Matte screens are overrated, no?

[Beau10]

. The more general use benefit of matte is less reflection/glare in outdoor or very bright environments.

I've seen people make comments on both sides of the issue (matte lovers say matte is more readable in sunlight, glossy say glossy is).

My current MBP is my 5th laptop over the years. My first was a Duo 280c (bought summer of '94). Then 2 Dell Inspirons. Then an Asus Z70V.

None of those first four machines were usable outdoors in most situations, whether in a significant degree of ambient sunlight, or even just a little bit of direct sunlight. They were washed out.

My glossy MBP though, all I have to do is kick the backlight up a few notches and it's almost as if I'm indoors. Just adjust the screen if any direct sunlight is hitting it to kill off reflections. Perhaps the LED backlight makes all the difference.

But it makes little sense to me that when you have a powerful source (the sun) wouldn't you want the light reflected vs. absorbed?

 

[Beau10]

Hardly; my CRT is 100X less reflective than the screens in those photos of the new notebooks. There is no gloss.

--Eric

This comment puzzles me. Does it have an anti-glare coating of some sort? A CRT uses a piece of curved glass that attracts light from many angles. The new MBP uses a piece of flat glass that should be much easier to change angle to minimize direct reflections.

My glossy MBP (early 2k8) is much less reflective than any CRT I've used (and I've used a whole bunch since buying a 386/25 back in '89 - computer labs getting my computer science degree in the mid 90s, and in all sorts of office environments I've worked in). Not to mention all the tube TVs I've used.

Glass is glass and it's nasty reflective stuff regardless of the application. Am I missing something?

 

[Timur]

Just to underline that again, personally I'm not a glossy lover myself (I prefer semi until they start building glass panels with proper diffraction), but glossy does have several benefits.

One that was not mentioned yet is that glossy/even surfaced panels appear brighter, or better to say more contrasty for the same amount of energy, or to put it the other way around, use less energy for the same appearing brightness/contrast (compared to the surrounding light). Glossy is more white on black, matte is light grey on dark grey. For the very same reasons Viewing Angles (contrast) and Sharpness (contrast) on glossy panels are better!

Well, to be exact, matte panels are just worse. That is because the very same diffusion that happens with reflected light also happens with emitted light coming from inside the panel itself. I mentioned twinkling and silky appeal of large colored surfaces before, same reason: Light doesn't travel out of the panel evenly spread, but is diffused, thus leading to interferences of colores. That results in angle depending color shifts, washed out appearance, loss of contrast and thus loss of viewing angles.

Here's is a "constructed" example what the rough surface of a matte screen looks like compared to the even/smooth surface of a (more) glossy screen. At that angle the smooth panel may reflect more of the objects in front of the screen, but it also shows more of the onscreen panel-image.

In fact the effect of the dust on the surface is about the same as the rough surface of a matte with the exception that dust usually is less transparent than panel material.

Which leads us to another aspect of Apple "glass" front. Yes, you will likely "want" to clean it more often. But that is not a bad thing, because dust and fingerprints happen on any screen (including matte), it's just harder to recognize. I even suspect that the rough plastic surface of matte screens is far more prone to dust collection that the smooth glass surface.

Last but not least, cleaning the sturdy and hopefuly scratch-resistant glass surface should be alot easier than the rough and flimsy plastic ones.

PS: Now I'm off for the next Apple store to have a look at the new niceties. I'm a musician and upto now PC user and mostly wanting to get the much overpriced Macbook Pros because they are kind of a standard in the music biz. (Alot of musicians/producer swear LOUD about the loss of Firewire on the Macbook, I can tell ya!)

 

[Timur]

But it makes little sense to me that when you have a powerful source (the sun) wouldn't you want the light reflected vs. absorbed?

You want it absorbed and that is exactly what glossy panels try to do! Matte pannels reflect more light than glossy ones, they just spread/diffuse it over a larger area. See the first picture I posted to get an idea about that. With glossy you see more of the image/material behind the panel-front, with matte you see more of the panel-front (plastic) itself.

And as explained in my last post matte displays also spread/diffuse the outgoing light over a larger area making them less sharp and thus for some people harder to read while others prefer the somewhat smoother appearance over the higher sharpness and contrast of glossy.

 

[soms]

No.

 

[PAUL BRIAN]

thanks timur for your contributions

i'm a musician/audio engineer and also hated the omission of firewire on the macbook

i wouldn't be getting the pro if that wasn't the case

 

[krye]

I have spent 2 years in front of my MacBook and my Mom has an iMac that I use from time to time. I don't think I could go back to a matte display. They look so dull and washed out now. I think the colors on a glossy display look far richer than a matte display. Especially black. Black looks really black instead of a grayish color that you see on a matte display.