Glossy versus matte LCDs
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Much like Coke or Pepsi or Kanto versus Kansai, glossy versus matte LCDs, the subject of a recent iShare survey, is an eternal battle with entrenched favourites.
Demographics
Between the 13th and 18th of January 2010 500 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 59.8% of the sample were male, 31.2% in their twenties, 32.0% in their thirties, and 36.8% in their forties.
I’m firmly in the matte camp, although I’ve never actually used a glossy… When I bought my monitor they had both a glossy and matte version on offer, and whilst the colours from glossy were very vivid, I’d heard a lot about issues with reflections, and anyway the matte was cheaper…
Oh, and just to mention the iPad for the first time on this blog (although no doubt they’ll be a million and one surveys over the next couple of months), I hear a lot of people imagining how professionals in the field will use one, but it has a glossy screen which along with the LCD makes it a no-go – and that’s also ignoring that it’s not ruggedised, water resistant or even terribly sturdy-looking.
Glossy or matte?
Research results
Q1: Did you know that glossy LCD screens existed for computers? (Sample size=500)
All Male
N=299Female
N=201Yes 74.2% 86.0% 56.7% No 25.8% 14.0% 43.3% Q2: For about how long per day do you use your home computer? (Sample size=500)
All Male
N=299Female
N=201Under 30 minutes (to SQ) 4.0% 4.0% 4.0% 30 minutes to one hour (to SQ) 10.4% 10.0% 10.9% One to two hours (to SQ) 19.6% 20.4% 18.4% Two to three hours (to SQ) 21.4% 22.1% 20.4% Three to four hours (to SQ) 18.0% 21.4% 12.9% Four to five hours (to SQ) 5.8% 4.3% 8.0% Five to six hours (to SQ) 3.6% 3.0% 4.5% Six hours or more (to SQ) 16.2% 13.4% 20.4% Don’t use it 1.0% 1.3% 0.5% Q2SQ: Is your home computer monitor glossy or matte? (Sample size=495)
All Male
N=295Female
N=200Glossy 22.4% 23.1% 21.5% Matte 69.9% 70.8% 68.5% Not LCD (CRT, etc) 7.7% 6.1% 10.0% Q3A: For your next computer LCD monitor, would you want to buy glossy or matte? (Sample size=500)
All Male
N=299Female
N=201Glossy 15.2% 17.7% 11.4% Perhaps glossy 21.2% 18.7% 24.9% Perhaps matte 30.4% 27.1% 35.3% Matte 29.0% 32.8% 23.4% Won’t buy LCD 4.2% 3.7% 5.0% Q3B: For your next computer LCD monitor, would you want to buy glossy or matte? (Sample size=495)
Glossy users
N=111Matte users
N=346Non-LCD users
N=38Glossy 34.2% 8.4% 21.1% Perhaps glossy 39.6% 16.5% 10.5% Perhaps matte 17.1% 36.4% 15.8% Matte 7.2% 37.6% 15.8% Won’t buy LCD 1.8% 1.2% 36.8%
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Glossy screens are completely hopeless for doing anything graphical. You get everything in front of the screen reflected in it – including your face and clothes, lit by the screen, so turning off all other lights doesn’t help. And with those reflections the contrast and color tone of the stuff on screen changes.
Photography is a hobby of mine, so I avoid glossy screens. Editing pictures – or writing code and reading papers, for that matter – just isn’t very enjoyable when reflections obscure the contents. I chose not to buy an Apple laptop a couple of years ago largely for this reason.
But for my wife it’s worse. She’s a graphical designer, and having reflections impose a color cast, contrast changes and superimposing faint lines and shapes over the view as she works is a major no-no. She got her last Apple screen when they were still matte; the next screen will likely be from a different manufacturer unless they come up with a good matte unit again.
Oh, I didn’t realise they were that bad! Especially given that the Mac is the designer’s favourite, yet they do glossy only these days…
Absolutely matte, but more important is the underlying LCD technology (eg: IPS or TS, backlight, etc).
I had one of the original “aluminum” Apple Cinema Displays which was an absolutely beautiful matte IPS panel, however the cathode tube always made the colors come out warm. Now I primarily use a laptop-integrated matte TS RGB-LED display (which achieves full NTSC and AdobeRGB gamut); despite being TS, the colors are incredibly vivid and sharp, and I no longer have warm color shifting.
While glossy provides deeper blacks, the RGB-LED makes the colors really pop; I hardly get the visual impression that the blacks are washed out with such vivid colors, such as when watching movies.
As for the iPad, I’m not sure glossiness or build quality is the main concern; the real limitation is the OS and lack of multitasking!
Thanks for the comment, but I didn’t really understand these technical terms… I’ll spend some time with Google to see what it all means…