Knowledge
Nits indoor and outdoor
You choose brightness by the ambient light. Indoors a few hundred nits is often enough. In full sun you need thousands of nits.
What is a nit?
A nit is one candela per square metre (cd/m²). It tells you how much light a surface emits towards the viewer. For comparison: an ordinary office monitor sits around 250 to 350 nits.
Indoors
Indoors the screen competes with artificial light. Indoor LED screens usually deliver a few hundred to just over a thousand nits. More is rarely needed and quickly too much in a dark room: the screen dazzles and blows out on camera.
How well the screen dims matters more than the maximum. For dark rooms and studios, ask about the image at low brightness.
Outdoors
Outdoors you compete with daylight. For a screen that has to stay readable during the day, count on roughly 4,000 to 5,000 nits or more. If the front faces the sun, you need more. Screens for the sun-facing side go beyond 10,000 nits.
In the evening that brightness is too much. An outdoor screen should dim with the ambient light, using a light sensor or a schedule. That saves power and avoids nuisance for the surroundings. Local authorities sometimes set limits on the brightness of advertising screens after sunset; check that for your site.
Behind glass
A screen in a shop window stands indoors but is viewed from outside. It has to hold its own against daylight and reflections in the glass. That is why screens for behind glass are brighter than ordinary indoor screens.
More nits is not always better
Brightness costs power and produces heat. A screen you run at part of its maximum uses less.
When you compare, look at contrast too: black has to stay black when the sun is on it.
Examples from the catalogue
The values below come straight from the catalogue.
| Product | Brightness |
|---|---|
| C-Max 640 | 300–800 nits |
| C-Max 640 COB | 300–600 nits |
| C-Max 640 Eco | 500 nits |
| C-Rock 500 Outdoor | 4,000–5,500 nits |
| C-Rock 500 Indoor | 600–800 nits |
| C-Slim 960 | 5,000–5,500 nits |
| C-Slim 960 Bright | 5,000–14,000 nits |
| C-Slim 560 Curved | 5,000–5,500 nits |
| C-Slim 960 DIP | 10,000 nits |
| C-Mesh 750 Poster | 2,000–3,500 nits |
| C-Mesh 250 Strip | 3,000–3,500 nits |
Read on
Pixel pitch and viewing distance
What pixel pitch is, how a rule of thumb takes you from viewing distance to pitch, and when that rule does not hold.
IP ratings explained
How to read an IP rating, what IP20, IP40, IP54, IP65, IP66 and IP67 mean, and why an LED cabinet has a front and a rear rating.
Refresh rate and camera
What refresh rate is, why a camera sees bands you do not, which values are common and how to test a screen before a shoot.