretched out over both monitors if i want, or timeline and viewer windows on one screen, and bin and effects or whatever on the other...
 
I've got dual 24" at work and I love them. I've got a single 26" at home and while it's definitely a nice monitor, it is really nice having the second screen at work. I usually run my editor on the left panel and a full-screen preview window on the right panel. Definitely go for the dual 24" option. It's got some good WOW factor and it'll probably even end up cheaper. At work I have two ASUS 24" widescreen monitors with HDCP support, HDMI inputs, and while they're certainly not nearly as good as a true production monitor, I can do some pretty good color/contrast adjustments on the monitors. They ran about $270/each from Newegg.
 
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