Show HN: An interactive comparison of 100 laptops with matte screens | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: An interactive comparison of 100 laptops with matte screens

productchart.com

87 pointsmg46 comments

Some people seem to be indifferent about it, but I just cannot work with glossy screens. Not even with those called "anti-glare". So I decided it is important enough to make an extra section for matte displays on Product Chart.

How do other developers think about this?

I strongly prefer matte.

For laptop I still nurture grand dreams of a relatively large, fully sunlight readable screen with support for a good stylus. Seems like it would be heaven for outdoors/bright place work when conditions invite to that. I've yet to find a way of realizing that.

Same here. I struggle every day with my 24 inch Dell glossy monitor. I originally had a matte display, but It went dead during guarantee period and it was replaced with one with a glossy screen.

I am thinking of getting a smoked window glass and putting it in front of it. It is that bad.

Matte. Even if you "don't notice it", fatigue you experience over time may be related to unconscious strain to tune out reflective glare.

I hate looking at marketing material for monitors where they don't at all describe whether the monitor is matte or glossy, or where they hide this spec or use other unspecific descriptives that leave one wondering, "Huh?"

Glossy has its place; however, I think that place is not the general nor varying workplace. Not for me, at least. So, make it clear what I'm getting with your product.

Very strongly prefer matte.

Such a personal choice. I don't mind the reflections, and I strongly dislike matte - everything looks dead & second-rate to me on a matte screen, so much so that I just gave away a matte 4k monitor rather than use it.

I'm okay with a very light matte. Laptop displays however tend to be way too strong, and I prefer glossy for that. I can control my room lighting--I can't do anything about text looking like I'm seeing it through wet wax paper.

Matte all the way. I can't understand why anybody would choose a glossy screen for any purpose.

Glossy screens are used to get good color representation in a dynamic lighting environment - although often hidden behind the reflections. If vibrancy and color are important to you (designers) a glossy screen might be the right coating. If you are just trying to see your monitor and don't care if colors change depending on external light source then matte.

And yet the Dreamcolor on which I'm reading this is matte.

The worst part visually is the bounce from the white wall behind me, which would be much worse if it were glossy.

Colors are always going to be dependent on ambient light, since your perception of the white point changes. And if color is important to you then vibrancy probably isn't, since calibrating a monitor can only ever shrink its gamut.

IMHO, glossy screens came from the same place as shortscreens and white backgrounds (for emissive displays) - Hell.

As far as laptops, just get a used Thinkpad (real one - X, T, or W). I hear HP has a good business line too, if they're your kink.

Glossy screens are usually used to provide a better contrast ratio on an otherwise unremarkable TN panel. TNs are used for their higher response aka - gaming laptops. Mattes are fine for IPS panels where response time typically isn't a factor.

It's just a personal preference. I don't think being a developer has anything to do with it.

As the Navi say "I see you".

I hate matte screens even more than I hate open office plans, which is more than I hate genocide, java and the IRS.

EDIT: If you are forced to use an Apple 27" display, you can remove the glass panel on the front; it is a magnetic snap on panel.

I don't mind glossy for just programming. It's not usually enough to disturb my text (though I use a bright background and dark text rather than a dark background with bright text). But I hate it for working with photos and videos.

Love it!

Just an FYI: The Lenovo W541 and W550 both offer 2880x1620 screens as well as 1080p.

And for Linux users out there, the W541 seems to have fixed some of the ACPI incompatibilities, so the nouveau driver works with the quadro cards out-of-the-box (with Ubuntu, at least). Great compiz performance at UHD resolutions w/ dual monitors. (Apple 27")... I'm loving it!

Only two nitpicks: The left wrist rest gets uncomfortably warm (fairly certain it's the graphics card, as it only really happens when I'm plugged into the second monitor). And the number pad on the right leads to an off-center keyboard.

Neither of these are deal-breakers, as the temp is on-par with the MBP I had been using, and the keyboard is still immensely better than the shallow keyboard on the MBP (Plus, I love the touchpoint.)

I have one of these[1] on my rMBP and I love it. Great solution and you can't even tell it's there.

[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/product/H8055ZM/A/moshi-15-ivisor-...

In case the author is watching - would it be possible for you to add information about thermal temperatures at idle and at load? Notebookcheck is the only website I know of that includes this information regularly in their reviews. Unfortunately they dont expose this in their searchable fields. I have written to them asking for this feature, but for now there is no good resource to find a laptop that wont burn my lap.

