I plan to buy a MacBook pro very soon as many of you may know. I have a slight dilemma and that would be whether to get a glossy or matte display. My friend jonno has a matte and it doesn’t look to bad, but I do like the look of a glossy display. Glossy’s are said to increase contrast and richness the colour but mattes are said to give better and a truer colour representation. All my previous computers have had a matte display, but I can’t help but be tempped by the glossy. The new MacBook Pros have an LED display which is really bright which is supposed to counter the glare. I thought I would do a post for you to help weigh up the pros and cons of going glossy.
Pros
- Richer colour
- Deeper backs and lighter whites
- Contrasts higher
- Slightly brighter
- Richer colour
Cons
- Not true colour
- Glare outside and in well lit rooms
- Washed out in sunlight
- Eye strain
Looking at the Pros and Cons, the Pros out weight the Cons in number but what is important for me? Well I would say accurate colour representation because I like to do photo editing. But I love the rich and deep colour the glossy gives you and the colour is not distorted that much, I have yet so see a glossy display washed out by the sun. I have seen the glossy iMac and MacBook and MacBook Pro in a well lit store and I didn’t see much glare but I would say that it can be distracting. So I still haven’t made up my mind. I have an idea lets ask some people and the poll says…
The polls says that matte is favoured over the glossy by a huge margin, but is this just because we are so use to matte displays? In these photos below we have glossy MacBook Pro’s and a matte ones.
There is also another thing to take in to account JohnLewis gives you a two year warranty on top of apples, but they only sell the basic model so no glossy, if they sold the glossy that would make my mind up. I know that people will say do you need that warranty, it will be my first Mac and I want to keep it
I think you will get lots of reflections from a glossy screen leading to eye strain
I actually didnt even know computers much less pros came in glossy or matte, I thought that was a strictly photo paper thing.
yer but the glossy look so good
your question is exactly the same for photos. Glossy or matte paper ! And the difference is done by the “qualification” of the user :
Amateur photograph will prefer matte paper as the colour is not the most important thing, but what is represented.
Professionnal photograph take care of the content and the colour.
I think you should consider one more thing in your reflection : the use of you laptop.
- if you use your laptop primarily for displaying photos, then you should consider a glossy display. For you, correct colours and brightness are as important as the subject.
- if you use laptop to write papers, documents, etc… you should consider a matte display. Fonts are always small enough to be difficult to read. With a glossy display, a lot of reflection will be added, and you’ll have even more difficulties to read the text.
thanks for the advice i still can’t decided because i will be witting papers and photo editing umm