In this work we propose a new descriptor of the local texture in gray-level images, named Simplified Texture Unit (STU). This descriptor is a version, with a smaller computational cost as much in its obtaining as in its later use, of the well-known Texture Unit descriptor (TU) [6]. We have carried out a comparative study of the capacity to describe the texture of a region. with the capacity provided by the TU descriptor and two other versions of the same one, known as Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Local Binary Pattern with Contrast (LBP/C) [11]. The results of the experiment allow to affirm that the new descriptor has a greater performance with small region sizes, what makes it suitable for unsupervised texture segmentation since it could allow a greater accuracy in the localization of the frontiers between textured regions.