Sunlight Viewable Displays

TFT color displays are commonly used in various applications for home and industry, both indoors and outdoors.  Sunlight and other bright ambient lighting can negatively affect the viewing capability, causing washout of the display.

Two common technologies used to enable good viewing of the TFT displays in direct sunlight or high ambient light environments, are High Brightness TFT displays and Transflective TFT displays.

High Brightness displays have additional LEDs, brighter LEDs or special films, or a combination of these to increase the brightness from an average of 300-450 nits to 1000 nits or more.

Transflective TFT displays are a combination of reflective and transmissive displays.  Reflective displays do not have backlighting and use ambient light to allow readability.   Transmissive displays are only viewable when the backlight is turned on.  When the display has a Transflective polarizer, a significant percentage of sunlight is reflected away from the screen to minimize washout.  The result is a display that can be used in direct sunlight with reduced power consumption.

Transflective displays are more expensive than High Brightness displays and are commonly available only in small sizes.

A newer technology, MIP or memory in pixel, is a Transflective display, viewable in direct sunlight and features ultra-low power consumption, wide viewing angles and easy 3 wire SPI interface.  All Shore Industries will be introducing a line of MIP displays in the near future.