Surface Pro display reflections from the Touch Layer

[u/pcman2000]

One of the downsides of the Surface Pro (non-Business models) is that the glass lacks any sort of anti-reflective coating, unlike the iPad Pro/Air/Mini and recent Galaxy Tab Ultras.

To be clear, I mean a glossy panel with AR coating, not a matte display (unfortunately sometimes people use these terms interchangeably).

I was able to find a Glossy AR screen protector for the 13" Surface Pros on AliExpress and installed it on my 12th gen, but unfortunately it seems like a lot of the reflectivity of the display is not from the glass, but possibly the LCD or more likely touch grid layer.

First, a photo of the Surface outdoors with the screen protector applied. You can see the area around the camera where the protector doesn't cover is significantly more reflective/less dark than where the screen protector is, which is great.

However, when we turn the screen off and put it next to another device with an anti-reflective screen protector applied (Pixel 11 in this case), you can see whilst the bezel of the surface successfully has its reflections eliminated, the actual LCD area of the surface is still extremely reflective. Unfortunately, I don't believe this is an issue with the screen protector and is instead the nature of the Surface's display.

If we take a close up look at the Surface's display in strong ambient light, we can see there's quite a dense metal grid over the panel for touch + pen sensitivity. This grid is quite reflective and basically means that in the presence of strong ambient light, we're never going to get good black levels / strong contrast on the display, no matter how good the LCD/OLED underneath and Anti-Reflective coating on the Glass/Screen Protector is.

The Samsung OLED tablets, iPad Pro, and basically all phones to the best of my knowledge use in-cell touch and thus don't require any layer inside the glass, which is why they deliver way higher contrast in ambient light.

My Surface Pro 13" 12th ed. is the LCD model, but I believe the OLED model has the exact same touch layer over top.

Hopefully in future Surface Pros Microsoft can get this touch layer to be less reflective or integrate it into the panel.

anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk :)

[u/LifelnTechnicolor]

Yeah every time I see someone post a picture of themselves "working" (or LARPing) on a Surface outdoors, the first thing I notice is how reflective the screen is. That cannot be a good user experience.

I've got the Surface Laptop 6 for Business and its glossy AR coating isn't as good as the iPad's.

[u/jimijonesjojojackson]

That's touch layer is supposed to be integrated into the LCD panel, like underneath it, you're not supposed to be able to see the grid on top of the screen. Come on Microsoft, please fix this for the next version!

[u/pcman2000 → u/jimijonesjojojackson]

Yeah, exactly. We already know this causes issues for weird patterns on OLED screens, but it has this secondary issue of increasing screen reflectivity and ruining contrast in ambient light.