glossy vs matte lcd screen manufacturer

If you are shopping for a brand new display, you may be comparing glossy vs matte screens. The best computer monitors, after all, tend to offer one of these screen types. You may also want to compare LCD vs LED monitors, especially if you’re keeping eye health in mind. But, keep reading to learn all about the differences between glossy screens and matte displays.

Glossy screens tend to offer slightly improved visuals, with better contrasts, vivid colors, and deeper blacks. They may work even better if you know the right brightness and contrast settings.

The main difference between these two types of monitors is the coating applied to the display itself. Otherwise, they are similar when it comes to what is underneath the hood. LCD displays can arrive with a glossy or matte coating and further differences will be subtle, such as when you are comparing 2K vs 4K computer monitors.

If you are trying out monitors in a store, be aware that the store will be perfectly lit to show off the benefits of a glossy display. In real life, that may not be the case.

Glossy displays tend to offer better color accuracy and more improved color saturation for enhanced image quality. This translates to deeper blacks and a slightly improved visual experience when compared to monitors with a matte finish. The graphics and visuals will be good no matter which you choose, however, such as when you are comparing computer monitors with HDMI vs DVI connection ports.

Though glossy displays do offer improved colors, this is only in ideal situations. When it comes to sunlight and glare, you will find that glossy screens are more susceptible than matte screens. As a matter of fact, the minimization of glare is one of the primary reasons people end up choosing matte displays. This natural glare-reducing functionality of a matte screen makes them a great fit for offices or rooms that get plenty of sunlight. An anti-glare feature thanks to a matte surface can also help reduce distractions and headaches from bright light, direct sunlight, or another glare-inducing light source.

Unfortunately, matte screens are more prone to blurry or hazy visuals, which can be a real bummer while playing games or when working as a creative professional. If you want to absolutely minimize the chances of blur, go for a glossy monitor and keep it in a room that does not attract too much sunlight.

In all other aspects, these two monitor types are extremely similar. You will find both at similar price points and the coating used to create a matte or glossy display will not impact performance in any way, so the refresh rates, response times, and input lag amount will be the same across both categories.

It may come in handy for graphic design, but it may not be necessary, depending on what kind of work you do. 4K monitors do, however, provide for vibrant colors no matter if you choose a glossy display or its matte counterpart.

When a display is advertised as being anti-glare, it is usually a matte display, as this type of monitor is treated with an anti-glare coating. This helps them resist glare caused by bright lights.

While matte screens produce consistent, glare-resistant images in different lighting environments, glossy alternatives can provide a more vivid, colorful image in the right conditions. You can find glossy screens in everything from TVs to smartphones and general-purpose PC monitors. Glossy gaming monitors, though, haven"t been available. A small company called Eve plans to change that by making shiny versions of its two gaming monitors.

On Wednesday, Eve confirmed that it will make a glossy coating option available for two of its three 27-inch gaming monitors, the 4K 144 Hz Spectrum and QHD 280 Hz Spectrum (previously 240 Hz). The company did not confirm a price or release date.

Eve explained the difficulties behind making glossy displays. Despite what you may have seen on Reddit or YouTube, producing a good glossy screen is not as simple as removing a monitor"s anti-glare coating. Glossy displays also require changes to the LCD module"s polarizer filter, which controls the lightwaves.

"It took a bunch of convincing with the right people inside of LG Display to make this a reality," Eve"s announcement said, adding that the changes meant that LG had to recalibrate its fully automated LCD assembly line and tweak the certification process. The process also meant that LG had to tune color performance and conduct durability testing. "It was not an easy task," the company said.

Gaming monitors use matte finishes because they"re much better at reducing glare. As explained by monitor-maker BenQ, matte screens use "plastic surfaces made of different polymers that undergo an etching process. Either chemical or mechanical, the etching creates an enormous number of grooves or indentations in the screen surface" that scatter light. Advertisement

However, less light also means a darker screen. Matte screens can look less vivid than glossy screens, as anti-glare finishes have a dulling effect on contrast and color. Glossy screens, which use reflective glass or reflective polymers, don"t have this issue.

But because they"re more prone to glare, they can be difficult to use under certain lighting scenarios. So while a glossy screen can look more vibrant in favorable conditions, you may find yourself staring at your own reflection if your lighting situation is less than ideal. Some glossy screens have anti-glare treatments, but a matte display will always provide the best anti-reflection solution.

