Glossy is reflective Antiglare is fuzzy. Is there a 3rd way coming?

[MrCooperS]

I think the anti-glare is amazing. I have a glossy MacBook screen for 4 years. And I have to constantly adjust the angle of the screen (pulling and pushing it forward) because the glare kills me. Now that I have the anti-glare, the glossy MacBook Pros in the store simply annoys me.

 

[jjahshik32]

I just did away with my 13" macbook pro and put it up for sale. I just picked up the 17" 2.8GHz antiglare model at my local microcenter brand new for $1599! I had this model before and the funny part is that I got the exact same 9CAD lcd. I have to say this screen is amazingly vivid! The blacks are really out of this world.

One thing that was interesting is that the i7 17" macbook pro that I just sold off a month ago had a crappier display as to this 17". I remember looking around trying to find a good color profile and calibrating the i7 17 inch's screen all the time and never was satisfied.

 

[NYR99]

How can anyone say that one is better than the other? It's personal preference. I have an iMac and a 2nd matte monitor. I prefer the glossy (and glassy) iMac screen. Doesn't mean one is better than the other though.

 

[revelated]

IMHO, the AG coating on the MBP screens is a screaming bargain for what it does.

And your honest opinion would actually be factual if Apple didn't force you into the high resolution just to get antiglare. For me it's a dealbreaker because of the increase in price.

 

[whitedragon101]

You're confusing a diffuser with a true, anti-glare coating. Indeed, a "diffuser" does what your suggest, and the aftermarket applied films for glossy displays accomplish this function.

However, a proper anti-glare coating doesn't function this way at all. It involves the very careful deposition of a thin film of precisely controlled thickness and index of refraction, often multiple layers, to take advantage of the destructive interference of the wavefronts of the reflected light from the various film/film and film/glass interfaces. This literally cancels the glare or reflection.

The anti-reflective coating is not what is used on the macbook pro anti-glare screens. They do indeed use a diffuser stuck right to the screen. You can see this when you see the torch test on you tube you see a fuzzy blob reflected as the light is spread and scattered rather than appearing as a distinct specular source. An AR coating does not diffuse light like this.

Others have wondered whether an anti-reflective coating may be the way to go, but as you say the cost for a good one may be prohibitively high.

I was hoping this thread might uncover some tales of a lab somewhere working on just such possibilities.

I'd stump up an extra £200 if they could get an AR coating that really worked


It seems Sony are going down the AR route:
http://www.screentekinc.com/sony-xbrite-lcd-screens.shtml

 

[diablo2112]

Others have wondered whether an anti-reflective coating may be the way to go, but as you say the cost for a good one may be prohibitively high.

I was hoping this thread might uncover some tales of a lab somewhere working on just such possibilities.

I'd stump up an extra £200 if they could get an AR coating that really worked


It seems Sony are going down the AR route:
http://www.screentekinc.com/sony-xbrite-lcd-screens.shtml

Nice find on the Sony AR screens. I think the jury is out on the AR/AG tech used in the MBPs. On my inspection, it screen does appear to have a true AR coating. One way to test this is a water-drop test. You can carefully look at the fringing and rainbows around a drop of water and compare to a water drop on a known plain sheet of glass. I see fringing like I get on my AR coated watch crystals with the MBP screen, suggestive of a coating.

Obviously, it's possible to incorporate both a diffusive coating and AR films in the same screen. I'd like to get the MBP AG screen under a microscope, to see the local topology.