Does Anyone Really Prefer Glossy Screens? 646
An anonymous reader asked a question that I've been wondering about too: "I live in a small southern European country where natural light abounds. This may sound good, but it is a pain when it comes to using laptops that come with a glossy finish, making it impossible to work unless you are doing it in the dark. To make matters worse, since we are a small market, most manufacturers only offer a subset of their product line, and don't allow you to choose any options available in other countries (like matte screens). Buying abroad is not an option since we have our own very specific keyboard layout. Why are manufacturers doing this? Does anyone really prefer using glossy screens for day-to-day activities?"
I hate glossy (Score:2, Insightful)
Glossy looks cool in the display line in the store (Score:5, Insightful)
The ten seconds a prospective customer looks at it before the sale is given million times more weight that the several hundred hours the actual customer spends staring at it after the sale.
Work or play? (Score:2, Insightful)
Classic issue (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks impressive at the store. That's enough to sway the mass market. Long-term usability is the concern of a few nerds, and the manufacturers don't really care as long as stuff sells.
This same issue shows up in software user interfaces. Testing -- and reviews -- are based on quick impressions. "Scientific" usability tests try to get subjects with no biasing prior experience, and then measure task performance with a new and unfamiliar UI.
Unfortunately, interfaces which have a great immediate discoverability are not necessarily the best for long-term use. That's a lot harder to get right -- and if a long-term usability improvement would come at the cost of those at-the-store decision makers, it loses out.
I HATE GLOSSY!!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on the circumstances (Score:3, Insightful)
Laptops are invariably used in areas with bad lighting, glare, etc. Glossy screens are less than ideal in those situations.
My TV or desktop computers, on the other hand, are in controlled environments. I can eliminate glare, so I'll take the better apparent saturation that glossy gives me in those cases. (If I have a choice, that is)
Re:Glossy is mostly worse, but not totally (Score:3, Insightful)
Pros and Cons (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember the first time I saw a glossy screen on a laptop (it was an otherwise completely hideous Sony). Colors looked so vibrant, but you could tell that glare would be a real issue. Absent direct light sources, they really do look better to me.
Glare can be a real issue, though, which is one reason why there's a market for iPad anti-glare sheets. The iPad screen is glass, though, so glossy was the obvious choice. The glossy IPS screen is quite striking next to a TN matte laptop screen.
What really irks me though is the predominance of glossy plastic bezels. Walk into any computer store these days and you're bombarded with shiny black plastic on nearly every laptop, monitor, and TV. Here there is no functional advantage - it simply shows fingerprints more and even can distract from the screen itself. But it's the latest trend in computer/tv "fashion" (remember when silver plastic was in?). I gave in when shopping for an mid-sized TV, as Samsung (my preferred LCD manufacturer) had all glossy bezels. It's fine so long as I don't touch it, but a glossy HP laptop was a magnet for fingerprints.
didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
if you ask people whether anyone likes guns at an NRA convention, you'll get one result -- if you ask at a pacifist convention, you're likely to get a strongly diverging result...
Many of the slashdot crowd will be people that work with a lot of text (source-codes, DB dumps, shells, ...) - for many of us, the matte screen is the better choice.
On the other hand - for many people primarily using their laptops to access Facebook, consuming multimedia content, ... the more vivid colours of the glossy screen have a higher appeal...
So - for the slashdot crowd, what split between those groups do you expect to find here?
Now look at the general population? I'll bet you, the split will be the other way around... And - for people not using computers quite as much, how much easier do you think it will be to sell them a computer with a 'vibrant'/'vivid' display?
What's right for most of us, may not be the right thing for most people out there...
What I found a bit surprising, though - for a professional photographer friend of mine, matte is the screen of choice as well - for less glossy, but apparently more accurate colour representation...
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, slashdot, the place where people will jump in and start talking about dark rooms when the parent poster specifically talked about being sat in front of a tall window.
BUY A REPLACEMENT KEYBOARD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
The trick is to angle them so that you're not looking directly at them. Take a mirror and place it in the same place that you use your laptop. At the right angle, you're going to blind yourself with the mirror. Tilt the mirror down and all the back light will hit you in the chest.
Once I realized this I had no problems with my glossy MacBookPro and I can't stand going back to matte as it looks like the whole screen is dirty.
It doesn't take much just a few degrees and it only doesn't affect how the screen looks.
Re:Glossy is a bad name (Score:5, Insightful)
So really it should be "Good-looking-screen-but-with-reflections vs. Not-as-good-looking-without-as-many-reflections"
Which can be efficiently summarized as "Glossy vs Matte".
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:3M (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes (Score:2, Insightful)
You're an idiot. The window is six feet tall and has no shade - I live on the plains, and I get direct sunlight through it all morning. Likewise in the jeep - clear glass, no tinting, Bright as hell all around. Clear enough for you now, dimwit?
I swear, if there's a way to misread, and/or mis-moderate, there's a slashdot reader that will find it and do it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't sit with your back to the window (Score:1, Insightful)
Works great if you're at home, but what about those of us with a glossy screen in a cubicle at work? Good luck eliminating glare there. We used to have white imacs with flat screens. Now we have the new imacs with the glass to the edge and glossy screens. My eyes are much less happy now trying to constantly dodge the glare.
Re:3M (Score:3, Insightful)
This leaves the market for "screens with deliberately sucky viewing angles" as a reasonably small set of laptop users who work on modestly sensitive stuff in public. Thus, they get the aftermarket screen protector, representing zero change to panel or laptop design processes, and everybody else gets the default.