TFTCentral tested out a pre-production sample of Eve"s glossy 4K 144Hz Spectrum panel and noted its sharper text and better overall image quality. The publication reported that the sub-pixels appear "sharper, clearer, and more easily distinguishable, removing the blurring and haziness of ... [anti-glare] coating."

TFTCentral also said the monitor has stronger colors and deeper blacks, improving perceived contrast. Measured contrast and color gamuts were the same between the glossy and matte versions of the monitor, however.

On phones, capacitive screens use a glass layer. Apple extended the glass layer to the laptops because it looked better (probably because matte screens looked worse than phones). Before them the screens were matte. Of course, everybody copied Apple and introduced glossy screens, because when looking at a glossy and a matte screen next to one another (in a shop) the glossy will win. And of course, everybody introduced glossy screens without the anti-reflection coating that Apple uses (cargo cult), so it made everything worse.

There was a time period when you had to really search for a non-glossy screen. Now it"s a bit better, you can find them, but the touchscreen ones will always be glossy, and I did not yet see an OLED without glossy screen (could be because they are more fragile, although folding OLEDs do exist, so it"s not clear).

I used to do volume specs of laptops for a big enterprise as a side duty. The glossy displays became a thing ~2005. If you had a spec that incorporated brightness, glossy would always win.

Grousing about Apple is always fun, but I’m sure they would happily charge you $500 for an enhanced matte panel if anyone cared about it... nobody does.

As a developer, I could not use a glossy screen for the life of me. Thankfully there are many laptops with matte screen. I keep an up to date collection of them on Product Chart:

Unless we discover a type of glass that lets light pass in only one direction, this divide between matte and glossy screens will probably continue up to the day we all wear VR headsets.

Coming now to other motivations, a glossy screen at the point of sale: A Macbook with a glossy screen in a shiny Apple Store is just way more impressive and will trigger more impulse buys. It"s like a jewel or expensive watch sparkling in all its glory at you. Glossy screens go also seamlessly to the edges or in other words, there is no bumpy plastic edge which just looks more like a slick and polished product. In contrast, ThinkPads are more of an enterprise product and not in need to trigger impulse buys + need to signal "hey I am workhorse for professional users" => matte screen. But be aware that Lenovo puts glossy screens on very similar specced Yoga models which target consumers and are found at the point of sales. Those models have also more showy aluminium cases while the Thinkpads have also beautiful cases but their beauty is more of a subtly beauty which needs longer to lure buyers into a buy (if they aren"t loyal ThinkPad users already). To drive this even further, Lenovo recently introduced alu-cased Thinkpads and a new subbrand "Thinkbooks" to target really any user out there. So, matte or glossy is more about demographics and their value system and beliefs than about functionality.

Last advantage which most forget: High-dpi screens have eg way crisper fonts on glossy than on matte, hence are overall sharper, eg code or a terminal on a 300dpi glossy screen is just incredible (check out 4K 13-14 inch notebooks or Dells 8K 32 inch).

In addition to laptop and 20inch matte lcd monitor, I also have 43inch TV that I use to discuss design with my partner. It"s good for short term, but I still prefer my matte screens for long usage.

- anti-reflective: colors almost as vivid as glossy, difficult to care for, costly. Not really difficult (warm water and soft cloth) but more difficult than the general public can do. Used on high-end displays/TVs.

You can tell the difference between anti-glare and anti-reflective as one has more texture/grain vs smooth. Also when looking at the reflection of a point source of light, the anti-reflective will dim the point, the anti-glare will spread it out like a ball, which is why it washes out in bright ambient light.

For a high resolution mobile screen only glossy and anti-reflective would give a good image in wide range of lighting (assuming you can shuffle to avoid reflections). Care and cost prohibit anti-reflective.

Some of the flashier models from the Apple wannabe manufacturers are starting to go glossy or have a glass overlay, especially if they have a touchscreen, but the vast majority of laptop displays are still matte.

But credit where it"s due... it is nice to be able to take a damp rag to it, vs. having a mild heart attack any time someone gets their fingers a little too close while pointing at something.

- laptops are purchased by consumers and are shiny and modern looking. Personally I think glossy sucks, but it"s like buying a shiny clean car when you see it in the store.

