When you are looking for a laptop, a mobile phone or a tablet, and read the specifications, you'll probably find information in nits . But, what are the nits? What measures this unit?
A nit is used in measuring luminance or the brightness in screens of laptops, televisions, tablets, and other devices with displays. Is a non-SI measure unit to specify how intense light emitted of a display can get per unit area.
And the greater the number of nits, the greater the luminance.
When you have a tablet and go to a park in a sunny day, you'll need to increase the bright of the screen to see the content. The maximum bright are the nits that the display supports.
It is believed that the word nit is formed from the Latin word "nitere", which translates to "to shine". And is related to the candela measure unit, when the candles where used to lit houses and streets, previously of most of the Standard International measure units.
In that epoch, you could say that one nit was one candela per square meter, that was the light produced by just one lit whale oil candle placed in a one-meter by one-meter container.
Nowadays, the SI measure unit is candela/square meter ( cd/m² ) .
Equivalences:
1 nit = 1 cd/m² (candela/square meter)
1 nit = 10-4 sb (stilbs: the CGS unit of luminance)
1 nit ≈ 𝛑 asb (apostlib)
1 nit ≈ 1 / 𝛑 cd / ft² ≈ 0.2919 fL (foot-lambert)
References
