Stuart Semple's Black 4.0 is very nearly as black as Vantablack—and unlike that fabulously expensive coating, developed for the UK's defense ministry and possibly carcinogenic, you can buy a bottle of Black 4.0 for fifty bucks.
Vantablack has a light absorbance value of 99.965%, with Black 4.0 close behind at 99.95%. Earlier models of Black x.0 were only 99.6%.
I covered a laptop (below) in Black 2.0: it was exceptionally dark (and as you can see easily defeats a cellphone camera) but in person still had a faint velvet reflectance that was made worse over time by fingerprints. Even so, I liked the way it made other people in coffee shops look at it with a vague sense of unease. I'm hoping that my Black 4.0 laptop will be genuinely discomfiting for humans to behold.
