alt Hacker News32" is too large, it makes you turn your head a lot, and the distortion at the corners is noticeable. You can put it farther away (which requires a nonstandard desk), but it sort of defeats the purpose.
To me, 28" 4K is near the sweet spot: it's exactly 4 14" screens of my ThinkPad. I wish the screens had higher resolution and smaller size though.
How shallow is your desk? I'm on a pretty regular sized desk and have no issues with a 32in monitor.
You said you wished the screens had a smaller size? You'd want a smaller than 28in screen? Wouldn't that get pretty uncomfortably close to view, even with scaling?