How would you imagine anybody would get that data?

The old fashioned way - do benchmarks and collect data.

Lovely website. Laptops weren't so interesting to me but playing with the phone section I found a Blu Studio Energy phone I hadn't heard of before, 5000 mAh battery, that's hilarious. iPhone 5 by comparison has 1500 and the iPhone 6 has an 1800 mAh battery. And it's just $150, pretty cool, definitely an interesting 'utility-first' phone with days of battery life (it's pretty subpar in most other areas, performance, internet speeds, storage etc, camera was actually pretty decent). Fun find.

This is great. I've seen this tool before, but now that I'm considering a new laptop I find it really helpful. I found a couple laptops I hadn't been aware of, which will make me much more confident that I've made a good decision with whatever I do end up buying.

That said, all of the >>>check details and availability links I've clicked (~5 so far) have 404ed. Is something broken, or are these just expired links?

Ups, you found a bug! Thanks! I fixed it now. It happened because those were relative links and this page is one level deeper in the url hierarchy then the other charts.

I wonder if this preference for matte screens coincides with preferring a "dark" color scheme? I would think running your primary code editor as dark text on light background would mean you can't see reflections as easily, whereas light-on-dark would show reflections much more readily...

Here's a list of 1289 laptops with matte screens and a lot more filters, but less fancy presentation: http://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb&xf=83_LCD+matt+(non-glare)#xf...

The list behind that link says "LCD non-glare" but are those really matte? I see a lot of touchscreens in that list. And I have yet to see a matte touchscreen laptop.

I saw a few that were definitely not matte in there.

Would you consider the lenovo x1 carbon's or the x240's touchscreens to be matte?

Nice job. I love the simple interface.

Just a quick bug: the 'reset settings' feature 404's. I think you're missing a `/1` at the end of the url.

Thanks, fixed it!

Nice! The only thing I'm kinda missing is the type of the pointing device. But, since it looks like Lenovo is currently the only one with the trackpoint and there is nothing else out there (is that right?), it's not too hard to just filter by brand and then look at pictures.

Perhaps, separate "Lenovo" and "Lenovo/Thinkpad" because they are really quite different machines?

14" and larger Dell Latitudes are available with a pointing stick. Most 12" and larger HP elitebooks are too, but they only have two buttons. Some Toshiba Tecra R and Z series have two-button pointing sticks. A very few ASUSPRO machines have three-button sticks, but none are available in America.

FYI, the display size filter is wonky. Filtering up to 13" ignores 13.3" when it should probably include it.

    Filtering up to 13" ignores 13.3" when it should probably include it.

Hmm... should it? Im not sure. Would love to see a poll on this.

Poor GP post is going gray, but I kinda agree. 13.3 should probably make the <13 cut, just as 14.9 should make the >15 cut. The slider is limited to whole numbers, so it might make sense to round the display's actual diagonal to the nearest integer before applying the user's criteria.

I think it is better to change the interface so that the choice is labelled <13.3 rather than <13.

> Filtering up to 13" ignores 13.3" when it should probably include it

Your definition of "up to 13", includes the higher number 13.3? I hope you aren't a programmer.

You think that users always want clear, mathematically valid filtering criteria on searches? I hope you aren't a programmer.

There is no reason to consider a laptop without an SSD in 2015. That should be checked by default.

Nice tool. I haven't shopped for a laptop in a few years and I find it surprising to now see so many nice laptops with 1920x1080 screens. Just a few years ago it was difficult to find anything non-Apple that had more than 1366x768.

So sad to see there are no 15inch or lower laptops with 16gb of RAM. :(

The Thinkpad X250, T450, and T450s are all available with 16GB of RAM. The T450s maxes out at 20GB, and the T450 can theoretically support up to 32GB. The Dell Latitude E7450 is available in a 16GB configuration as well, but you must call and custom-order it. It's got a glossy screen, but the Chromebook Pixel LS has 16BG of RAM as well.

Author appears to have omitted the MacBook Air, which seems a serious omission. He does allow you to narrow the search to Apple models, but then no Apple models are actually listed.

This is amazing! Is there a site like this for desktop monitors?

Yes, I prefer matte. However, I mostly use a desktop monitor that is matte so I don't feel the pain of what laptop users face.

The lenovo y50 comes in glossy or matte. Be careful!

No Thinkpad X250?

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