Consider the signal of e.g. a photodiode or a spectrometer, where a dark measurement has been taken to account for baseline noise. The signal we want to measure is quite weak, so we need a decently long integration time to almost saturate the device, lets say 1 second for the sake of simplicity. This gives us a reading every full second.
What if instead we used a 200 or 500 ms integration time and averaged 5 or 2 measurements, respectively, into 1 reading. Are these averaged measurements objectively better or worse, as both read out the signal every full second? Worded differently, one could ask if it is a good idea to always go near saturation if the time allows for it, i.e., if the measured process is static or very slow?
