After using Gorilla Matte Pro, I dread any laptop that doesn’t have it

Matte versus glossy screens

There’s a lot of debate about what’s best for display quality. Some say that a glossy screen allows the purest transmission of light from the display to your eyeballs. I can’t argue with that. But enjoying that pure transmission requires an ideal environment setup to minimize the glare and reflections that end up on such glossy displays. 

Anti-glare finishes on screens can make reflections darker, and matte finishes can diffuse light that’s hitting the screen, so reflected light sources are less distracting. Traditionally, though, these anti-glare and matte options have reduced contrast (undesirable on high-quality OLED displays) and introduced sparkle to the light emitting from the display.

Corning describes this sparkle as a “grainy or even greasy” appearance to the screen. And having put matte screen protectors on a host of devices from my phone to my laptop, I can see exactly that sort of graininess and greasiness sometimes. But the trade-off is that I don’t see my mirror image or bright lights reflected on my displays.

For some of us, that trade-off is worth it. It’s why my colleague Chris Hoffman now prefers matte over OLED in his laptop screens.

The Gorilla Matte Pro difference

Here’s the thing about the Gorilla Matte Pro display treatment on the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI I reviewed: it had all the glare-busting benefits without any of that sparkly grain or grease. In other words, it offered the best of both worlds. A true win-win for laptop screens.

I love taking advantage of high-resolution laptop displays to make the most of smaller screens, by shrinking everything down as much as possible. This makes for very fine text and icons just about everywhere—yet that ultra-fineness looks crisp behind Gorilla Matte Pro.

To compare, I have two additional laptops, each with a 14-inch 2880×1800 OLED display that’s almost identical to the one Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI. One is a Lenovo laptop to which I’ve applied a matte screen protector (completed with almost zero bubbles or trapped dust, much to my satisfaction). The other is an Asus laptop with a glossy display. These are all high-quality and worthwhile laptops, by the way.

The Asus laptop’s display shows fine superbly, but the second I turn my back to a bright window or light source, I’m squinting to make out what I’m looking at most of the time. Meanwhile, the Lenovo laptop avoids the glare issue most of the time with modest brightness levels thanks to the matte film I put on it, but fine details are awash in the grainy sparkle caused by the matte screen protector itself.

The Gorilla Matte Pro screen avoids both issues. Fine text is wonderfully clear without any noticeable sparkle at normal viewing distances, and the text remains clear even if I turn my back to a bright window or light source. Sure, there’s still a bright spot on the display if it’s hit by something really bright, but it’s still a night-and-day difference.

With that bright window behind me, I have to turn the glossy display up to 100% brightness (about a 400-nit whitepoint) before I can comfortably focus on the screen and not the reflection. On the Gorilla Matte Pro screen, I can readily focus on content with the brightness at its lowest level (a 23-nit whitepoint) and the font displaying at a smaller size. And when it comes to performance in the dark, all I can say is that the black pixels look as pitch as they do on the glossy screen.

Just to put some numbers to it, I grabbed a light meter that I use for projector testing and a small LED fill light. I placed the light meter between the two laptops with both screens facing the sensor at an equal distance. I then shined the LED onto each display from alternating sides of the meter, this way it would pick up reflections from one display and then the other. In this test, the Gorilla Matte Pro display reflected 20 lux from the LED while the glossy display reflected 60 lux.

Why it matters

I love OLED displays on my laptops. Between their color and contrast, they look phenomenal—in the right conditions. But I take laptops all over the place, and unless I’m at home, I usually don’t have control over ambient lighting, overhead lights, environmental brightness, etc.

When it’s too bright or there’s a strong light hitting my screen, I have to crank the brightness of that glossy OLED display to continue using it comfortably. It’s a similar issue if I want to sit in front of a window and have a decent view while I work. The light pouring in through the window will light me up and then all I see is my reflection on the screen, unless I crank up the display’s brightness in turn.

That increased brightness comes with a huge tax on the laptop’s power usage and battery life. A laptop that might’ve run all day could last just a few hours with its display brightness amped up. Good luck doing work on a lovely patio in the middle of summer.

This Gorilla Matte Pro finish sidesteps those issues. I can work in front of windows. I can go outside (though I’d still avoid angling it up towards the sky for the best experience). And even in challenging conditions, I can keep the brightness level low while still clearly seeing what’s on screen, which helps extend battery life much farther. That’s huge.

It’s little surprise that more high-end devices—for example, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra, Apple’s iPhone 17, and the MacBook Pro—are offering similar glare-fighting features and that Corning’s Gorilla Matte Pro won a CES innovation award this year.

This tech simply lets wonderful displays look their best more of the time in wider circumstances. As someone who loves a great-looking screen, I now want Gorilla Matte Pro on all of them.

Further reading: The good, bad, and ugly of OLED laptops