Why 200 nit calibration?

[e22big]

When reviewing a monitor or TV, I often see people calibrate it to 200 nit for reference when testing other areas of their performance (contrast, power consumption etc.) 

 

I wonder why this is the case though? Why exactly 200 nits and why not more or less? It doesn't sond like a standard brightness that most people use (or do they?)

[Stahlmann]

Everyone has to set the brightness to the value they are most comfortable with. For me it ended up at 150 nits. This value is not too dim for daytime viewing and not too bright for night time viewing. You'll have to play around with the brightness slider until you find something comfortable. The result will change for each person and each room. I recently did a calibration for a friend and because his room is rather dark even at daytime, his comfortable brightness ended up at 80 nits.

 

Also, the lower you can get your brightness, the more comfortable it will be for your eyes.

 

There is no real "standard value". Some reviewers measure while calibrated to 200 nits (Hardware Unboxed), some do it at 100 nits (Rtings). It really doesn't matter.

 

When you set your monitor to be dimmer, first it might look too dim. Just let your eyes adjust a few minutes and it and then make your decision to go brighter or dimmer.

 

Or course, capping your brightness to such low values only applies for SDR. For HDR you should keep it at 100% and let the PQ-mapping decide how bright it should be. In HDR the content-creator has to decide at what brightness it should run.

[xg32]

200 is way too bright for me, it's actually around 120-160, of course it's personal preference, color accuracy at the brightness you are comfortable with is important for some, there are also people that like their monitors oversaturated  

[e22big]

4 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Everyone has to set the brightness to the value they are most comfortable with. For me it ended up at 150 nits. This value is not too dim for daytime viewing and not too bright for night time viewing. You'll have to play around with the brightness slider until you find something comfortable. The result will change for each person and each room. I recently did a calibration for a friend and because his room is rather dark even at daytime, his comfortable brightness ended up at 80 nits.

 

Also, the lower you can get your brightness, the more comfortable it will be for your eyes.

 

There is no real "standard value". Some reviewers measure while calibrated to 200 nits (Hardware Unboxed), some do it at 100 nits (Rtings). It really doesn't matter.

 

When you set your monitor to be dimmer, first it might look too dim. Just let your eyes adjust a few minutes and it and then make your decision to go brighter or dimmer.

 

Or course, capping your brightness to such low values only applies for SDR. For HDR you should keep it at 100% and let the PQ-mapping decide how bright it should be. In HDR the content-creator has to decide at what brightness it should run.

guess I am the minority then, I actually prefer my monitor at at least 300 nit, perferably 350 although I tried to tone it down to 200 nit recently to save some electric bill

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, e22big said:

guess I am the minority then, I actually prefer my monitor at at least 300 nit, perferably 350 although I tried to tone it down to 200 nit recently to save some electric bill

No you're not a minority. Like i said everyone has to set it how he needs or wants it. There is literally no drawback or advantage to higher or lower brightness when we're talking about SDR other than eye strain. And even this varies from person to person with some being affected less and some more.