The most expensive laptops often have vivid, beautiful, high-resolution OLED panels that look fantastic. But those OLED screens are almost always glossy, and that means they suffer from glare and reflections. Out in the real world, I prefer matte IPS displays—they don’t look as good in perfect lighting, but they’re more usable everywhere else.

If your laptop lives at your desk in perfect lighting all the time, then OLED is an excellent choice. But if you’ll be taking it outdoors, the sun is kryptonite for flashy OLED panels. That premium OLED display option? It doesn’t always feel premium in real-world conditions.

Glossy panels are the real problem

I keep saying OLED, but the core issue here is the display’s coating: glossy versus matte. A glossy display is more vivid and shiny, but

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