What does fully laminated screen mean? Fully laminated display vs non laminated display

Most people start out their digital artist journey with a non-screen drawing tablet, be it a tablet like the Wacom Intuos or XPPen Deco. and then they upgrade to a pen display such as Wacom Cintiq and XPPen Artist? why and When?

One of the pros of a Pen Display is the fact that drawing directly on the screen offers more accuracy than drawing on a Pen Tablet. And it doesn't require a lot of eye hand coordination.

Display Pens also offer more comfort and doesn't strain your wrists. and you would be able to work more hours and be more productive. Once you get used to drawing and writing on glass, it's perfectly natural because the near-zero-latency of the stylus. 

But what I believe the winning point for Drawing Tablets with Screen is Comfort and Workflow. These Screen tend to be big and more comfortable for your hand, the fact that you can set it up on your desk on a stand and move it around with ease.

if you're good with a good portably sketching device, then the iPad Air/iPad Pro is a viable option. plenty of space for drawing on it, and the Apple Pencil is great. 

The market offers a wide variety of tablet devices that makes up for multiple options for almost every requirement. There simply are a lot of parameters to consider when you buy a pen display monitor, the display size and resolution, stylus pressure sensitivity, compatibility with your other accessories, and so on. Not to mention, price too can be a huge factor when it comes to choosing the right tablet.

Ive seen some people say that a non-laminated screen is mostly unnoticeable when drawing if your not using it at the same time as a laminated screen to test the difference. I have also seen some people say they always notice the non-laminated screen and it annoys them even when they are not drawing.

While a parallax is not the worst thing that can happen to an artists but the slight difference between the tip of the pen and the mouse cursor can be annoying.

screen parallax can be a problem if it's noticeable, most tablets suffer from parallax in some measure. So this article is about Fully laminated vs non laminated display drawing tablet and explaining why Fully laminated display screens can reduce parallax.

Parallax

Parallax is an offset between the tip of the pen & the mouse cursor where the lines you draw actually appears.

If you Noticed that the cursor doesn't match where the tip of the pen is, that's what parallax is.

Parallax is usually caused by the distance between the pen tip and the digitizer under the screen's glass. The less this distance is, the less parallax you will get in your pen display.

Calibrating the screen can help you get the lowest amount of parallax from your pen device, but that doesn't totally eliminate it.

Also, parallax is affected by the angle you view the screen from, so it's often recommended to recalibrate your device every time you adjust the angle you draw on (unless you're fine with an extra parallax).

Non-laminated display

Unlike drawing with a pencil on paper, a monitor tablet is made up of multiple panel layers. These layers cause a gap between the physical pen tip position and the digital line input location. This is the most common cause of the inability to draw lines when drawing with a pen monitor for the first time.

In conventional non-laminated displays, the screen sit at the bottom. And the digitizer panel and top glass layer are stuck together. With this kind of arrangement, an air gap builds up between the two layers.

For example, the first generation of XPPen Artist 12 / Artist 13.3 / Artist 15.6 doesn't have a laminated display, which means there's an air gap between the glass and the LCD.

If you've ever seen any of those "budget" iPads from 2017-2020 that a lot of people own, it's exactly like that.

Cons

The air gap causes disturbances in the light coming in and out of the screen. These disturbances affect the quality of the image produced.

The screen is more reflective, in-coming light will bounce around inside the screen causing glare. but under normal indoor lighting conditions, you can see everything perfectly.

Non-laminated displays have a parallax issue in which the line on the screen appears several millimeters away from where the stylus touches the surface.

The air gap in a nonlaminated display is also a hollow area. Thereby, tapping the glass layer with a stylus produces a noticeable hollow sound. The sound can be disturbing for some.

Pros

Most of this display is easy to disassemble, they are normally fixed with clasps. If you want to change a screen, just snap the buckle. However some are fixed with glue, then you need to change the display integrally.

Compared to the screen covered with a glass, it has a lower reflectance. You can have a better view angle even under a strong sunlight, sometimes it depends on the maximum display brightness.

Because the plastic frame is a bit higher than the screen, so it has a better protection to the screen when falling down.

Fully Laminated display

Laminated screen is the screen made by having the screen glass, digitizer, and the display are made as one piece. The glue used in this process is not visible in the final result. Making the screen seamless.

In models of XPPen Artist 12 Pro / Artist 13.3 Pro / Artist 15.6 Pro which have a laminated screen. The three layers are laminated together as a single piece of display and glass.

drawing directly on the XP-Pen Artist 12 Pro's laminated screen:

There is no gap between glass and display. So, it would look like screen and front glass are one and the same. More "like paper".

Writing on the laminated iPad display is definitely nicer - it feels more like writing directly on the surface of something, since there's not the air gap between the screen/image and the Pencil. It's slightly quieter, too, but it's not deafeningly loud on a non-laminated screen.

This is the difference a laminated screen makes. Original iPad Air 1 vs iPad Air 2:

Pros

This makes the screen thinner, and so it reduces the distance between the pen tip and the digitizer, thus reduces the parallax.

There's no difference to the parallax when using the stylus. There's no misalignment. The lines still look as if they appear directly beneath the pen tip.

images on laminated displays appear more vibrant and as if they are painted on the top of the glass because of the reduced glare or light spill.

Using a stylus to draw or annotate is a lot of fun. It feels more precise when you're drawing directly on the pixels.

laminated display does not completely eliminate the tapping sound but it significantly reduces the hollow sound.

Removing the air gap by bonding the displayers all together significantly reduced the physical profile of the display screen, thus reducing further the thickness of a drawing display monitor.

It prevent dust to come below the screen glass, which happens at times in pen displays, it makes the screen thinner & more beautiful too.

Because of the absence of the air gap, the light and produced image from the display screen is brighter and clearer. The result is better visibility, especially when the involved device is used in a strongly lit environment or under sunlight.

Cons

Manufacturing laminated displays is more expensive than producing nonlaminated ones. Laminating the display layers is complicated, thus requiring a different manufacturing process. The result is that devices with laminated displays are more expensive than their nonlaminated counterparts.

Another significant disadvantage of a laminated display when compared to a nonlaminated display is that it is more expensive to repair when it is damaged because the digitizer also needs to be replaced. Thereby, if the top glass breaks, the user has to have the entire display panel replaced.

In earlier non-laminated display devices, if the top glass breaks you can simply swap it with the new one – with minimal repair costs.

The advantages of laminated displays may be negligible for average users. In use-case scenarios that involve typical office productivity or distanced viewing, especially when used in computers and televisions, the design and manufacturing configuration may not provide significantly better usability and user experience.

Conclusion

This article make a introduce of what a full-laminated screen performs on the graphics tablet. The fact is that full-laminated display has a better display quality and great visibility in strongly light environments and under the sun and a supreme appearance performance.

the laminated displays are becoming the popular trends. With its cost decreasing, it will be applied more in electronic devices.

If you really want the absolute best visual technology, you should go with a new XPPen Artist Pro model because it has a laminated screen and will give you the best picture quality. It really is a great device.

However, if you’re a school or business or just a frugal person wanting a solid tablet, I recommend the old Artist model. The Artist 12 or Artist 15.6 is a high-quality device, and it uses a non-laminated screen. This means when it breaks , you’ll be able to get it repaired for a reasonable price.

For glare you can get a matte Anti-reflective screen protector which is useful.