Dynon Brightness - Is it really improved?

Dynon now has an option for brighter displays on its D100 series EFIS and EMS. The output is doubled from 400 nits to 800 nits. The option is available on new units or as an upgrade for $200.

I upgraded my two units and, to tell the truth, I can't tell if they're any brighter at all. I made a phone call to Dynon tech support and was told, "They don't appear twice as bright to the eyes because vision is subjective." But I did expect to see SOME improvement.

Has anyone else upgraded theirs or seen a comparison between the old and new displays? If so, was the increased brightness readily apparent? I'm wondering whether my units might have gotten mixed up in the queue and returned with the old displays still inside.

- Larry

I looked at them both at Oshkosh. Side by side you could definately see a difference, although like the rep said, the brighter display doesn't appear to be twice as bright.

Try it in the Sun

Have you tried viewing the new displays in the direct sunlight? That's where you'll likely see the ddifference.

I just got my D-180 back from having the screen upgraded. I can certainly tell that it's brighter, but it didn't leave me squinting and reaching for sunglasses

The good news is that it was almost bright enough before, so it should be perfectly OK now. I'm a few weeks away from first flight, so I haven't had much chance to play with it yet.

Cheers,
Rusty

Oh Nits

I have a bud that has the brains to design and build his own glass panel. Here's his take on the nit business:

"In respect to the screen decision. There is a night and day (no pun
intended) difference between 400 and 800 nit. An absolute no brainer,
particularly in a canopy type aircraft such as the kick butt RV3. Don't
worry about the pundits, spend the money. And no, it won't look twice as
bright (you can do an experiment with LEDs to show you how useless the human eye is with judging brightness), but remember that CC back lights have a decay curve. I do believe by the time you put 500 hours into your RV, your bright option one will be the same brightness as a new 400 nit one. This is the real reason to go as bright as you can..."

Tony

The eye works on a log scale, so you have to make something 10X as bright in terms of light output before it looks twice as bright. The new screens really are 800 nits over the old 400 nits. Twice as many photons come out of the front as they did before. nits is the standard measurment for LCD screens, so it's what we use.

The place that you will notice the brightness increase is in bright sunlight. The extra light out really helps the contrast. We've had customers that are flying say that they are definatley easier to see when the sun is pouring down on the panel in flight.

As for the half-life of the backlight, on the panels we use it's about 15,000 hours. So your 800 nit screen will be 400 nits after 15,000 hours. If you make it to 15,000 hours on your plane and EFIS, give us a call and we'll make you a deal on a new backlight, okay?

dynonsupport said:

The eye works on a log scale, so you have to make something 10X as bright in terms of light output before it looks twice as bright. The new screens really are 800 nits over the old 400 nits. Twice as many photons come out of the front as they did before. nits is the standard measurment for LCD screens, so it's what we use.

Click to expand...

The relationship of energy-to-perception is logarithmic for both sight and sound, and the above statement is correct, it takes a 10X increase in energy (sound or light) to double the sound pressure level or light intensity. I'm more familiar with audio, but doubling the energy results in only a 3 db increase in loudness, not sure what that would be in nits.