- monitors meanwhile, are very large and will not fall "in your shadow" so to speak. You will see everything behind you. Even with a matte screen, I have to turn off lights behind me to see dark ares on the screen, like when watching a movie.

Speaking of "out of touch" another issue with new screens is the format: On my old IBM/Lenovo X41 and X61s laptops the 4:3 screen format was perfect for the 12" screen. Although the screen was small I used the X41 as my main laptop for about half a year (without an external monitor). On my current X201 the 16:10 format is much worse: I"m a programmer, I don"t need horizontal space, but vertical space. Even for non-programmers I guess that for reading web pages or other documents vertical space is also more important than horizontal space. With Lenovo"s new X210 they"ve introduced a further step in the wrong direction by switching from 16:10 to 16:9.

Mostly agree, but my opinion on this matter was somewhat swayed after I started using :vsp in Vim on my 13" widescreen notebook (combined with a full-screen mode in iTerm). Not only had splitting the screen vertically right in the middle helped me recover the "lost" space, but it also forced me to wrap my code consistently to 80 characters, so now it looks/prints better. I guess the moral is that sometimes a bad thing can lead to something good.

It"s for this reason that I can"t bring myself to upgrade my Lenovo X61t. A 4:3 1440x1050 12.1" screen is vastly superior to anything available today. God, how I wish the new Lenovo tablets came in 4:3.

Cheap glossy screens have exactly the same issue, but more expensive glossy screens such as the ones in Apple"s Macbooks or Lenovo"s X1 laptop are basically a glass board right in front of the screen. So they are much more resistant against scratches and against other types of physical abuse.

As someone who has no office and works every day either from home or from a coffee shop on a laptop, the glossy screen is pretty annoying. It"s not impossible to work on it and you do get used to it, but my next MacBook Pro will be the matte finish. It"s more annoying that a matte finish costs $50 more.

Not true. Apple"s retail stores often stock the high-end (high-res matte with the top-end i7) 15" model, so they can upsell. Not all stores will have it, and there"s no guarantee (they typically only stock just a few at a time), but it"s not online BTO only.

Matte films are easy to come by and I"m rather surprised that given this sort of market research there isn"t someone out there selling them by the boat load.

On a 44" LCD television. I got it through a window tinting contractor who had a relationship with 3M (they bought their window tinting film from them).

People who love matte tend to be the bargain shopping type already, only buying stuff on sale. The retail giants don"t want those customers anyway, they want the people who get dazzled by the high contrast and will buy anything you tell them to.

I ordered a T61 back in the day, expecting a 1920x1200 LCD as specified. After decades of delay, I got my laptop, and they substituted a shitty 1440x900 screen instead. Not as ordered.

If the survey had been done with a picture of a glossy screen, and a matte screen, and readers would have been asked to choose, I suspect the results could have been closer.

Optical coating used to be standard on high-end CRT monitors. It seems like the right solution here as well. I wouldn"t miss the matte finish nearly so much if I could get the glossy screen coated.

1) It"s better in sunlight. Counterintuitive I know, but it"s far, far better. Matte screens diffract light and render the screen unreadable. Glossy screens can be made visible either passively (in very strong light) or actively if the screen is bright enough (as many now are.)

2) Glare is controllable and not diffused on a glossy screen. With a matte screen, glare manifests as blobs, and spread across the screen. With a glossy screen, glare is localized and easily defeated by repositioning the screen.

I was initially skeptical; after using an iPad outdoors I found it hard to believe matte could be worse! But some quick research seems to confirm your point.

It"s essentially a netbook with a special screen that can can work in both daylight and indoor light. In the sun, most of the colors wash away and it becomes a mostly black&white screen. But you can read it perfectly easily (similar to eink, but I don"t think it actually uses eink, despite what their PR claims).

Each screen has its advantages and disadvantages, which is why manufacturers waver between the two. Glossy screens produce an image that’s generally regarded as “richer.” Admittedly, that’s a nebulous term, but essentially it means there is more color depth and vibrancy. On the downside, glossy screens are more susceptible to glare, reflecting light from windows and light bulbs. And they tend to show fingerprints and smudges more readily, especially when they are off.

Glossy and matte displays use the same LCD panels. The only real difference between these two types of displays is the coating applied to the screen. In controlled situations, glossy and matte displays will look fairly similar.

