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Direct Reflections On TVs
Glossy And Matte Finishes
If you watch TV in a well-lit room, especially one with large windows, you've likely noticed how distracting direct reflections can be. Glare is one of the biggest factors that can hinder your viewing experience when watching television or playing video games. Unlike laptops or phones, TVs typically can't be repositioned to avoid reflections. Therefore, it's important to choose a TV with effective direct reflection handling and high peak brightness; otherwise, it may be difficult to see the screen clearly. TV screens are designed to absorb and reflect light in different ways, and the material used for the screen finish plays a significant role in how they deal with glare.
We test a TV's direct reflection handling using objective methods to determine how much light it absorbs and reflects. You can read about reflection handling on monitors.
Test results
Test Methodology Coverage
We added this test as part of our 2.0 test bench update. Before that, we had a different Reflections test, and while they're similar, they're not identical, and their results aren't comparable. However, the bright room photo is taken the same way as it was in the previous test bench, so they're comparable. Learn how our test benches and scoring system work.
| 1.11 | 2.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| Direct Reflections - Intensity | ❌ | ✅ |
| Ring Light Picture (Dark Room) | ❌ | ✅ |
When It Matters
If you watch TV in a bright room with large windows or place multiple lights directly opposite the screen, pay close attention to how your TV handles reflections. Excessive reflections distract viewers, and a TV with limited brightness can make the picture even harder to see. Remember that every TV reflects some light, so you can't entirely avoid reflections when you watch in a bright environment.
Our Tests
When light shines on a display, most of it is absorbed by the screen, but some is reflected back towards the viewer. We want to know how intense those reflections are. Also, depending on the panel's coating, not all light is reflected the same way; some light comes straight back to the source, like a mirror, while other light is scattered across the screen.
We take two photos of the TV while it's turned off for our TV reflections test. In the first photo, we place it in a bright room with lights shining directly on the screen to show how it looks in a well-lit environment. In the second photo, we position a ring light exactly nine feet in front of the panel in a dark room to capture the intensity of reflected light—our objective marker for how well the TV handles direct reflections. We derive the final score from scientific measurements rather than these photos, which serve only as a visual reference for reflection handling. We also verify the type of screen finish the TV uses.
Picture (Dark Room, Off)
We take a second photo with the lights turned off. We install a ring light exactly nine feet away from the TV, as it's a practical distance to use for any TV regardless of its size. It's also the distance at which most of our pictures are taken. We then place a black backdrop behind the light to eliminate any light bouncing off nearby walls. This test shows how the TV handles reflections independent of its content and how they appear in dark scenes. We measure the intensity of reflected light to gauge its performance under these conditions.
Here, again, the ring light is much more visible on the Sony BRAVIA 3 than on the Sony A95L.
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Intensity
When light hits the screen, it does one of three things: it's absorbed by the screen, reflected directly back (like a mirror), or scattered across the screen. Our intensity score indicates how intense the reflections are.
To measure the amount of light a TV reflects, we power off the TV in a dark room and use a Neewer RP18B Pro ring light, always installed exactly 9 feet away from the panel, to light up a portion of the screen uniformly. We install a non-reflective black backdrop behind the ring light to eliminate any reflections from the surrounding walls. We use a Nikon D750 camera to capture a shot of the ring light reflection from the screen. With the photo, we calculate the total intensity amount, with 0% being black and 100% being pure white. As the calculation is done using the photo, a score of 100% indicates clipping on the camera, and thus, the final % is how close the image is to being clipped.
Additional Information
Reflections & picture quality
Reflected light changes how you perceive the colors your TV generates and can wash out certain details. Smeared reflections also raise the TV's black levels. In a bright room, increase the backlight to help the TV outcompete other light sources, preserve image accuracy, and retain visible detail.
For more on this see our articles on Total Reflected Light, Ambient Black Level Raise, and Ambient Color Saturation.
Glossy screens, matte screens & contrast
A TV's screen finish strongly influences how it reflects light. Glossy screens produce intense, mirror-like reflections, but because these reflections remain well-defined rather than smeared, blacks can still appear deep and inky (though this depends on the panel).
Matte coatings diffuse reflections more widely across the screen. This diffusion lessens their visual impact but also raises black levels and reduces the perceived depth of dark areas. Whether this trade-off affects picture quality depends on your room's lighting conditions.
Below, we see how the matte coating on the Hisense CanvasTV QLED 2024 spreads out the reflection more than the glossy coating on the TCL QM8/QM851G QLED.
