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I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable. Maybe you'd notice it in lab s
by asdff 1y ago
I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable. Maybe you'd notice it in lab setting but not irl. Kind of like 120hz and 4k; just useless to most peoples eyes at the distances people actually use these devices. I've only owned matte external monitors as well and again, no issues there.
The glossy era macbooks otoh have been a disaster in comparison imo. Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections. Using it outside sucks, you often see yourself more clearly than the actual contents on the screen. Little piece of dust on the screen you flick off becomes a fingerprint smear. The actual opening of the lid on the new thin bezel models means the top edge is never free of fingerprints. I'm inside right now and this M3 pro is on max brightness setting just to make it you know, usable, inside. I'm not sure if my screen is actually defectively dim or this is just how it is. Outside it is just barely bright enough to make out the screen. Really not much better than my old 2012 non retina model in terms of outdoor viewing which is a bit of a disappointment because the marketing material lead me to believe these new macbooks are extremely bright. I guess for HDR content maybe that is true but not for 99% of use cases.
- BoorishBears 1y agoTo each their own but I have a matte M4 Pro and I don't like it, and the screen is noticeably worse than my glossy M2 Pro. There's a graininess to the screen that makes it feel a little worse at all times, meanwhile I never had a problem in daylight just cranking brightness into the XDR range using Lunar. It's especially noticeable on light UIs, where empty space gets an RGB "sparkle" to it. I noticed the same thing when picking out my XDR years ago, so it seems like they never figured out how to solve it.
- daymanstep 1y ago120Hz is absolutely a noticeable improvement over 60Hz. I have a 60Hz iPhone and a 120Hz iPhone and the 60Hz one is just annoying to use. Everything feels so choppy.
- dontlaugh 1y ago4K too, at anything over 15” or so. I’m always baffled people insist otherwise.
- asdff 1y agoAt the distance I look at my TV screen (about 7 feet from the couch) I can't make out the pixels of the 1080p screen. 4k is lost on me. 2020 vision but I guess that is not enough.
- dontlaugh 1y agoI’m 3m from my TV and I can absolutely tell 4K from 1080p, but it is indeed subtle. But a fraction of that distance to my monitor makes even 4K barely good enough. I’d need a much smaller 4K monitor to not notice pixels.
- heavyset_go 1y agoUnless the screen is right in front of your face, video codecs and their parameters matter more than FHD vs UHD, IMO. At least to me, with corrected vision, a high quality 1080p video looks better than streaming quality 4k at the same distance.
- dalmo3 1y agoCompare apples to apples, e.g. gaming, and the difference is glaring.
- Tagbert 1y agoResolution is much less important for video than it is for text and user interfaces.
- rkomorn 1y agoThis is exactly why I went to 4K. Used to have a 27" 2560x1440 monitor at home. Got a 4K 27" at work, and when I got home, the difference was big enough that I (eventually) decided to upgrade the home monitor.
- coldtea 1y ago>I used to have a 2006 macbook pro with the matte screen. It was glorious. None of these issues were present or really noticeable. They were absolutely noticable. Contrast was crap. I immediately went with glossy with my next MBP around that same period.
- ra 1y agoIt became more of an issue when retina came out, that's when they stopped non-reflective screen options.
- musicale 1y agoI can't go back to the low contrast and washed-out look of matte screens unfortunately. The nano texture isn't terrible but I'd only use it if I had to work with a bright window or other lighting source behind me. If you go to an Apple store you can A/B test glossy vs. nano-texture and glossy wins for me. OLED glossy on the iPad Pro is even better.
- javier2 1y agoYeah, what on earth. Go back to one of these old displays, I guarantee you want to gouge your eyes out at how terrible they are. 2006 should put you firmly in 720p land.
- brians 1y agoWe have different eyes and different purposes, I think.
- dylan604 1y ago> Unless your room is pitch black it is so easy to get external reflections This is nearly my preferred setup, only I have wall lights on the wall behind the monitors so it's not truly a dark room (which is horrible for your eyes). No over head lights allowed on while I'm at the keyboard.
- nine_k 1y agoGood for you! Not as good for a typical office though.
- dylan604 1y agoWell, I WFH, so of course. Yet another reason RTO is a no go
- vladvasiliu 1y agoJust make sure to not wear glasses or white clothes.
- boredtofears 1y agoBoth 4k and 120hz were very noticeable improvements imo.
- acjohnson55 1y agoThe 2006 would probably have had 1080ish resolution. I think the GP's point is that at higher resolutions, matte has tended to have the issues they cited. I am with you in preferring matte. For me, mostly because of reflections on glossy screens.
- wtallis 1y agoEven at ~100 dpi, the grainy character of matte coatings from that era was noticeable; my 2006 iMac and a Dell Ultrasharp from a few years later were both unmistakably grainy in a way that glossy displays are not. At the time, the matte coatings were an acceptable tradeoff and the best overall choice for many users and usage scenarios. But I can imagine they would have been quite problematic when we jumped to 200+ dpi.
- charlie0 1y agoThat's what Lunar is for. Just bump up the brightness to HDR levels. Helps a lot with the glare, but will take a bite out of the battery life.
- jasomill 1y agoI still have my 2011 17" MacBook Pro, built to order with pretty much every available option available at the time, including the matte screen. While it serves a useful purpose by diffusing unavoidable point light sources in uncontrolled environments, it's honestly not much of an improvement over its glossy contemporaries in sunlight and other brightly-lit environments, as diffusing already diffuse reflections has little effect.
- vladvasiliu 1y agoI have a 2013 MBP retina with glossy screen and a 2020 HP with a matte screen. What I've found, is that inside, the HP is much better at handling reflections. However, outside, the screen gets washed out and is next to unusable. Whereas on the MBP, I can usually find an angle where reflections don't bother me and I can spend hours using it.
- scoodah 1y agoThe difference between matte and glossy displays in regards to their contrast and clarity is absolutely noticeable to the naked eye.
- thordenmark 1y agoFor professional graphic designers, cinematographers, photographers, and illustrators these subtleties in the screen is a big deal.
- Arn_Thor 1y agoYour 2006 MacBook was pre-retina, a.k.a. High-resolution, displays though. Any kind of smearing effect probably improved the perception of the image because it masked the very visible pixels in the LCD
- waldothedog 1y agoI also was matte in 06, and had that machine for 9 years (until it was stolen :/). Only option was glossy for my replacement, I was devastated. A few machines later now, I can’t imagine going back.
- Zanfa 1y agoI have the last gen 27” 5k iMac with nano texture as my primary monitor these days and you can immediately tell the difference between image quality, compared to a glossy MacBook pro. Don’t get me wrong, it’s by far the best quality matte finish I’ve ever seen and I would buy it again, because it works great in a room with south-facing windows, but it definitely affects the overall image quality noticeably.
- esseph 1y agoThere is a large visual difference between 60hz/120-144hz.