XPS-15 9550 - How to reduce glare/reflections from glossy 4K screen?

Hi,

I recently got a 9550 in trade for some work. I replaced the bloated battery, upgraded the SSD, repasted the cooling bits, etc. It's running nicely now under Debian.

This notebook is fantastic except for the glossy screen which has horrible glare with any kind of light source behind me.

If I had bought the notebook new, I would have got the HD matte panel. I find myself running the 4K panel at 1920x1080 anyway.

I'd be interested in any solutions. I saw an adhesive screen protector (like for a cell phone) on Amazon. I'm thinking maybe there may be a removable plastic panel that could be placed/removed from the screen. Has anyone found a good solution to this?

Thanks!
Mark

 

I put a mate film (screen protector) on the 4K screen of my Dell XPS 9560. It’s also compatible with the 9550.

Bought it on eBay (see link below). The package contains 2 screens.
I was able to put it on my screen without bubbles, but some suggest to do it in your bathroom :d



Link: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/112399982607

 

Do you have pics of it installed?

 

Took some pictures, with/without flash:

 

Why would you run it at 1080p? You'll blur everything, and you gain absolutely nothing from it.

 

Extended battery life

 

Already confirmed many times over that it does nothing for battery life.

 

I'm running Debian Linux + Mate, not Windows. It is possible to run in "HiDPI" but it's imperfect. There were some things that were still not sized right -- i.e. tiny text, mis-sized controls in some situations. They'll eventually resolve those issues as 4K displays become more common. As it is, I work mostly with text and don't notice much difference. I know usually running at a lower resolution looks like crap but running 4K at 1920x1080 works out OK as it basically uses four 4K pixels for each 1920x1080 pixel.

To the original question, I did buy an antiglare film from an Amazon vendor. It was less cost/faster than buying from overseas. The kit came with two covers so I got to practice on the first one. I followed all advice on the second one and the result is good. I have a couple of bubbles that can't be seen in the corners. The glare is much reduced. I still see the mirror effect on the area not covered by the film -- mostly the inch or so below the panel.

It's made the notebook much more usable as I have a window behind me that doesn't bother me any more.

Tips on screen protectors:

1. Use masking tape to locate the film on the screen so it is perfectly aligned before unpeeling anything.

2. Work in as dust free environment as possible.

3. Clean, clean, clean the screen. I used Isopropyl alcohol.

4. Use a can of compressed air to dry and get rid of any remaining dust.

5. Work slowly and stop if there is a bubble, peel back the film and squeegee it.

6. Bubbles that don't go away may be a bit of dust. I would peel back the screen protector and use some masking tape to pick up the dust. Most of the time, the dust would be on the inside of the screen protector.

 

I don't know if it is any different on Linux, though I can hardly imagine that, but on Windows the whole perfect upscaling is a myth many people believe in. All GPU manufacturers (Intel included) actually do not support integer scaling (which is, perfect 1080p to 4K scaling). They all use some kind of filtering for scaling, which always results into a blurry mess.

 

You're living up to your handle ;-)

I hadn't heard of integer scaling but my searches didn't turn up anything on it working differently under Linux. It did look clear to me, but that might be my eyesight. I'm working now again on 4K and working through the remaining little issues.

Thanks for your post.