Answer:
While matte screen coating effectively reduces reflections, it also makes the image quality slightly dull and hazy. Glossy monitors, on the other hand, have a more vibrant and intense picture quality, but a very reflective screen.
Since neither coating is flawless, the choice mostly depends on personal preference.
The type of screen coating plays a big role when you’re looking for a new PC monitor or a laptop. Besides the effect of the screen surface on the image quality itself, ambient lighting is a crucial factor to take into account as well.
Glossy screens allow for more vivid colors and expressive contrast, but under heavy sunlight reflection or too bright room lighting, they can become mirror-like and not very pleasant to use.
The matte finish monitors, on the other hand, include an anti-glare treatment, which eliminates the issue of reflections. However, the image quality is more grainy and less clear.
Other benefits of matte-coated monitors are that dust is less visible, and they’re better for your eyes as you don’t have to look through the reflections like you would with glossy displays.
Matte vs Glossy – Which Should You Choose?
In the end, the disadvantages of both options can be neglected depending on what kind of environment you’ll be watching the screen in.
For instance, if you’re looking for a laptop for the outdoors, a matte screen laptop is the obvious choice, whereas if you spend most of your computer time in a dim-lit room, you will benefit more from a glossy screen.
In the picture below, note the difference between glossy (left) and matte (right) screen coating under sunlight reflection.
The Middle-Ground Option
As none of the screen coating types are perfect, manufacturers are working on improving them. So far, there are certain semi-glossy and light-matte screen finishes that deliver more balanced results. All of these are essentially matte coatings but with lesser light diffusion and thinner layers.
AU Optronics developed a semi-glossy coating for their VA panels, which features only 13-18% haze value as opposed to the regular 25%. This low-haze matte surface makes for a considerably less grainy image, but it’s also a bit more reflective than the usual matte finish.
Samsung also has its own ‘very light matte’ surface that they featured on some of their latest curved VA panel monitors. These offer an 18% haze value as opposed to the usual 24-28%. The result is pretty much the same as it is with the semi-glossy surfaces and some of LG’s AH-IPS panel models.
In the end, you’re back where you’ve started. The panels with the lighter matte surface may preserve image quality more than the common matte finish does, but not as effectively as glossy ones.
You’ll also find glossy screens with anti-reflective treatments (low 0-4% haze). These are a bit less reflective than the standard glossy screens, but still not nearly as efficient at mitigating glare as matte coatings.
When it comes to matte vs. glossy surfaces for gaming, the matte is a more obvious choice, particularly for competitive gaming.
In fact, most gaming monitors feature a matte finish. You certainly don’t want your reflection to be in the way of shooting your opponents!
OLED Screen Coatings
W-OLED
The most popular gaming monitors today include OLED displays based either on LG’s W-OLED panels or Samsung’s QD-OLED panels, which have different panel coatings.
LG’s W-OLED panels have a bit heavier (~35%) matte anti-glare coatings that are very efficient at preventing reflections, but they add noticeable graininess to the image.
The graininess is only noticeable on solid colors, so a lot of gamers don’t mind it.
LG Display also develops glossy versions of some of its panels, which gives more options to consumers. Their current glossy panels have 0% haze and 1.1% reflectance, and they aim to improve that further with new 0.3% reflectance panels.
They’re also working on new budget-friendly glossy panels with 4.4% reflectance and 3% haze.
QD-OLED
Samsung’s QD-OLED panels also have a glossy screen surface. However, since they lack a polarizer, black levels are raised when the screen is hit by direct lighting, resulting in grayish blacks.
Here’s how that looks on previous-generation QD-OLED panels, where direct lighting also causes a magenta tint.
Samsung’s new film removes the magenta tint seen in previous-generation QD-OLED panels under direct ambient light, boosts black level by 40% and improves surface hardness to 3H for 2.5x better scratch resistance.
Here’s how the MSI MPG 341CQP X36 (on the left) with this film compares to the MSI MPG 271QR X50 (on the right) when light is aimed directly at the screen.
This is the same LED light bar aimed at both screens. You can see that the 271QR X50 reflects the LEDs with a purplish tint, which gives blacks that infamous magenta cast. On the 341QR X50 with DarkArmor Film, the reflected LEDs appear more greenish and closer to white, resulting in a more natural-looking reflection.
Below you can see how both screens handle an LED lamp and a softbox light aimed at the screen.
Overall, the new film is a big step up from the previous-generation coating. The screen is still clearly reflective, so for the best image quality, you’ll want to avoid having any light pointed directly at it, as is the case with any glossy display.
Finally, Samsung also adds an anti-glare coating on some of their QD-OLED monitors, so that’s an option as well.
Again – some gamers play in dark or dim-lit rooms (or have lights placed behind the screen rather than in front or above), so they do not mind these drawbacks as they get to enjoy the clearer image without grain.
