Apple Watch Display With Ion-X Glass Outperforms Sapphire in Bright Light
DisplayMate has published a detailed report today analyzing both the Ion-X Glass and the sapphire displays that come on the various Apple Watch models. While the sapphire is touted by Apple as more durable (which it is), according to the analysis it does not however perform as good as the Ion-X Glass when it comes to sunlight. Instead, the cheaper Ion-X Glass is better for visibility in terms of reflectance and outdoor lighting:
In the dark both Apple Watch displays appear and perform identically, but in ambient light they appear and perform differently due to the difference in the Reflectance of Sapphire and Glass… For the Apple Watch Sport with Ion-X Glass we measured the Screen Reflectance to be 4.7 percent, while for the Apple Watch with Sapphire we measured 8.2 percent Screen Reflectance, which is 74 percent higher than with Glass… The 74 percent higher Reflectance of the Apple Watch with Sapphire means that its screen will reflect almost twice as much surrounding ambient light as the Apple Watch Sport with Glass. And it takes surprisingly little ambient light for that to make a significant visible difference.
DisplayMate goes on to show the difference between the two displays including how each performs in ambient light, color gamut, viewing angles and more. As you can see from the image below, the sapphire display that comes on the steel Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition does not perform as well in terms of visibility when compared to the Apple Watch Sport’s Ion-X Glass.
DisplayMate suggests that Apple could improve the visibility of the sapphire and Ion-X Glass by “using some new advanced technologies” that are in the pipeline.