I'm now using this on my M1 MacBook Air (Ventura 13.6.6, combined with Stillcolor, force disabling contrast enhancement, font smoothing disabled, and True Non-Retina resolution streaming with sharp integer scaling)
Kensington UltraThin Magnetic Privacy Screen for 13" MacBook Pro/Air
It is dual-sided, I am using the matte side.
TLDR: Screen is even more comfortable now!! M1 Air = my most usable MacBook in years
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Sold on both Apple Store and Amazon, I got the Amazon version FWIW as it was on sale. Had a slightly different model number but I'm pretty sure both are identical products with the same name, probably just has e.g. different packaging for the Apple Store version.
Was interested in trying it out because it's one of only 2 "matte" screen protectors endorsed by Apple and sold on their store (and thus much less likely to have issues like "damaging the thin screen of the laptop while closed").
Huge fan of the "magnetic" style too, I had no idea that was even possible. No applying process at all, it literally just perfectly snaps on without bubbles and can be taken off extremely quick too. Also, contrary to some reviews, my m1air can still fully close just fine after snapping on the screen protector.
Since it's a privacy shield, it also effectively dims the screen — which I really wanted to try because one of my remaining issues with the MacBook Air screen is that it always feels too bright, even after making it very usable and readable for me (compared to almost any other MacBook) otherwise. Also wanted to see if reducing viewing angle would help things.
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It took a while getting used to at first as it certainly does dim the screen as expected, but because of the privacy aspect it's more dim the closer you get to the left and right edges and brighter in the center. Although even this "brighter center area" is still more dim than the screen usually is.
Yes, this does mean that your eyes are getting slightly different images but in this case it doesn't seem to be an issue for me. At first, this bothered me a little but I got used to it quick and it does not bother me anymore. While doing more focused work on the computer I realized I just stop noticing it. My eyes adjusted to this and the "darker edges" after just half a day.
I've realized that ever since I've put it on I am MUCH more productive! Once I got used to the way it affects the screen I realized that the near total elimination of glare and the dimming effect is making it so much more relaxing to read. Switching between windows with light or dark backgrounds is less jarring now. In addition, every time I open the laptop it doesn't feel like it's "blasting me with light" anymore.
Also any moving content like videos look amazing with the matte screen protector on — it feels like all motion is "happening at the same time all at once" in my field of vision. I'm much less having the need to move my eyes around or refocus while watching videos. For example if someone is walking around in a video but the background is supposed to be still, after putting on the matte screen it truly feels like only the person is moving and not the background.
Disabling temporal dithering already helped a lot with that (the sensation of "false motion" is even worse for me on dithered screens) but the screen protector finally made videos feel perfect to me.
I'm still using the laptop at lower hardware backlight, it looks like I very frequently settle on 44% backlight level indoors almost every day (both before and after snapping on the screen protector).
BTW, something really great is that there is very little "graininess" on this matte screen protector compared to others! There's a little bit but it's subtle enough to not interfere with focusing. It is not distracting or "rainbowy" unlike some worse matte filters I've seen.
I don't use any software color enhancements because when I've tried to use BetterDisplay color table adjustments to e.g. reduce the contrast, it feels like the screen becomes much less comfortable, even with Stillcolor. I noticed that when I modify color table adjustments such as Software Brightness on the physical display they seem to be "twice as precise with twice as less banding" as when I do the same color adjustment on a virtual display. Resetting color adjustments makes the screen comfortable again. FYI "Metal adjustments mode" is even worse (in that case I notice actual flicker), but even the default color table adjustments mode still causes issues.
Stillcolor still causes banding "to happen in some cases" instead of remaining entirely smoothed out, but it feels like these color adjustments are still running at some kind of more precise emulated 10bit i.e. possible dithering (possibly spatial instead of temporal?) instead of 8bit. On the other hand, if I leave all color adjustments at default and use the default Color LCD profile, the desktop seems to properly truncate to 8bit with Stillcolor and not use "in-between colors".
Since I don't use color adjustments as described above, the screen protector does a good job of perceptually dimming the screen and reducing contrast without introducing any software/color management issues.
