Do any gaming laptops have gloss screen?

Do any gaming laptops still come with a gloss screen? Or are they all matte now?

 

I'm not aware of any 1080p-screened gaming laptops with glossy screens, but there may be some with 4K displays with one. The Razer Blade Advanced 15's 4K touch screen is worth looking into. It's pretty expensive.

Charles

 

It's usually more about the panel technology (TN vs IPS, generally speaking) than the screen type when it comes to "gaming" laptops.

TN panels are generally found on gaming setups due to the high refresh rate and response time, which is arguably the most important factor, depending on your definition of "gaming". For this reason, "gaming laptops" tend to have TN panels over IPS. Conversely, IPS panels are the norm for pretty much anything where color quality and reproduction is more important than refresh rate and response time, such as professional graphic-related productivity, "every day macbook consumer", "usable outside", "looks good" use cases.

IPS tends to be glossy and TN tends to be matte.

As Charles said, you'll be hard-pressed to find examples of gaming laptops with glossy screens; it just doesn't really match up with the LCD panel that's being marketed for. General business, photo/video editing (professional or not), everyday appeal; these laptops are targeted at consumers who want high-resolution, high-gamut, great-looking images and great-looking screens (whereas gamers want high refresh/response, G-Sync, lower resolution that matches their GPU/CPU ability to keep up) , so your best bet for a glossy screen is to look at laptops that aren't necessarily "gaming" laptops, but rather non-gaming laptops with hardware that can run the games you want to play.

 

The easiest way to find a glossy screen is to select a laptop with a touch screen. In most cases they're glossy for easy cleaning of finger prints.

If you want glossy you can always swap the panel yourself after you buy the ideal specs for ~$100 by researching which screen you want based on the specs of the one that shipped @ panelook.com.

Now if it's more than matte vs glossy like you find the specs you want but they offer an "upgrade" to 4K for another 200-400 more then you're better off ordering FHD and then upgrading yourself as the panel doesn't cost that much if they're not upping the CPU/GPU/RAM with that price gouge.

 

Interesting. The only instance of TN panel use I've seen lately is in dedicated esports monitors, and the response and input lag parameters of those are basically matched by modern IPS 1ms 240Hz monitors. Obviously, the big downside of TN are the narrow viewing angles, so that panel type is hard to recommend to anyone but the most hardcore online gamers who are particularly used to TN screens or something.

 

Unless there's some obscure Clevo or Tongfang chassis, I'm not aware of any TN displays that are available on a notebook for sale today. Obviously it's different with external monitors, but even then IPS and VA technologies have advanced to where TN's trump card of the fastest response times isn't really true any more. Or at least the differences are so minute that only the most hardcore of esports players would notice. The next wave of ultra-high-refresh displays will be 360 Hz, and those are bring released as IPS straight out of the gate, so I don't think it will be long before TN is phased out entirely.

 

There were some gaming laptops that came with glossy 120 Hz screens in the past, but it seems that they only come with matte screens nowadays unfortunately.

If you're like me and you absolutely detest matte screens to the point you can't deal with them because of how ugly and dull they look, you can mod the matte screen to make it glossy.

All panels start out as glossy panels. Matte panels are essentially glossy displays with an anti-glare layer glued on top of the screen.

You can remove this layer by putting wet paper towels on top of the screen and letting it soak the anti-glare layer for 4-5 hours. This will loosen the glue to the point where the corners should start to curl up slightly, and you can safely peel the anti-glare layer off. Make sure you're careful though or you may mess up the polarization film under the surface of the screen.

Needless to say, do this at your own risk. You may damage the screen if you do this improperly. This process works on both desktop and laptop screens.

Enjoy your new awesome glossy panel with vibrant colors!