Oh Ok yeah that's characteristic of Noob's coating on the ceramic part. It's the ceramic part that appears brighter, not the letters appearing darker. I thought you were talking about the letters, because on my ARF the letters have accumulated a lot of dirt that's hard to clean and when they're not that clean they look "darker".
ARF and CF bezels look better compared to what you don't like about the Noob, but not a lot. The gen has the same effect as well, it's just that it looks worse on the Noob.