How To Do An Accurate Comparison Of The Price Of LED Signs

You have gotten a few different bids for Outdoor Monochrome LED Signs. You have compared the technical information for them all and narrowed it down to 2 bids. You have checked the references for both companies and they are more or less equal. What do you do now to decide between the two? How can you tell which is the better value?

What you need at this point is a way to compare the two LED Signs in an apples to apples way. How you do this is by comparing the cost per LED.

The true cost of LED Signs is in the LEDs. The cost of the cabinet containing the LEDs, the circuit boards, and the power supplies are negligible. What you need to compare is how much you will be paying per LED.

The math to do this is very simple so follow along with me.

Let assume you are getting a sign with a 34mm pitch and a matrix of 24×80. The pitch is the distance from the center of one pixel to the center of an adjacent pixel. If you are not familiar with the term ‘pixel’ let me explain it really quick.

A pixel is a cluster of LEDs which when lit create a discreet point on your sign. Take a look at the picture below. You can see the individual points that make up the letters. Those points are pixels.

Pixels In An LED Sign

The number of LEDs per pixel varies with the pitch size. If your 2 bids are for signs with different pitches you need to find out why they are different and why the company quoted the pitch they did. The correct pitch to use is determined primarily by the distance people will be viewing your display from.

The matrix is simply how many pixel tall by how many pixels wide your sign is on each side. For instance if you look at the above picture, you can count that the sign is 16 pixels tall.

Now, back to our example. Look at each bid and determine how many LEDs there are in each pixel. If that information is not on the bid, call the company and ask them for it.

The number of LEDs in a pixel at the 34mm size will range from 3 to 8 LEDs. Let’s assume one bid is for a sign with 4 LEDs and the other is for a sign with 8 LEDs. Our research is done, let’s do the math.

Bid #1

This bid is for a sign with 4 LEDs per pixel. At 24×80 there are 1,920 pixels PER SIDE making it a total of 3,840 pixels in the sign. At 4 LEDs per pixels there are 15,360 LEDs in the sign. If the quote is for $20,000 the cost per LED is $1.30 (Total Price divided by Total LEDs).

Bid #2

This sign will have the same number of pixels but let’s say there are 8 LEDs per pixel. That means there are a total of 30,720 LEDs in the sign. Now, let’s say the price is a bit higher at $25,000. That makes the price per LED $0.81.

Conclusion

Even at the slightly higher price, Bid #2 is a better value. There are also technical reasons why you would want the sign with the higher number of LEDs in each pixel but on a purely price basis the second bid is the better value by a whopping $0.49 per LED.

So, when looking at bids make sure you look at the true value which is in the price per LED.

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