The actual brightness in nits is not that important.
It is far more important that whatever light is created does not have to compete with reflections on the display surface from ambient light.
If you would have a panel that would not reflect any light at all you would be quite happy with as little as 200 nits in sunlight. You would be able to see the image just fine.
The trick is to have the right composition of touch screen and suitable anti glare and anti reflective coating.
The need for coating elliminates accustic touch screens and makes capacitive difficult - that leaves the traditional resistive types.
The types using a plastic touch screen overlay (usualy glass - plastic) are useless in sunlight.
Glass-Glass is much better.
Best is "inner layer touch". In this case the touch screen is glass-glass (good) but the LCD polarizer is actually the final layer. Of course this means a custom manufactured display that completely integrates the touch screen "inside" the display.
This method gives the best light transmission while reducing reflections to a minimum. There is only one extra layer of glass plus an extra layer of air.
Another option is to use an infrared beam based touch screen. In that case you can just use a normal display at the cost of a "rougher" resolution. This however can have some issues with sunlight.
Blasting your way through a badly designed display just by increasing the backlight is a pretty crude way these days. Just costs extra power and makes more heat.
Stick on films (we have tried them all) are pathetic. Most of them do a great job of cutting reflections but are nearly as good cutting the image too !!!
Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
I am hoping someone here has a response on this.
I am looking for an LCD monitor to use for several reasons, sort of like my own MFD. The general specifications are:
-10.4" display
-Sunlight readable 1000 nits +, hopefully with LED backlight
-12-14V DC power
-touch screen overlay
-1024x768 resolution
-262K colors +
-controller board capable of DVI, VGA, CVBS(video) inputs
-panel mount (open frame)
Does anyone know od a source or sources?
Thanks