Cover image of an article - Display Nits and How we measure it?
(Image credit: Daniel Korpai at Unsplash)
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What are the Display Nits?

The nits of a display is nothing but an unit of measurement of the screen's brightness. Just like meters, centimeters, kilometers, and many more are the units of measurement of a length, Nits is just an unit.

Nit isn't a standard unit of brightness measurement, just like horsepower isn't. The standard unit that's recognized by SI (System of International Units) for nits is Cd/m2 (Candela per Square Meter).

Now, How to measure 1 Cd/m2?

Well, it's very simple. You just fit the one poster of size 1 x 1 square meter on e wall, then hold the lighting candle, and see how much light is spreading on the poster.

The amount of lights that spread on or illuminates the 1 x 1 square meter poster that you just fitted on the wall, is 1 Candela per Square Meter.

And, that 1 Cd/m2 is nothing but 1 Nit.

Remember that the Nits do not refers directly or indirectly to the intensity of lights. Read below how nits are differs from light's intensity.

Intensity of Light vs Nits

First of all, what's the intensity of light?

It's basically the amount of light that emit from the source. The general unit that we use to measure the intensity is Lumens.

Now, compare it with Display Nits.

Nits are only related to the lights that falls on the surface of specified area whereas Lumens are relate to the source not the destination.

So, the amount of light that's falling on surface will always be less than the same is emitting from the source.

Hence, the higher the nits, the higher the brightness of a display.

Display with higher nits have always give better visibility of content in outdoor or high ambient light rooms.

How we measure the Display Nits?

To measure the display nits of the laptop, we are using Extech LT45 LED Light Meter. You can get from Amazon US here (Non-aff link). See below how the meter looks like. It measure in lux (Lumens per Square Meters).

Extech LT45 LED Light Meter
(Image Credit: Amazon US)

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