Another of these things I don't get. Matte screens become unreadable with indirect light. I've been a long time ThinkPad user.

But dim screens just don't work, no matter if it's matte or not. Bright screen with anti-reflective layer work much better, hate to say that.

> Bright screen with anti-reflective layer

True! I've come to realize that anti-reflective coating is more effective than matte screen.

I don't think I fully understand what conditions you are talking about. I very rarely put my screen brightness any higher than 50%, and I've never maxed it out. My first thought is that it's not the brightness, but the contrast, that is the cause of your problems? Or perhaps I just have a model with a brighter screen... (currently on a T460, though I don't remember the screen specifics)

EDIT: I might add as well, that part of the point of using a dark colortheme, is to not be looking into a lamp...so perhaps I am simply more okay with lower brightness, because I explicitly look for dark colorthemes. That does mean I am very sensitive to finding a colortheme with good contrast.

Let's say you have a lamp behind your screen. The light will be visible on your screen in some way.

With a reflective screen, you'll see a reflection of lamp, bright and clear. I think everybody agrees that this is annoying.

With matte screen, the reflection isn't strong or clear, but a larger portion of the screen is affected, since the matte layer scatters the light.

With a anti-reflective but non-matte screen, you'll see a 1:1 reflection - but only very very dim.

In my experience across the Lenovo matte screens, and comparing it to MacBook screens, I found the latter to work better.

There's a significant difference between the MacBook and cheapo reflective screens.

You can buy matte screen protectors. I put one on my macbook and it was night and day.

Do you think it was as good as a factory-produced matte screen? While I was aware you can do this, I'm a little hesitant to do something which is an absolute minimum for usability, in case I'm not happy with the outcome. It feels a bit like having to install a keyboard on the laptop myself, because the laptop didn't come with one...

I honestly couldn't tell the difference. You lose some output and viewing angle, but you did so on the matte screen as well. I had it on for like 6 years and my wife still has hers on from 2011.

I like matte screens too but my problem is their brightness. T495s comes with a 250 nits screen which can be quite dim. The Intel models have more screen options.