I bought the Elecom screen protector from ebay thanks to this thread and I made an account just so I could share my experience and hopefully help inform others.
First off, I never used the PaperLike brand as to me it seemed too expensive for something that possibly had even worse screen clarity than iCarez. I did like the iCarez protector, especially for the price, but I found they seemed to wear down and eventually even get weirdly smudgy and hard to clean. But again, they’re cheap, so I wasn’t too mad. There were times though, especially on a pure white screen, where the rainbow distortion effect really bothered me. Finding this thread made me curious about the Elecom protector, and I decided it was worth a try.
The clarity on the Elecom is WAY better. Before I removed my iCarez I pulled up a white screen and took a picture of the pixely, rainbow distortion, and then I did the same after installing the Elecom. A world of difference. (Hopefully I’m adding these images correctly, apologies if it goes badly.)
I do also want to highlight what I’ve found to be the one big drawback of the Elecom: it wears down my apple pencil nibs. It is definitely a rougher screen and while that doesn’t personally bother me while using my fingers or drawing, it does clearly wear the nibs down, eventually revealing metal. It’s worth mentioning that I’m an artist, so I’m drawing every day and for others it may not be so bad. It’s been nearly a year and I’ve gone through four nibs now [EDIT: I just double checked and I’ve actually only gone through three so far, yay], and my current one is getting close to done. I feel like this should be enough to make me want to remove the protector, as I saw NO wearing with the iCarez, but I honestly love the clarity so much I think it may be worth it anyway.
Thanks again to the folks in this thread, I’m grateful to have found a screen protector that works for me and I hope this helps me pay it forward a bit to anyone else trying to decide what they want to do.
