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Hands-On With the iPad Pro's Nano-Texture Glass - Is It Worth the Upgrade?
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I put this on my previous-generation iPad Pro 12.9 and I cannot tell you how wonderful it is. It’s a matte glass screen protector with just a tiny bit of texture. The colors still look good, it there is no glare. Highly recommended If you are looking for something for,older iPads.
Mothca Matte Glass Screen Protector for iPad Pro 12.9-inch 6th/5th/4th/3rd Generation(2022/2021/2020/2018 Models) Anti-Glare & Anti-Fingerprint No Dazzling 9H Tempered Glass HD Shield Smooth as Silk
What is Included: 1 piece of Mothca matte screen protector , 1 piece of rear camera lens protector, 1 x cleaning set, 1 set of dust remover.
www.amazon.com
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
That's why I'm thinking of getting the nano-texture glass.. and on stage it should help with glare from lighting.
Honestly, I’m just happy I can sit on my couch in front of backlit window blinds without closing my blackout curtains. I cannot imagine how inconvenient using a glossy iPad around stage lighting must be.
I imagine it’d help lots.
I prefer glossy display. But good to have an option for those who like it.
Maybe I just don’t get it, but why don’t people just buy the regular version iPad screen and get a paper like screen protector or something to reduce glare?
No.
Text isn’t as sharp. Colours aren’t as good. It’s not as good at reducing reflections as whatever Samsung coated the S24 Ultra with. The texture change at the bezels is jarring.
If you’re one of the 0.01% of buyers who need it for work then this won’t make a difference. It for everyone else, save your cash.
Text isn’t as sharp. Colours aren’t as good. It’s not as good at reducing reflections as whatever Samsung coated the S24 Ultra with. The texture change at the bezels is jarring.
If you’re one of the 0.01% of buyers who need it for work then this won’t make a difference. It for everyone else, save your cash.
To remove dithering they need to introduce true 10 bit displays. And since they are fully reliant on LG and Samsung supplies, they do not even have a right to choose the technology they put in their devices.
They technically can force 8 bits instead of fake 10 (8bit + frc), but how will they brag about “true blacks” and “pop colors” then? It is all about marketing and fake competition with others
God how I miss my old MBP with matte display! I believe it was 2010 model, my friend still has it, it is working just fine. AND - there are no marks on its beautiful display whatsoever! Like none! No scratches, no keyboard marks, nothing! It is absolutely clean in pristine condition, even after 14 years!
Then I look at my MBP 2017 and all I see are keyboard marks and the so-called antiglare layer peeling of massively everywhere. I tend to forget about it time to time when working with the brightness all the way up but every now and then I notice and wonder how could this be dubbed as a Pro machine for serious design work.
IMHO all the laptops and iPads which have a moniker 'PRO' should have matte display. Or at least give us an option to pay extra for this! I'd love to give you money if you give me matte screen again!
I know this article is about iPad, but I had to say it.
Then I look at my MBP 2017 and all I see are keyboard marks and the so-called antiglare layer peeling of massively everywhere. I tend to forget about it time to time when working with the brightness all the way up but every now and then I notice and wonder how could this be dubbed as a Pro machine for serious design work.
IMHO all the laptops and iPads which have a moniker 'PRO' should have matte display. Or at least give us an option to pay extra for this! I'd love to give you money if you give me matte screen again!
I know this article is about iPad, but I had to say it.
I'm a professional illustrator. I've always used my iPad Pros with a textured screen protector (PaperLike most recently), because drawing directly on standard slick iPad glass is horrifying. The nano-texture excited me when it was first announced, but I've tried it in-store and I'm not convinced it's worth the extra dough. If it was $100 I'd probably go for it, but I have a 512Gb iPad now and barely use 200 of it even with a boatload of 100-layer illustrations on-board. A new 512 iPP costs $1500, but I can't get etched glass without shelling out $2000 for the 1Tb model. That's a crap-ton of memory I'll never use, but $500 still might be worth it—to someone like me, who often draws on an iPad all day and gets paid to do so—if the experience was significantly better. Yes, the weird stickiness of using an Apple Pencil on the basic glass is improved by the nano-texture. I'm just not sure it's enough of an improvement to justify an extra $500.
