Working outdoors or in high-ambient-light environments such as maritime, aerospace, or oil and gas industries presents unique challenges – paramount among these is maintaining screen visibility under the sun’s relentless glare. The quality of your operations can depend heavily on the readability of your screens, and navigating the world of screen brightness can feel like a complex science.

So, how can you ensure that your display is always clear, crisp, and visible, no matter how intense the ambient light is? Welcome to the world of high-brightness monitors, where the key to sunlight readability lies in understanding and selecting the right display based on one crucial metric: nit counts.

Let’s delve into the science of screen brightness, break down the jargon, and help you understand exactly how many nits your screen needs for optimal sunlight readability.

What Does “Sunlight Readability” Really Mean?

Sunlight readability refers to the ability of a monitor to retain its visibility, clarity, and legibility in broad daylight conditions. Unlike standard screens that succumb to washed-out displays and troublesome reflections under the sun, sunlight-readable monitors  maintain their vibrant, crisp display even under intense outdoor brightness.

The versatility of sunlight-readable screens extends across various outdoor environments where visibility and comprehension are paramount. They are critical in ensuring safety and enhancing awareness for drivers and pedestrians alike. These high-visibility monitors are integral to many safety-critical applications, alerting and guiding individuals when it matters most.

In the demanding field of military operations, sunlight-readable monitors have been vital allies for several years, aiding in seamless navigation and the successful execution of high-level tasks. Their resilience and clarity under harsh light conditions make them an invaluable tool in the field.

Moreover, these monitors have found widespread commercial use as well. You’ll likely encounter them at your favorite fast-food chains or retail stores, where they function efficiently to display menus and other information in drive-thru sections, ensuring an uninterrupted customer experience. In essence, sunlight-readable monitors are far more than outdoor screens – they are a cornerstone of outdoor digital visibility.

How Sunlight Readability Is Measured:

Decoding the Brightness Metrics: Lumens, Candelas, and Nits
To understand how the display industry evaluates monitors’ relative brightness and visibility, we need to break down the terminology used in light measurement: lumens, candelas, and nits.

• Lumens (L): Lumens quantify the total volume of light emitted by a source, determining the breadth of illumination. A lighting device with a higher lumens value can illuminate a larger area.

• Candelas (CD): Candela measures the intensity of light emitted in a specific direction, encapsulating the ‘brightness’ of a light source. The term originates from the Latin ‘candela,’ meaning ‘candle.’ One candela approximates the light emitted from a 19th-century whale oil candle, sometimes visualized as the total amount of light emanating from a candle housed inside a one-meter cube.

• Nits: In the context of screen brightness, the industry employs the term ‘nits,’ signifying one candela per square meter. Despite not being an official unit, nits provide a practical way of measuring brightness for display devices. This term originates in the Latin ‘nitere,’ implying ‘to shine.’

Though you might be more accustomed to hearing about lumens in the context of lighting, when it comes to screen brightness, nits offer a more useful measure. Understanding these units allows us to make informed decisions about the most suitable monitors for our specific lighting environments.

Nit vs. Lumens: A Comparative Understanding

The key difference in nits vs. lumens is how these units consider light spread. Lumens overlook the dispersion or divergence of light from the source, whereas nits account for the light per unit area on a display surface. A typical fluorescent light emitting a wide beam might have a rating of 1,700 lumens. If a monitor were to concentrate the same amount of light into a focused 20-degree beam, it would have a high nit value, indicating an increase in brightness per unit area.

The concept becomes more evident when comparing diverse display sizes. A movie theater screen, used in dark environments, operates around 50 nits, whereas a smartphone, often used outdoors, has a brightness level of at least 300 to 400 nits. Even though a theater projector emits more light (measured in lumens), the smartphone concentrates more light into a smaller area, hence the higher nits.

The Significance of Nits in High Brightness Monitors

The use of nits in high-brightness monitors is essential for several reasons. Nits accurately measure the true display brightness, making up for the limitations of most displays that cannot replicate the full range of human color vision and enabling the comparison of different displays’ brightness. Two screens with identical nit values will appear equally bright, facilitating the selection of the optimal display or adjusting a screen to its best brightness.

Determining the Required Nits for Outdoor Use

Commercial LCDs often lack the necessary brightness for unhindered visibility in high ambient light conditions. In contrast, optically bonded sunlight-readable displays ensure clarity even in intensely bright environments. For good visibility in daylight conditions, a monitor needs to possess a brightness level of 400-700 nits. However, a sunlight-readable display requires at least 1,000 nits or more for direct, bright sunlight viewing. This understanding is essential in selecting the right monitor that can withstand the demands of outdoor use.

Elevating Sunlight Readability Where You Need It Most

While understanding brightness metrics and optimal nit values is crucial, enhancing sunlight readability isn’t just about cranking up the backlight intensity. At AbraxSys, we recognize this and approach readability with a broader perspective, ensuring our clients get the best visibility in even the most brightly lit environments.

Beyond brightness manipulation, we employ advanced optical bonding technology to enhance the contrast ratio, which is crucial for outdoor viewability. This technique eliminates the air gap between the display and the glass surface, improving contrast by removing mismatched reflective layers and increasing sunlight readability by up to 400%. In essence, we don’t just make the display brighter; we enhance its inherent visibility features. This approach, combined with increased scratch resistance and overall LCD integrity, ensures you can always find superior, high-performance displays for the most demanding outdoor and industrial environments.

Want help selecting the perfect monitors for your needs? Contact us today and schedule a consultation with our team.