Matte vs glossy screens on mini laptops – moving the right way

I also wrote about this dispute between matte and glossy cases/displays in a previous article, this is a followup to that one. Because i finally believe things are moving in the right way.

Like one of my readers noticed and commented on the article in August (thanks Imran), glossy surfaces were used on netbooks for the wrong reason. Yes, shiny devices look good and catch attention. But only for a couple of hours after you’ll get them out of the boxes.

So while mesmerized by glossy devices in shops, you’ll soon learn the hard way to live with your decision, as the surfaces will start to catch fingerprints, smudge and even scratch. Plus, displays, while great during the night, will be barely unusable during the day or in strong light conditions (unless you plan to use them as mirrors). Of course, brightness is important too and some might say a glossy Macbook screen is better than a matte HP or something, but generally speaking, those reflections are awful.

Remember that 1 or 2 years ago netbooks were still unknown. Many have bought such ad device till then, meant to be portable and easy to carry around. Now, after more than a year has passed and new and better versions have entered the markets, many of those previous clients will go for their second netbook. But this time they learned the lesson: they will no longer choose glossy, they’ll go for matte.

Thus, producers that will be able to meet this growing demand for such netbooks will be the ones attracting more customers. However, i see that only a few prepared for “the revolution”. Despite some existing versions from Samsung (the NB30) or HP (the 5102), most existing netbooks on the market right now are still glossy. In fact, the only good and affordable solutions are the Toshiba NB305 and the Asus 1001P.

But Asus did it at CeBIT, launching an entire range of products with brushed aluminum cases and matte displays (1015PE, 1016P, 1018P, 1201PN). And everyone seemed to love them. Acer, Samsung, Dell or Sony lost the start, but considering the public’s response to the new Asus devices, I’m pretty sure they’ll come with new versions of their own devices in the following next months. Or at least they should if they want to have us as customers.

So finally, it seems that my 2 years old plea was finally heard. A new “era” is about to start in the netbooks world, and no longer contains the word glossy in it.

Hurray for that!!!