I typically draw on a big honkin' Wacom Cintiq, which also has nano-texture (or "etched glass" as Wacom calls it—so pedestrian!), and there's just nothing like it for digital illustration. That's the measure by which I'm assessing both nano-texture and screen protectors, and I don't think the nano-texture goes far enough. It just doesn't have enough tooth. Admittedly that's based on my brief in-store tests and extended use might change my opinion, but I'm pretty tuned into what drawing on a screen feels like. I'm also no hater. I'm always ready to be impressed by a better digital drawing experience. PaperLike costs $45, and MAN it feels good to draw on. Rather, they feel good to draw on, since you actually get two for $45. I was ready to feel the same way in the Apple Store! But I just . . . didn't. So if I do buy a nano-textured iPad Pro, I'll be trying it hard for 13 days and I'll be ready to return it on day 14 if it doesn't surpass my initial impression.
(I actually think iPads should've always had nano-texture, since they were designed to be used with Apple Pencil. But don't we all have a buncha genies we'd like to put back into their bottles?)
I typically draw on a big honkin' Wacom Cintiq, which also has nano-texture (or "etched glass" as Wacom calls it—so pedestrian!), and there's just nothing like it for digital illustration. That's the measure by which I'm assessing both nano-texture and screen protectors, and I don't think the nano-texture goes far enough. It just doesn't have enough tooth. Admittedly that's based on my brief in-store tests and extended use might change my opinion, but I'm pretty tuned into what drawing on a screen feels like. I'm also no hater. I'm always ready to be impressed by a better digital drawing experience. PaperLike costs $45, and MAN it feels good to draw on. Rather, they feel good to draw on, since you actually get two for $45. I was ready to feel the same way in the Apple Store! But I just . . . didn't. So if I do buy a nano-textured iPad Pro, I'll be trying it hard for 13 days and I'll be ready to return it on day 14 if it doesn't surpass my initial impression.
(I actually think iPads should've always had nano-texture, since they were designed to be used with Apple Pencil. But don't we all have a buncha genies we'd like to put back into their bottles?)
I bought the nano and it’s absolutely fabulous. Never had it before, makes the screen look more pro and no glare. I can sit outside in the sun with no issue. You can clean it with the special cloth that came with or a fleece blanket. I’m glad I got the nano! I hope iPhone max comes in that option as well.
I considered it initially but I decided to save myself the hundred bucks and irreversible glass texturing and just go with the regular glass and then get a Rock Paper Pencil nano texture screen overlay instead. It was more than half the price of Apple’s option, is easily removable and then applied again as many times as I need over and over, and came with swappable pencil tips that simulate writing with a 0.7mm ballpoint pen. It’s honestly the best screen protector I’ve ever used on anything I’ve owned.
I have the same use case, but chose the add-on Astropad screen "protector" instead. Would have had to spend several hundred dollars more to get the nano-texture glass (i.e., upgrade storage + screen option), and the effect is the same.
I had to return my M4 iPad Pro and replace it with the standard glass. Here's why? Yes - slightly fewer fingerprints, but those are harder to clean off.
What's not obvious when you buy it is you can only clean the nano-texture with the supplied cloth - and that isn't just marketing BS. Other cloths have almost no effect. What's more, you have to clean with some vigour. No liquids other than occasional use of isopropyl alcohol - this makes it a pretty needy screen and a month of use was more than enough for me - and, 'can only clean with our cloth' and other restrictions should be made clear as a warning at the point of sale.
But that's not the worst. After putting this in a backpack, with the Apple Magic Keyboard attached, and a few other things in the pack, I arrived at my destination after an hour of travelling only to find that there were two prominent horizontal lines marked on the display. These were impossible to remove - I didn't have the cloth with me - and highly distracting. Around the keys of the Magic Keyboard is a raised lip - this had been in contact with the glass, and the pressure from carrying it in backpack had marked the glass. When I got back home, I was able to remove them - with extreme vigour - using the cloth provided - but it took almost five minutes.
Now I loved the screen, but come on. The idea of a portable computing device, designed to be used with your fingers, and you need to carry a special cloth with you, and putting it in a backpack marks the screen badly? I'm not exaggerating this. My biggest worries were - I can't carry this with other things in a pack (?!) but mostly - over time, will these become permanent? Honestly, they were tough to remove.
