UPDATE:
I ended up ordering another pair and the 4th screen protector finally came out acceptable. My advice:
Don’t do it alone, have someone pull down the adhesive layer for you while you scrub it down and do it in the most dust-free environment possible (We chose the bathroom right after a shower AND a quick vacuum session)
Align from the top with the bezels off (you can put them back on to check your alignment) and use as many stickers as possible to secure the protector to the top of your screen.
“Fold” the stickers along your protector so that the alignment sticks.
Do a final thorough wipe with the cloth before you start to pull the adhesive side layer off.
Pull the layer off quickly, moving diagonally downwards while scrubbing down the protector onto the screen as much as possible. Don’t worry about air bubbles unless you can see some kind of debris (dust, hair or similar) underneath. You can get them out afterwards. Do not try to remove air bubbles with debris under them by scrubbing at them, I got some scratches on my screen that way.
I just installed Viascreens’ matte (not ‘matte light’) protector. Honestly much easier than I feared after reading some of the discussion above! With the supplied ‘post-application’ tabs it’s pretty easy to remove dust/bubbles even once it’s down, just by lifting a little area.
I would say their dimension isn’t great for a Framework-labelled product though, pretty obvious they haven’t actually got one or tried it. I assume custom sizes cost extra - but if it’s not much I’d suggest taking a measurement (& checking against nrp’s above) and ordering a bigger, better-fitting one than they offer.
It could be so easy to align, and any misalignment hidden by the bezel anyway (plus the edges which are hardest to keep dust/bubble/crinkle free) - and most importantly you wouldn’t see that it:
is slightly out of square;
leaves a slight gap, where glare from the light behind you really catches the eye if positioned just (not) right
I would suggest larger than the bezel’s opening area, simply size it to the panel. I checked alignment by overlaying the bezel and it doesn’t seem like it would interfere, it only didn’t click fully into place because of the sticky tabs on the protector.
I received my Viascreens “Privacy Lite” protector, which also adds a matte surface. Matte is really nice, but of course it isn’t as good as a factory made matte surface. Mounting was quite easy, but sadly there is no second protection plastic sheet on the outside. Got some small scratches on the protector itself now from removing air bubbles, but this is no big deal.
I can confirm what @OJFord wrote: my protector is a little too small, I did not have to remove the brezel. Installing it was quite easy.
It is a little expensive for a 2-way privacy protector, but there was no alternative here. Overall I’m quite happy with it.
There was a second peel-off strip at the outside, but I wasn’t able to find a additional layer at first (removed the hole protector using the strip). You motivated me to try it again using another edge than the one with the strip - now I found the protection layer easily and removed it, thanks a lot! The matte is now really matte The protector could be a little larger, now there is a noticable gap (matte/glare) at the bottom/top.
For anyone living in the EU, the German seller schutzfolien24 now also offers screen protectors including matte ones starting at 14,99€. - Sadly I couldn’t test them out yet, since my laptop is not here yet.
I mentioned this to ViaScreen’s support, their reply:
I’m not sure if that’s true @nrp? Fair enough if so, but it really doesn’t seem a great fit to me, though maybe the spec was fine and it’s just poorly cut (it isn’t even square after all, which I did also mention, no reply to that).
Thanks for the tip. I bought the 14,99 one, just applied it and its waaaay better now. Honestly i do not see any upsides of having a reflective display. Right now with the cheap matte protector the display looks as sharp as before, but without the incredibly annoying reflections.
I got the photodon one sized for framework and I didn’t do mine on center. But it seems like if I center it there will still be some edges with glare (but less pronounced). I would love to have someone verify this before I think about returning my laptop again lol.
Update: it seems like the photodon sized one only covers the part of the screen that lights up, but there is probably a few mm of parts that are glossy but don’t light up that the photodon one doesn’t cover.
The setting is a north side room with a very large window, on a day with very bright evening sun. The photos were made with an LG G6 in automatic mode.
Without protector:
The screen shows a clear, sharp reflection of the window at the presented angle.
With screen protector:
The screen shows a diffused, bright reflection without details.
Subjective interpretation:
Without the protector the reflection is so clear and detailed that i could skip the morning tour to the mirror. Working at lowest brightness wouldn’t be possible in the given light situation.
With the protector it’s way better. It’s not quite the most comfortable working at lowest settings, but it’s doable without beeing too distracted by the reflections. One step above is already very comfortable (and actually the setting at which i’m writing this). When i sit in front of the laptop there is no reflection at all, with the window to my side.
The foliage itself is cut to fit the framework display. There is a margin of ~2mm top/bottom combined, and ~1mm left/right combined. You can see it when the display is off, when the display is on it’s basically unnoticeable. Though i would recommend to make it flush at the top, and have more margin at the bottom, as in my subject experience it’s less distracting at the bottom.
They also offer a glas variant, I would be really interested in how that would look, if the finish is very different or not.
Depending on how annoying it is, you can also provide them with pictures. They are normally very flexible when it’s about margins etc. and may send you a slightly bigger one.
p.s. I still hope that frame work will sell me a 1920x1280 matte screen in the future. Perhaps sending in the current one (Don’t even need a refund for it. You can use it for someone else!!)
The protector could be a little larger, now there is a noticable gap (matte/glare) at the bottom/top.