A glossy display is an electronic display with a glossy surface. In certain light environments glossy displays provide better color intensity and contrast ratios than matte displays. The primary disadvantage of these displays is their tendency to reflect any external light, often resulting in an undesirable glare.

Matte screens tend to handle glare better, due to a polarized coating over the glass that diffuses ambient light. A side effect of the matte finish is a slight blurring, reduced contrast and a narrower viewing angle.

Unfortunately no plasma TV since 2008 has had a matte screen, and while new antireflective materials might help, none handles glare as well as matte LCDs. Even less fortunately, the flagship (read: best-performing) LCDs from many makers, especially Sony and Samsung, sport glossy screens, so you might have to choose between superior bright-room (matte) and dark-room (glossy) performance. Hey, at least neither company charges extra for matte like Apple does.

Screens and monitors are great and all, but the problematic thing about them with a lot of people is that they’re made of glass – highly reflective, shiny glass that is.

The average person, even avid users of tech, doesn’t spend that much time looking at a screen during the day, so even though they may have other issues related to prolonged use they wouldn’t have an issue with some shine.

For the people who have hobbies or jobs involving said prolonged use however, screen glares and reflections could be a big hassle when one has to look at a monitor for longer periods of time, for example:

In short, highly reflective monitors are not as liked and as preferred as their matte counterparts by many people looking at screens for longer periods. (gamers, office workers, etc.)

The main purpose of all of those shiny screens is exactly to be as shiny and as reflective as possible so they look fancy, expensive and of pristine, premium quality.

The screens being shiny and not having any matte coating on top has its technical aspects as well, but the primary reason why you will barely find any matte screens in mainstream tech these days, especially with smartphones and touch screens all around us, is product image. After all, we all love good shiny, glossy gadgets don’t we?

Luckily for avid computer users, matte alternatives and anti-glare products exist to combat and offer competition to the sometimes painful to use shiny screens.

Older varieties of anti-glare filters were mesh filters giving the appearance of a nylon screen – although effective they caused severe degradation in image quality, so they weren’t quite the perfect solution and alternative.

Filters these days are manufactured from polycarbonate or acrylic plastic, giving the screen that matte finish without compensating with image quality or clarity.

While glossy screens may cause distortions due to reflections and glare, they have been reported to display images more clearly and colors like black deeper and more saturated, while their matte counterparts tend to water down colors and make images fuzzy sometimes.

While matte screens are better for tasks like gaming or office use, glossy screens, in a controlled environment and properly lit, can be very beneficial to tasks like graphic design or photography – duties requiring clarity of image.

Seems like glossy screens, while producing images with better quality, colors and clarity, have the issue of being rendered unusable in any light condition other than perfect and are major fingerprint magnets, while matte screens combat those same issues, but can compensate by not delivering the best image quality.

In a perfect world there would be a matte screen that doesn’t cause any irritation through shine and glare, has a killer image quality and color accuracy, and is not a fingerprint magnet, and maybe someday we will have such a monitor, but until then we can only do as much as pick the best option for our specific needs.

Glossy or matte, users should pick the monitor they think suits them best and doesn’t compensate with ease of use, their user experience or their health.

Much like birds building nests, people seem to like shiny objects. The truism holds, apparently, for laptop and LCD TV screens as well. Samsung was among the first TV makers to popularize the shiny, glossy screen with its

The sole picture-quality advantage of glossy screens we"ve observed, at least when done correctly, is that they can in some cases preserve black-level performance--dark areas stay darker--in bright rooms with overhead lighting (think Best Buy) somewhat better than their matte cousins. In our book, that plus doesn"t outweigh the big minus of a glossy screen: bright objects reflected therein, such as windows opposite the screen, lamps, or even lighter furniture and clothing worn by viewers, appear brighter, sharper, and more distracting than they do when reflected in a matte screen.

That"s why, for bright-room viewing or situations where ambient light is difficult to control, we prefer LCD screens with a matte finish. If you do, too, check out the matte LCDs below.

Unfortunately no plasma TV since 2008 has had a matte screen, and while new antireflective materials might help, none handles glare as well as matte LCDs. Even less fortunately, the flagship (read: best-performing) LCDs from many makers, especially Sony and Samsung, sport glossy screens, so you might have to choose between superior bright-room (matte) and dark-room (glossy) performance. Hey, at least neither company charges extra for matte