I usually use a sphere for visualization while I'm setting up the scene and then I switch to the background node one of the last things before I render due to the lagging they can cause. My geriatric computer has that problem even with medium-sized backgrounds. 

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2961030/rotation-when-using-an-hdr-bitmap-on-the-background-node there's a script here to help set up a background. I've only used a it couple of times so I can't say how good it is.

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