Shop for an LED wall and you'll drown in the word panel— panel count, panel size, panel pitch. Here's the anatomy in plain English, so the quotes you collect actually mean something.
Module → cabinet → wall
- Module: the smallest building block — a circuit board carrying the LEDs themselves. Modules are also the serviceable part: one takes a hit, you swap that module, not the whole panel.
- Cabinet (the "panel"): a rigid frame — usually die-cast aluminum — holding several modules plus the power supply and receiving card. This is the unit you buy, mount, and count.
- Wall: cabinets locked edge to edge into one surface. Because every cabinet carries the same pixel pitch, the finished wall reads as a single seamless screen at any size.
Common cabinet sizes
Indoor and rental walls are dominated by 500 × 500 mm and 500 × 1000 mmcabinets — light enough for one tech to handle and quick to lock together, which is why touring rigs standardized on them. Fixed outdoor walls often use larger cabinets, trading portability for fewer seams and faster installs. The practical takeaway: your wall's finished dimensions land on multiples of the cabinet size, so a "roughly 10-foot" wall is really a choice between specific cabinet grids.
Skip the math. Our LED Wall Calculator turns your dimensions and viewing distance into a recommended pitch, panel count, resolution, power, and a ballpark investment — in about 60 seconds.
Indoor vs. outdoor panels
Outdoor cabinets are sealed against weather (look for an IP65rating) and push far higher brightness to beat direct sun. Indoor cabinets run finer pitch, lower brightness, and lighter frames. They are not interchangeable — an indoor panel outside dies in the first storm, and an outdoor panel indoors is usually paying for brightness you'll never use. Our nits guide covers the brightness side.
Face protection: GOB and COB
On stages, in sports bars, anywhere the public can touch the wall, GOB (glue-on-board) coating armors the LEDs against impact, and COB takes it further for fine-pitch surfaces. If a wall lives at hand height, protected faces pay for themselves the first time someone leans on it.
Panels don't run themselves
Budget for the control chain: a processor(or sending card) feeds the wall, and each cabinet's receiving card takes it from there. NovaStar-class control is the industry standard and what we spec and support. A suspiciously cheap panel quote is often a wall with no brain included — always ask what's driving it.
What to compare across quotes
- Pixel pitch and the LED/driver generation behind it — pitch alone isn't the spec.
- Refresh rate: 3,840 Hz keeps the wall clean on camera.
- Spares: modules and power supplies on the shelf, not on a boat.
- Warranty and where it's serviced — ours is handled in the US, by us.
When you're ready, send us the spaceand we'll turn it into a cabinet grid, a power plan, and a real number.