Good news is that Apple agreed to refund and I bought the same model without the nano-texture and and very happy with it. The agents I spoke to (it had to be escalated up twice) were great, and really shocked - promising to pass this to the development team. For clarity, I've been an iPad user since the first model and while it's my secondary device I use it all day and often travel only with that, so I have a lot of lived experience with various models.
What's not obvious when you buy it is you can only clean the nano-texture with the supplied cloth - and that isn't just marketing BS. Other cloths have almost no effect. What's more, you have to clean with some vigour. No liquids other than occasional use of isopropyl alcohol - this makes it a pretty needy screen and a month of use was more than enough for me - and, 'can only clean with our cloth' and other restrictions should be made clear as a warning at the point of sale.
But that's not the worst. After putting this in a backpack, with the Apple Magic Keyboard attached, and a few other things in the pack, I arrived at my destination after an hour of travelling only to find that there were two prominent horizontal lines marked on the display. These were impossible to remove - I didn't have the cloth with me - and highly distracting. Around the keys of the Magic Keyboard is a raised lip - this had been in contact with the glass, and the pressure from carrying it in backpack had marked the glass. When I got back home, I was able to remove them - with extreme vigour - using the cloth provided - but it took almost five minutes.
Now I loved the screen, but come on. The idea of a portable computing device, designed to be used with your fingers, and you need to carry a special cloth with you, and putting it in a backpack marks the screen badly? I'm not exaggerating this. My biggest worries were - I can't carry this with other things in a pack (?!) but mostly - over time, will these become permanent? Honestly, they were tough to remove.
Good news is that Apple agreed to refund and I bought the same model without the nano-texture and and very happy with it. The agents I spoke to (it had to be escalated up twice) were great, and really shocked - promising to pass this to the development team. For clarity, I've been an iPad user since the first model and while it's my secondary device I use it all day and often travel only with that, so I have a lot of lived experience with various models.
I find it funny how the author failed to mention that you can scratch the display just by looking at it.
The conclusion should be
"The nano-coated iPad Pro is a good option for those who enjoy looking at a scratched screen."
The conclusion should be
"The nano-coated iPad Pro is a good option for those who enjoy looking at a scratched screen."
Yes it would, but screen protectors also increase the perceived screen to surface distance quite a bit which makes a pencil feel like it's "floating" above the image rather than touching it (kinda like using a pencil on the regular iPad).
It's for very niche users.
Just got my 13” Nano today. And I have to say, it rocks. I just sent back the Wacom Movink earlier this week, as their 13” OLED Pen-Display was dull, faded out and the glass surface too different from the Intuos Pro etc. It’s okay, but it was not 850€ okay. The matte display of the Nano however feels silky, the image is clear and alive. There is minimal loss of sharpness in typography, but that (weirdly enough) adds to a feeling of using paper when reading books, comics or magazines. It just feels more like non-glossy matte (or unvarnished) paper, very nice. Same with photos, which look less over-cooked. The surface is not giving you a textured writing feeling (I use leather tips from Etsy which work nicely with the glas surface, however). The nano texture gives the display a completely different feeling, which is really rather nice, it is not like any matte display I‘ve ever used, quite the brillant solution. I could’ve ddone without the glossy bezels but I understand the reason for that in the overall design. Movies, at least the ones I tried, look a tad more realistic and real, the non-glossy display makes it all look a bit less «netflixy», if you get what I mean. Also nice to not see your own face half of the time you’re working. I had massive doubts with this, watched a ton of videos and there was a chance, I might have to return this, but so far so good. There’s other stuff that needs work (make the pencil more precise and Wacom-like, the MKBD feels a bit thin and cheap compared to MacBooks, the OS itself ;-)), but the display is surprisingly pleasant for my use case.
The Nano version did not seem as sharp to me. It does get rid of reflections, but I seldom have this a problem with this.
Nano-texture was meant as an anti-glare treatment not so much as a pencil texture. Given how much attention has been given to the pencil feel with and without nano-texture, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple starts looking at ways to improve it.
I wish I could blame the glass surface for my horrific artistry, but I don't think there's anything I could apply to the screen to help.
Remember when all Macbooks were antiglare and you had to pay extra for the glossy screens?
