Anti-glare laptop: Here’s how | NETWORK

NOTEBOOK

June 05, 2022 at 7:00 p.m

Bought a new laptop, unpacked it and noticed that the screen reflects even in low room lighting? Action can be taken against this.

1. How do anti-reflective films work?

2. Anti-reflective film strongly scatters incoming light

3. How is an anti-reflective film applied and which models are recommended?

4. Alternative: Laptop with a matte display?

You can take a laptop with you anywhere to work, play or consume content. But this very advantage of laptops brings with it a problem. Because of different lighting conditions that cannot be influenced, for example on the train or outside, reflections quickly appear on the screen of the notebook, with which the display becomes an illegible glass surface. You can counteract this with an anti-reflective film.

How do anti-reflective films work?

An anti-reflective film is an extremely thin plastic film that is matt and is manufactured using a special process. The film is attached to the display by means of electrostatic attraction and makes the originally smooth and reflective surface of the display matt and anti-reflective.

This is achieved by the foil manipulating the angles of refraction of the light. When the reflection of an object appears on the screen, the light is reflected according to the law “entrance angle equals exit angle”, so that the reflection of the object falls directly into your eye on the screen and makes it difficult to decipher the screen content.

Anti-reflective film strongly scatters incoming light

Most commercially available anti-reflective films work on the same principle. They use the principle of matte scattering. The reflection of the objects that hit the laptop screen is diffusely reflected. Because of this irregular and uneven scattering, only a few of the original rays of light reach your eye. The result: the disturbing reflections are weakened and only present to a small extent.

Anti-reflective coatings, which are applied by the manufacturer in the factory, are based on a different principle. A “Lambda/4-layer film” is usually used here. The anti-reflection effect here lies in the effect of destructive interference. The light that hits the display is delayed by a quarter of a wavelength by the coating, so that the light waves largely cancel each other out. The end effect is the same as with the matte film.

Some anti-reflective films also have a disadvantage. In the case of models of inferior quality in particular, the color representation may be somewhat distorted. Deep black values ​​or bright colors are then not displayed as strongly.