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How To Get The Best Results
Position your TV so that no direct light shines on the screen. Raise the backlight or OLED setting to a level that suits your environment. A TV with high SDR brightness helps combat glare, so if you watch in a well-lit room, look for a model with both high peak brightness and strong reflection handling.
Conclusion
If you don't watch TV exclusively in a dark room, you likely deal with a few direct light sources. Although you should avoid placing your TV directly opposite bright lights, that isn't always possible—so you need a TV with strong direct reflection handling. We test reflection handling to see how each screen disperses and absorbs bright light. Glossy TVs absorb the most light but reflect it more like a mirror, which isn't ideal for rooms with direct light sources. In brighter spaces with multiple light sources or large windows, a matte finish may help. Above all, prioritize a TV with high peak brightness to combat glare effectively.
Recommended Articles
Comments
Direct Reflections On TVs: Glossy And Matte Finishes: Main Discussion
What do you think of our article? Let us know below.
Want to learn more? Check out our complete list of articles and tests on the R&D page.
- 32120
Thanks for your work on this issue. My TV is a glossy screen located in a small bright room with large windows (affecting daylight sports viewing) or lamp-lighted in the evening (affecting viewing of other shows). Moving stuff around to improve viewing is not an option. So I am thinking about replacing it with one of the matte screen TVs offered by Samsung, Hisense or TCL, and came across your comments on reflection handling. It’s counter-intuitive to me that a glossy screen can be better at reflection handling than a matte screen. Sure enough when I go into Best Buy, I can see reflections of the store’s lights and my own presence in ALL the glossy screens, but in NONE of the 3 brands’ matte screens, which were all represented in the store 10/25/24. Yet in the table that you provide, you identify many glossy screens as better at reflection handling than your highest-rated matte, the Samsung. My current TV works fine even though it’s old–the only issue it really has is the reflections on the glossy screen. I don’t want to replace it with say, the highly rated Samsung C4 OLED shown in your table, and then bring it home and wonder why I can still see the windows and lamp light reflected in the screen. Am I misunderstanding your rating and testing? If an old glossy screen is my only problem now, is that likely to continue with a new glossy screen? Would appreciate your thoughts.
Hi erict,
Thank you for reaching out with your question! I’m glad you asked—it’s an insightful one, and it makes sense that our results might seem counterintuitive at first glance.
Reflections on TVs can be broken down into three main types: specular reflections (mirror-like), haze reflections, and Lambertian reflections. This image captures the distinctions well: Specular, Haze & Lambertian Reflections
Here’s how each screen type handles these:
Matte Screens: Matte finishes are excellent at handling specular (mirror-like) reflections, so you won’t see clear reflections of yourself or nearby lights on the screen. This can be ideal if you can’t control lighting around your TV, as it minimizes these types of direct reflections. However, matte screens tend to struggle with haze and Lambertian reflections, which can result in an overall lightened or “raised” black level in bright environments, reducing contrast and slightly desaturating colors.
Glossy Screens: Glossy finishes typically perform very well at handling haze & Lambertian reflections, especially if they are combined with a polarizer such as is the case with LG OLEDs. This makes them excellent for overall reflection handling, though where they fall short compared to matte finishes is at handling mirror-like specular reflections, which will be readily visible unless the TV is able to fight them off with a high brightness output.
When choosing a screen finish, it comes down to what’s more distracting for you. If mirror-like reflections are the main concern, a matte screen could be a great choice. But if you’re primarily concerned about maintaining contrast and color in well-lit rooms, a glossy screen with good overall reflection management might be more suitable.
Finally, if your TV environment has a lot of ambient light, regardless of the finish, a bright TV can make a significant difference in daytime use. The extra brightness can help cut through the reflections and maintain a clear, vivid picture.
On a side note, we are currently in the midst of reworking our reflections testing for release in early 2025 :)
I hope this provides useful insights for your next TV purchase, don’t hesitate should you have any other questions or feedback for us!
Cheers
- 21010
Thanks for your work on this issue. My TV is a glossy screen located in a small bright room with large windows (affecting daylight sports viewing) or lamp-lighted in the evening (affecting viewing of other shows). Moving stuff around to improve viewing is not an option. So I am thinking about replacing it with one of the matte screen TVs offered by Samsung, Hisense or TCL, and came across your comments on reflection handling.
