Glossy Laptop Screens
January 31, 2007
Do any of you have an opinion regarding glossy screens on laptops? My dad’s Dell has a glossy screen, while mine has the normal matte screen. I may be purchasing a laptop soon, and I’m still torn as to which I like more.
What about you? Which do you like? Why? What do you primarily use it for? (eg: Desktop Usage, Coding, Photo Work, Games, etc.)
My laptop has a glossy screen, and I think it is sweet. I use the laptop for everything too, music, photo editing, games, etc. The colors seem sharper through it, and look more solid to me. The glare is a bit of an issue, usually only really bad if you happen to be in the sunlight. I’d say if you actually are using the laptop outside a lot, might not be so good.
by “glossy” screen.. do you mean the xBrite (I dont know if that’s just Sony’s name for them or if that’s what they are indeed called) screens?
I have what could be described as a glossy screen. I really like it. I helps reduce glare TREMENDOUSLY and there is a feeling, for me, of looking through a window at the internet.
The only bad thing I’ve encountered is that cleaning can be a bother..
I’m not sure what Sony’s name is for it, but it is a shiny/glossy screen as opposed to the matte screen on normal laptops. I’m curious how it helps reduce glare when it’s more reflective, though.
Ben’s laptop screen is gorgeous. I don’t quite know *how* it isn’t annoying, but it’s not. The color is crisp, and his analogy of feeling like you’re looking through a window really fits.
I did some googling on xBrite — it’s a Sony label for the glossy screen.
I can’t explain how it works — I just know that it does. When the computer is off, it’s very reflective, but when mine is on.. I dont see any sort of reflection.
I really do like it, eventhough it’s kind of a pain to keep clean.
My new laptop has a glossy screen, my old ones had normal screens. I thought it’d be so reflective as to be nigh-unusable, but I don’t really hate it as much as I thought I would. Every little speck of dust shows up, the “ghost keys”- the wear/contact marks from the keyboard- show far more clearly than they did on my old one, and it’s got 3 dead pixels whereas none of my other screens have had any (but I don’t know if that’s necessarily a function/byproduct of the glossy screen).
I use it for the standard school stuff- taking notes, web surfing/research, paper-writing, pdf-reading, etc. When I (rarely) play WoW on it, I have to be mindful of where the table lamps are around me because of the reflection- not necessarily b/c of glare, but rather when I go into a dark area, the damn thing becomes, essentially, a screen-sized mirror. The graphics on this thing are awful, too- some typefaces & some pdfs can be tough to read- but again, I think that’s more of a overall-laptop problem than a screen-specific problem. I rarely do photo work, and certainly not to the degree that you do- to me, that basically consists of turning a photo the right-way up- but it seems sufficient to the task.
Whites do seem whiter on this thing, and blacks blacker, but I do hate the glossiness. I don’t know the exact screen type on this thing, but it’s a Lenovo 3000 N100, if you wanted to look it up.
Of my six LCD screens, four matte and two glossy, the only one with a dead pixel is matte (I had a second one, also matte, that had two dead pixels out of the box, but I managed to play stupid and whiny and got MicroCenter to swap it out at no cost). So your experience may be a coincidence.
(The one with the dead pixel is also the second oldest, which probably has something to do with things. :D )
I think the dead pixels are more of an indicator of the overall quality of this particular machine than of the quality of glossy screens, yeah. I’ve had 5 matte LCD screens, 4 on laptops, ranging in age from 7 to 1.5 years old- and this glossy Lenovo’s the first of all of them to have a dead pixel, and it’s 2 months old.
I still really hate the reflectiveness of it, though. I’m not particularly looking forward to taking it outside anymore, either, after a comment above. :(