A byte is a unit of digital information that consists of 8 bits. It is the smallest commonly used unit for measuring data storage and can represent 256 different values (2^8). One byte is enough to store a single character, such as a letter or number, in a computer system. In summary:

• 1 byte = 8 bits
• 1 byte can represent 256 values
• Used as a basic unit for data storage and measurement.

Bytes are also the building blocks for larger units of data like kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), and gigabytes (GB), where for example, 1 KB is approximately 1,000 bytes (decimal system) or 1,024 bytes (binary system) depending on the context.