Monitor Upgrade
I've recently upgraded my monitor, going from a very budget 24” Sceptre (1080p resolution at 60Hz) to a Gigabyte M28U monitor, 28”, 4K resolution at 144Hz
The really nice thing about is a built-in KVM switch and a dedicated KVM button, that allows me to switch between by work laptop and my home desktop with a single press (not quite, but I'll expand on that later).
This monitor features three 3.0 USB-A ports for your peripherals, 1 USB 3.0-B port and 1 USB-C port for 2 distinct sources. I've ended up plugging in a USB3 hub, to get an additional port for the webcam, so having 4 would be really nice.
The work laptop (a MacBook Pro) I've plugged in with a single Thunderbolt 40Gbps cable (which was quite expensive for its length, at almost $40 CAD for 2.7'). It carries the video signal to the monitor, and all of the periphery signals back to the laptop, which is an excellent way to de-clutter. Prior to that I had 2 sets of keyboard, mouse, headphones on my desk, and switching setups was getting pretty ridiculous.
The main computer is connected with the USB-B for peripherals and an HDMI cable for video. I wish the monitor had the second USB-C plug, so I could've done the same as with the macbook...
Now I have one mouse, one keyboard, one webcam and a USB headset with mic plugged in and shared between both machines. My desk is de-cluttered quite significantly. The only remaining pain is switching the muscle memory for the Windows vs Mac keyboard shortcuts... (Used to have a mac layout keyboard for the mac specifically).
Gaming performance is also better, it has FreeSync so that works really well with my Radeon card, and at 144Hz refresh rate the latency is much better. Battlefield 2042 runs at really good framerates even at 4K 144Hz.
About the KVM... The problem with the monitor is that if it doesn't detect signal it switches back to the previous input almost immediately. The counterpart system usually goes to sleep and doesn't produce video signal. And it also takes some time for the USB peripherals to switch over and get online, so I have to press the KVM and then mash the keyboard buttons to wake up the target, so it start outputting video signal for the monitor to pick up... It's not the smoothest, but maybe there's a setting to not try to fallback as aggressively.