px ≠ Pixels

All of these answers seem to be incorrect. Contrary to intuition, in CSS the px is not pixels. At least, not in the simple physical sense.

Read this article from the W3C, EM, PX, PT, CM, IN…, about how px is a “magical” unit invented for CSS. The meaning of px varies by hardware and resolution. (That article is fresh, last updated 2014-10.)

My own way of thinking about it: 1 px is the size of a thin line intended by a designer to be barely visible.

To quote that article:

The px unit is the magic unit of CSS. It is not related to the current font and also not related to the absolute units. The px unit is defined to be small but visible, and such that a horizontal 1px wide line can be displayed with sharp edges (no anti-aliasing). What is sharp, small and visible depends on the device and the way it is used: do you hold it close to your eyes, like a mobile phone, at arms length, like a computer monitor, or somewhere in between, like a book? The px is thus not defined as a constant length, but as something that depends on the type of device and its typical use.

To get an idea of the appearance of a px, imagine a CRT computer monitor from the 1990s: the smallest dot it can display measures about 1/100th of an inch (0.25mm) or a little more. The px unit got its name from those screen pixels.

Nowadays there are devices that could in principle display smaller sharp dots (although you might need a magnifier to see them). But documents from the last century that used px in CSS still look the same, no matter what the device. Printers, especially, can display sharp lines with much smaller details than 1px, but even on printers, a 1px line looks very much the same as it would look on a computer monitor. Devices change, but the px always has the same visual appearance.

That article gives some guidance about using pt vs px vs em, to answer this Question.