display Luminance

What is the best display luminance of your monitor?

What is the best display luminance of your monitor? - Table of contents:

The display industry is more complex than people realize. There’s so much that goes into a display technology that most people take for granted. This brief article will explain one of the most vital concepts within the display industry today—display Luminance.

Most people probably don’t realize how luminance affects their everyday life and how prominent its existence is. If you’re wondering, what is display Luminance and how it affects me, read below to find out more.

display Luminance

What is display Luminance?

Simply put, luminance describes the amount of light that is emitted from, passed through, or reflected off an object. It is measured using candela per square meter, which is the concentration of luminous intensity per unit area in a specific path. Luminance is often confused with brightness.

While the two concepts are similar, there are some striking differences. Luminance is something that can be measured with a luminance meter. It is an objective and a definite fact that can be tested several times over. Brightness, however, is subjective and something that is perceived by the human eye. It cannot be measured by any formula.

display Luminance

How Luminance of your monitor?

The brightness on your screen, As shown in the above picture, left is bright, right is dimmed.

The brightness of your monitor indicates the maximum amount of light emitted by the screen. The higher the brightness, the brighter the image. The maximum brightness, or peak brightness, is expressed in candela per square meter. This is more commonly known as nits. There are 3 levels of brightness.

  • Monitors have a low brightness if they have a peak brightness below 300 nits.
  • Monitors have a standard brightness if they have a peak brightness between 300 and 350 nits.
  • Monitors have a high brightness if they have a peak brightness above 350 nits.

How does the brightness influence your monitor?

Visibility

Of course, your monitor needs to be clearly visible in any situation. You have to be able to see the image properly, whether you’re in a dark or bright room. A monitor with high brightness is clearly visible in the dark and prevents reflections in brightly-lit rooms. That’s because the light produced by the monitor is brighter than the ambient light. That way, you can easily work next to the window all day long.

display Luminance

Color representation

Bright and vibrant colors contribute to a nice viewing experience, both in games or movies and when you edit photos or videos. A high brightness improves the color representation of your monitor. Bright screens display color differences more effectively than dimmed screens. For example, the dark blue of the ocean will look even darker and the light blue will look lighter.

display Luminance

Ergonomics

In addition to visibility and color representation, a monitor with high brightness also offers advantages for your eyes. With a dimmed screen, your eyes get tired more quickly than with a bright screen. To prevent strained eyes, you increase the brightness of your screen or turn on the blue light filter. This neutralizes the blue light that a monitor uses to display images.

display Luminance

What display Luminance value should my monitor be?

Now, it’s time to examine how bright (or dim) a display should be on different kinds of devices. After all, not every use case requires a super bright display, but a dim one isn’t acceptable for others either.

Smartphones: 300-1,500 Nits

Here’s the thing about smartphones: we carry them around everywhere. And many times, you’ll probably find yourself pulling your phone out under direct sunlight to check a call or a text. If your screen isn’t bright enough, even cranked up to the fullest, you’ll find yourself going to a place with more shadow in order to be able even to see what you’re doing on your phone.

Laptops: 200-600 Nits

Your laptop is a device you’d normally use indoors, maybe in your school, an office, or in the comfort of your home. Even if you’re using it outside, you’ll normally still sit down somewhere to use it, and that place will probably have at least some shade. Brightness, therefore, is not as important on a laptop as it is on a PC. It still needs a bright display, but it doesn’t need to go as bright as it does on a smartphone.

Monitors: 100-500 Nits

Finally, we have computer monitors. They can actually afford to go even dimmer than laptops. Why is that the case? Because while you might occasionally use a laptop outside, you’ll almost never do it with a PC monitor—they’ll be inside an office or your home, with appropriate lighting. The ability to go brighter is also appreciated, but it’s definitely not a must-have.

display Luminance

Brightness and HDR support

The brightness of your monitor also influences the HDR support. HDR monitors display a wider color gamut and contrast ratio, which in turn provides more realistic images.

VESA uses different standards for HDR monitors, such as DisplayHDR 400. In that case, “400” indicates the peak brightness of the monitor. The higher the peak brightness, the better the color representation and the higher the certification of the monitor. For example, HDR monitors with a peak brightness of 600 nits get the DisplayHDR 600 certification.

display Luminance

Unmarked pictures come from Internet, and source: makeuseof.com

Smartphones about 300-1,500 Nits, laptops about 200-600 Nits, monitors about 100-500 Nits.

Simply put, luminance describes the amount of light that is emitted from, passed through, or reflected off an object. It is measured using candela per square meter, which is the concentration of luminous intensity per unit area in a specific path. Luminance is often confused with brightness.

While the two concepts are similar, there are some striking differences. Luminance is something that can be measured with a luminance meter. It is an objective and a definite fact that can be tested several times over. Brightness, however, is subjective and something that is perceived by the human eye. It cannot be measured by any formula.

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