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wrote:

There has been some discussion on the ssca forum recently about laptops
vs chartplotters. On fellow commented that he tried a 15 inch LCD
screen at the helm but found it too bright at night. He could not dim
it enough. What has been your experience?

It is some of the subtle things like that that really make the
difference on the high end marine grade displays.

Last fall I did a delivery trip on a boat with a Raymarine C120. I was
in party with another boat and we were both by ourselves on the boats.
We made a night arrival at Portland, Maine in the same crappy weather
and in typical traffic and I was able to dim the C120 down enough to use
it in darkness without losing my ability to see out of the cockpit.

The display was panel mounted directly in front of the helm, 18"-24"
away, and below my line of sight and it is the first marine color
display I've used that would dim down enough to be that useful in
darkness. It it was not threatening my night vision at all. Very
confidence inspiring and big enough that a split screen radar/chart
plotter display worked well.

Up to that point, I had always preferred the older CRT and amber and
green monochrome LCD displays for use at night.

I'm kind of old school and used to consider color displays to be sort of
trivial or an "eye candy" thing but I've come to realize that the way
that color displays differentiate different by colors lets you spot
specific things quicker at a glance.

It is sort of tough to rate display by the specifications. Some of them
advertise with NITS values that seem to be aimed winning over buyers
with the biggest numbers. I've seen good displays that called
themselves 1200 NITS display and better displays that were spec'd at
half of that.

It would be great if you could find specs that give you the brightness
and contrast ratio expressed as meaningful range of appropriate values
and as they relate to day and night viewing in the real world.

Jack

--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)