While the amount of real estate is comparable there are two major advantages for programming with a widescreen for my use case.
1) Ergonomics. Having two monitors meant effectively using one monitor and occasionally the second one. But I ended up using one first. Which means that you either have your head tilted when you focus on the primary, or you keep it in front of you and then tilt the head for the secondary. It's not comfortable in the long run.
2) Two separate monitors generally end up with one taking the ide, but not really having the right amount of space anyway (think VSCode with two open files side by side and the terminal and possibly the explorer or debugger) one single screen becomes too cluttered. I can extend the editor to the second window, but then you have the bezels cutting the editor effectively in halt. A 34" widescreen (especially in 21:10 format) allows me to have more screen space for the editor (2 thirds) and still have enough space for a browser for documentation or the front end.
I can't lie, if I could I would travel back in time and tell my younger self to buy a 21:10 widescreen I would anyway.
Ergonomics are by far the most important factor in work comfort and the monitor generally outlives many machines.
As a note, I have a VA gaming monitor, the BenQ EX3410R and it's great as an office monitor and occasional gaming.
I think websites like rtings put too much emphasis on stuff that it's borderline a plus but not really core (number of ports available e.g.), or not really that common (PIP is not really such a common widespread need imho) or easily solvable (stands, and their limited flexibility, are better replaced by VESA arms anyway).
I can also vouch that the 40" LG is fantastic for office usage. My colleague has it and it's a great machine for web development, but the price is really high and the usage essentially constrained to work only.
Do you have it like virtually treated as 2 monitors by your computer, or just one?
I am using the Dell S2721QS for my home office. It is a cheaper version of the S2722QC and does not have the integrated USB hub.
Before WFH, at the office, I used the U2723QE which is excellent. But for coding work it is visually indistinguishable from the S2721QS (and probably the S2722QC). The S2721QS has a slight issue with "ghosting" or "fading" near the edges. However it is only an issue if looking at the monitor from a far angle which is rarely the case for me at my desk. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in the S2722QC.
Dell monitors consistently impress me with their top-notch construction, sturdiness, and dependability. One of my pet peeves with monitors and TV's in general is panel gap which is the space from the end of the panel to the plastic frame. Dell monitors usually minimize that.
Just to share my setup:
2x 4k monitors, portrait and landscape, both at 125% zoom (effectively 3072x1728).
IDE is primarily opened on the landscape. Portrait monitor is split into 3 sections: browser, Outlook/Teams/Slack and terminals. I use Stardock Groupy [1] to combine Outlook/Teams/Slack into "one window" and Windows PowerToys FancyZones [2] to manage the split.
[1] https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon...
From my vantage point, it's a precarious time to consider a new monitor or TV. We're amidst a technological showdown featuring QLED, OLED, Mini LED, and Micro LED. In my gaming setup, I've opted for the LG OLED C2 48-inch. My home theater will most likely continue to be traditional LED/LCD or Mini LED because 85" OLED is too expensive. I'd like my next work monitors to be 5k or a 2k5k Ultrawide (the vertical resolution must be 2k; many ultrawides are not) and either OLED or Micro LED.
43" is about the maximum to prevent excessive swivelling of the head, and it's about the minimum to get a reasonably-sized font with lots of lines visible for programming code.
I also have a 4K Lenovo 15" laptop. On that smaller screen, the fonts that are very usable on the 43" TV are just too tiny to be comfortable.