Re:didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the matte vs. glossy discussion doesn't have any bearing on the vivid vs. drab comparison. I have a 97% gamut matte screen at home. It's incredible for movies - or anything else. My work laptop is somewhere between 70 and 80% gamut, and also matte. It's just not as vivid. I've also seen a number of glossy screens, but they haven't been as vivid as my home monitor.
I think the conflation is caused because newer screens can have higher color gamut, and can be glossy. But the two have little or no relation from everything I've seen. And given the choice, I'll always go with matte.
Doctor it hurts when I do this! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're fixing the wrong problem.
Instead of switching to a screen that spreads the glare out over a larger percentage of the screen, why not move the screen to a place that isn't in blinding sunlight?
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
shiny things (Score:3, Insightful)
I like my glossy screens for coding, even in the sunlight I'll happily code on my macbook or take notes on my ipad.
Of course, if you own an iPad, you like shiny things - that's redundant ;-)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
With matte screens you can better distinguish pixels and compare one pixel with another. That's why people like them for graphics work. As for colour accuracy all LCDs are limited and will look totally different from film or print. In light of this, many are happy to trade in a little contrast and saturation for the consistency of the image.
Re:Glossy looks cool in the display line in the st (Score:2, Insightful)
And that, dear children, is the reason why Capitalism does not find the optimal solution for the consumers of the world. Purchase process != usage process.
Consumerism is tailored for sales; user's needs is just but one factor in the equation (certainly influential but not decisive).
Re:didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:2, Insightful)
A glossy screen does not provide 'more vidid color'. It is identical to a Matte screen except it reflects more of the environment around it because some idiot at Apple thought it looked cool when the machine was off and everyone else followed him.
There are no actual advantages to a Glossy screen once it lights up.
Glossy screens are purely for marketing to people who don't know they are bad, they see a laptop with a shiny screen and think ... 'ooohhhhh SHINY! ME WANT'.
Re:Agree (Score:3, Insightful)
It's personal preference I guess. You could just attach tracing paper to a CRT or glossy LCD.
I personally can't understand why some people like to brag about picture quality and how CRTs do better blacks and buy matte LCDs.
Next generation, please (Score:4, Insightful)
Diminishing refraction requires a smooth surface (i learned something reading that amateur telescope making book)
Glossy surfaces reflect higher intensity light sources more readily.
Polarize or coat the damned things already, so the light inside can come out, but these exterior sources are diffused across the surface.
Matte has drawbacks, but deepness of black and 'poppy' RGB aren't why I bought my computer. Neither is HD video playback, dammit. If I wanted an entertainment device with a keyboard, I would invent one.
I have a 'laptop computer' which I use to 'compute' on my 'lap', and I want about 2 million gloss-free, color-accurate pixels to do it with.
Glossy is better - you can choose your glare (Score:1, Insightful)
A few things make glossy better:
1. First you at least have the option of angling your screen away from the source of glare, whereas a matte screen will always glare ALL light from a 180 degree hemisphere.
2. Because the light from a glossy screen isn't diffused, it is brighter and has better contrast allowing you to see in bright sun.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
We all know that once the ring goes on the finger, our libido stops cold.
Our libido?! I take it you're female, then.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
You do know that seeing hot-girls on your screen has been available since before glossy screens right?
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Why assume he's single?....
He was posting here...
Re:didn't ask the right people (was: Re:Yes) (Score:3, Insightful)
No. You are wrong.
If you were well informed, we could have a discussion on how there are other factors that make more of a difference than the coating on the screen (Anti-reflective (glossy) vs. Anti-glare (matte)). But to say that there are no advantages, and that "some idiot at Apple thought it looked cool) is blisteringly ignorant.
It's simple physics, and if you thought about what's involved in making a screen's coating anti-glare (matte) you'd realize why it *has* to distort the image.
You can read more about it here:
http://www.screentekinc.com/pixelbright-lcds.shtml#anti-glare [screentekinc.com]
Educate yourself.
Oh and by the way, Sony (and probably others as well) was using Anti-reflective (glossy) screen coatings at least as long as Apple (circa 1998). I don't think this was not some kind of Apple invention. Mostly because making a screen matte is actually an extra step. That said, the Apple Cinema Displays are probably the finest displays that can be purchased for the price. It's no coincidence that most of them have AR coatings. Just because most people don't understand the tech and think that a $400 Westinghouse with a terrible TN panel is "just as good" as Apple's LED backlit IPS panel offerings doesn't make it so.
Re:Absolutely (Score:4, Insightful)
It really sounds like most of the people posting here are comparing apples to oranges -- i.e. comparing two different panels, one that happens to be glossy and one that happens to be matte. Unless you are comparing two identical panels, one with a glossy coating, the other matte, you can't draw any conclusions about which is 'better'. Personally, I have a laptop with a glossy screen and a desktop with matte screens. The laptop screen has a dull and washed out look to it, while the desktop monitors have a crisp and vibrant look to them, but this has nothing to do with the fact that one is glossy and the other matte -- the laptop panel is just rubbish.
I will say that given the choice, I'd always go with a matte panel -- even if it does reduce vibrancy or brightness (of which I am skeptical), I very much value the ability to work in poor lighting conditions without angling the screen. I presume Apple's screens are among the best glossy panels available (you'd hope so for the price...) but I still hate using my girlfriend's macbook pro in a bright environment....
Re:Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
> If you want an accurate and optimally capable monitor, then when dynamic range and color gamut are equal,
> the glossy display will be superior every time.
Unless of course, there's any light in the room - in which case the *matte* display will be superior every time due to it's far superior anti-reflective properties over a glossy display.