What bothers me most is that you cannot use the screen surface optimally. If you’re using a 32-inch 1440p or 4K monitor, you can simply put more on your screen than at 1080p, while still having everything easy to read. 1080p doesn’t scale well.

1080 is actually not a good resolution for monitors at all. It’s a legacy of “widescreen” cinema films that left us with black bars on our 4:3 TVs.
Widescreen is good for movies.

At some point, the market realized that it could save money by making computer monitors with the same panels as televisions. Since “widescreen” was popular at the time, they naturally chose to make all monitors widescreen.

By the way, there’s another reason that I think played a role: a rectangular screen has a larger diagonal than a (more) square screen with the same surface area. This makes rectangular screens appear larger than square screens of the same size.

For productivity, widescreen is just wrong. You want a high screen, with plenty of vertical space. All books, writing papers, newspapers, etc. are long and not wide. Newspapers even cut their texts into narrow columns because they are easier to read. Our eyes can only see a small portion clearly, the rest is fixed and spread out by our brains. Good when watching a landscape or movie, but not when reading text.

Fortunately, there are a few monitors on the market that have a higher number of vertical pixels. However, sometimes it is better to rotate your 16:9 screen by 90 degrees. At least that’s a good read (although there are screens with a coating that only works well in one direction, so pay attention).

Sorry for the rant, I’ve only been angry for 20 years