Should you get a matte screen protector for your tablet?

This article is to accompany the recent Youtube video "iPad Pro Matte Screen Protector (Should You Get One?)" I posted.

I've been using matte screen protectors for all my iPads over the years. The main advantages of using a matte screen protector is it protects the screen from scratches, and it provides you with a textured surface that feels nicer to draw on.

One downside of the matte screen protect does affect the sharpness of the screen. The other, sometimes more significant, downside is the anti-glare surface diffuses light and reflection, and that creates a white glaze that can make things difficult to see.

This is the white glaze I'm talking about. The window is in front of me.

This is how it looks without the matte screen protector. Notice that the white reflection does not cover the whole screen. But when the reflection is diffused, the whole screen would be covered.

Whether or not there is the white glaze will depend where the light is coming from and the angle of the tablet. If you're looking at the tablet straight on, there's probably not going to be any white glaze, unless there's light overhead of you.

In this photo above, the tablet on the left has a matte screen protector on it. Looking directly at them, even though there's slight white glaze, the light from the screen is bright enough, in this case, to overpower the white glaze. So colours aren't affected much here.

But at certain angles, you will still see the white glaze.

Drawing outdoors with a matte screen protector can be problematic because the environment light comes from everywhere. You have to look directly on top of the screen to minimize the effect of the white glaze. Sometimes I find it frustrating to draw outdoors because of that.

Most people use screen protectors to protect against scratches but the thing is, styluses with their plastic tips are probably not capable of scratching the screen. Having said that, I do have a small hairline screen on my iPad Pro 2017 that I have no idea where it came from.

The iPad Pro 2018 has a slightly less slippery screen which makes it better to draw on. I'll need to use it more often outdoors before I can can conclude whether I will keep the matte screen protector on. But so far, it's a 50-50 for me when it comes to taking it off. I do enjoy using the tablet at home though.