It’s counter-intuitive to me that a glossy screen can be better at reflection handling than a matte screen. Sure enough when I go into Best Buy, I can see reflections of the store’s lights and my own presence in ALL the glossy screens, but in NONE of the 3 brands’ matte screens, which were all represented in the store 10/25/24. Yet in the table that you provide, you identify many glossy screens as better at reflection handling than your highest-rated matte, the Samsung. My current TV works fine even though it’s old–the only issue it really has is the reflections on the glossy screen. I don’t want to replace it with say, the highly rated Samsung C4 OLED shown in your table, and then bring it home and wonder why I can still see the windows and lamp light reflected in the screen. Am I misunderstanding your rating and testing? If an old glossy screen is my only problem now, is that likely to continue with a new glossy screen? Would appreciate your thoughts.
- 21010
Dear rtings! I think Rtings is a bit contradictory. Since you believe that low reflectivity is meant to provide customers with a better viewing experience, isn’t having a higher brightness LCD screen just to solve the problem of reflectivity and provide customers with a better viewing experience; The current testing of Rtings is purely focused on testing the characteristics of the screen itself, ignoring the efforts made by TV manufacturers to optimize reflection. In my opinion, this type of testing is very unfair; At least in my opinion, the proportion of reflection in the score is too high, and OLED should not have such a big advantage in it
Hi Michaelli,
Higher brightness display panels do play a significant part in effectively fighting reflections and yielding a better viewing experience. However, this applies only to bright scenes. In darker scenes or with otherwise low APLs, good reflection performance is crucial to ensure good viewing in rooms with ambient light and/or direct reflections on the screen.
We are planning to reassess the weighting of our tests, including reflections, in our usages scores in the future.
Cheers
- 0-1-21-2
Dear rtings! I think Rtings is a bit contradictory. Since you believe that low reflectivity is meant to provide customers with a better viewing experience, isn’t having a higher brightness LCD screen just to solve the problem of reflectivity and provide customers with a better viewing experience; The current testing of Rtings is purely focused on testing the characteristics of the screen itself, ignoring the efforts made by TV manufacturers to optimize reflection. In my opinion, this type of testing is very unfair; At least in my opinion, the proportion of reflection in the score is too high, and OLED should not have such a big advantage in it
- 43230
Hi! I think that display contrast is a very important for both darkroom and ambient lighting condition for general viewing cases. And these days, I’ve been paying attention to the youtube reviews about the reflection of the display and its influence when watching TV. I feel like Rtings’ existing evaluation scheme is no problem and the weight is very important. Rather, I believe that contrast and refelection evaluating might need to be updated for the ambient or lighting conditions of indoor and outdoor.
Hi Darkman,
Thanks for taking the time to write to us with your feedback and suggestions!
Although we don’t currently test TVs for outdoor lighting conditions, I did go ahead and added your suggestion directly to the list that we review when planning our future test bench updates. :)
We are currently planning a rework of our reflection testing in order to better evaluate how TVs perform across a wide range of lighting scenarios, but the timeline isn’t definitive yet as we have quite a bit of reflection-specific R&D to do beforehand.
Let us know should you have any other suggestions or feedback for us!
Regards
- 43230
Hello! Sorry for the delay on our end. Pascal, a member of our R&D team in charge of displays has been away and will be retuning next week. He’ll aim to catch up on all R&D related questions in this thread once he’s back!
- 43230
Hi!
I think that display contrast is a very important for both darkroom and ambient lighting condition for general viewing cases. And these days, I’ve been paying attention to the youtube reviews about the reflection of the display and its influence when watching TV. I feel like Rtings’ existing evaluation scheme is no problem and the weight is very important. Rather, I believe that contrast and refelection evaluating might need to be updated for the ambient or lighting conditions of indoor and outdoor.
- 2102-1
In the TV evaluation of Rtings, You guys seem to think the Reflection item is very important and valuable. personally, I am not looking at TV reviews in terms of how reflection is handled. I am looking at PQ performance as well as other useful features that the TV has such as sound, connectivity, gaming performance, etc. I am not willing to sacrifice potential loss in black level, contrast, color, and detail with a matte screen just to avoid reflections. For TV evaluation, I do think it’s important but again, I do not feel it should be weighted higher than any PQ parameter. I understand it being under the PQ category for Rtings as reflections can affect the PQ. But this is subjective based on the user’s room environment. It is appropriate to give it a score, but I would prioritize and weight categories that directly affect PQ, higher than reflections. Don’t you guys really want to turn Reflection into something less important?
Hi James_92,
Thanks for taking the time to reach out with your feedback!
I agree with you that the current weighting of reflection handling is too high, especially in the TV shows and Sports usage. The good news is that we’re planning a complete overhaul of out TV usage scores later this year. I expect that the weight of reflections will be significantly lowered at that time (and PQ tests will see an increase in their weight at the same time!)
Let us know should you have any other feedback or suggestions for us!
Regards
Edited 1 year ago: Typo