The spec says 500 nits. Why does the wall look grey at noon?
Because nits measure light leaving the panel and lux measures light arriving at it. At 1,500 lux on the glass, reflection lifts every dark area until black reads as mid-grey. The panel is doing exactly what it was rated to do.Test it at night with the lights off. If black looks black in the dark, the panel is fine and the room is the problem.
So do I just buy the 700 nit version?
Only after you have tried moving the wall, which costs nothing.We pulled one 55-inch unit back 1.8 m out of a band of light from a glass entrance and the tenant thought we had swapped the panel. Cost: an afternoon and a longer power lead.
High brightness helps in a lobby with skylights. It does not beat a west-facing window at four in the afternoon, and no LCD at a sensible price will.
What does 700 nits cost me in power and noise?
Roughly 40 percent more draw. A 3 x 3 wall goes from about 1.1 kW to 1.6 kW, which changes the UPS, the air conditioning and the noise floor in a room people work in.In one control room we had to add a second split unit after the wall went in. That cost more than the brightness upgrade itself.
If the enclosure is sealed and the venue is hot, adding nits without adding cooling makes it worse: the panel derates in the afternoon, exactly when the light is worst.
Will it still look the same in three years?
Not at full output. LCD brightness fades, and a wall run at 100 percent from day one has no headroom when it drops 20 percent.We set walls to 70 or 80 percent in the factory menu and lock it. Clients who insist on maximum brightness usually call around year three asking why the wall looks dull. The honest answer is that we said so, and then sold them a new wall anyway.