An all-in-one LED display is a finished screen rather than a construction kit. The cabinets are already assembled and aligned in the factory, the receiving cards and processor are inside, the power supply is inside, usually so are the speakers and an Android player. It arrives on a trolley, goes on a bracket, takes one HDMI cable and works.
Everything else you sell is a wall you build. This is a television-shaped object that happens to be made of LED — and that difference runs all the way through to how it is priced, shipped, installed and quoted.
Why the category exists at all
It exists because a meeting room does not want a project. A 3.4-metre screen used to mean a structural survey, a rigging drawing, a two-day install, a processor in a rack, a commissioning visit and a service contract. For a boardroom replacing a projector, that is an absurd amount of friction for the size of the budget.
The all-in-one removes all of it. The factory does the alignment and the calibration in controlled conditions — which is genuinely better than doing it on a ladder — and what the client buys is a product with a model number, not a bill of materials.
The sizes are not arbitrary
All-in-one displays sell by diagonal inch, like a television, which is the first thing that trips up anyone used to quoting per square metre or per cabinet. The sizes look like a random catalogue — 108, 136, 163, 217 — until you notice they are all 1920 × 1080 at a standard pitch.
| Pitch | Panel size | Diagonal | Area | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.9375 mm | 1 800 × 1 013 mm | 81″ | 1.82 m² | 1920 × 1080 |
| 1.25 mm | 2 400 × 1 350 mm | 108″ | 3.24 m² | 1920 × 1080 |
| 1.5625 mm | 3 000 × 1 688 mm | 136″ | 5.06 m² | 1920 × 1080 |
| 1.875 mm | 3 600 × 2 025 mm | 163″ | 7.29 m² | 1920 × 1080 |
| 2.5 mm | 4 800 × 2 700 mm | 217″ | 12.96 m² | 1920 × 1080 |
One resolution, five sizes, and the pitch is the only variable. That is the whole product line, and once you see it the catalogue stops being a list to memorise. The 4K versions are the same arithmetic doubled: 1.875 mm at 4K is the 163-inch panel’s pixel count on a 271-inch screen, and 0.9375 mm at 4K lands back on 163 inches.
It also tells you what pitch a client is really buying. A 136-inch panel is 1.5625 mm, so detail stops being resolvable at about 5.4 metres and the sensible seating distance is nearer 2 to 3. In a room that seats people at 6 metres, that panel is delivering resolution nobody in the room can see — and a 163 at 1.875 mm would be bigger, cheaper per square metre, and no worse to look at.
Where it beats a cabinet build
- Install. Two people and an afternoon, against a crew and two days. On a fit-out running late, that is sometimes the entire decision.
- Nothing to specify wrongly. No processor to size, no receiving-card count, no cable schedule, no spare-parts list to argue about. One line on the quotation.
- Factory calibration. Uniformity done under controlled conditions and not on site at the end of a long week.
- Warranty is simple. One product, one supplier, one number to ring. Compare that with a wall where the panels, the processor and the mount came from three companies.
- It survives the finance conversation. A capital purchase with a model number gets signed off far more easily than a project.
Where it cannot follow
The constraints are all consequences of the same thing: it is finished, so you cannot change it.
- The size is the size. A 4.4-metre opening does not get a 4.4-metre all-in-one. It gets the 163 with 800 mm of wall showing, or a cabinet build.
- 16:9 only. Every ribbon, every 21:9 boardroom, every double-height atrium, every column wrap is a cabinet job.
- Flat and rectangular. No curves, no corners, no cylinders.
- Indoor. There are outdoor all-in-one posters and totems, but they are a different product line, not a big panel taken outside.
- Freight and access. A 217-inch panel is 4.8 metres wide and heavy. It ships in sections, and someone has to establish that those sections fit through the door, round the stair and into the lift before you promise a delivery date. This is the failure mode: the sale is easy, the doorway is not.
- Repair. Modules are still swappable, but you are tied to one supplier’s spares for the life of the unit rather than to a common cabinet format.
How to quote it
The trap is the unit. Your catalogue is priced per cabinet, occasionally per square metre; this product is priced per unit and marketed per inch, and the three do not convert cleanly in a client’s head. Two habits keep it straight.
Quote the unit, show the specification. One line, one price — then the technical sheet with the real numbers on it: pixel count, physical size, weight, power, viewing distance. That way the buyer compares like with like when a competitor quotes a cabinet build against you.
Price the difference, not just the box. The all-in-one is often more expensive per square metre and much cheaper installed. If your quotation shows only hardware, you lose to a cabinet build on paper and win nothing back on the day. Put the labour, the processor, the mount and the commissioning on both quotations, and let them be compared honestly. Our guide to the pricing chain sets out every line that belongs there.
The rule of thumb
One screen, indoors, rectangular, under about 220 inches, in a room that wants a product rather than a project: all-in-one, almost every time.
Anything bigger, anything shaped, anything outdoors, anything where the opening dictates the size: cabinets.
The borderline case — a 3 to 5 metre screen in a decent room — is worth quoting both ways. It costs you ten minutes and it is the single most persuasive thing you can put in front of a buyer who has three other quotations on the desk, all of which offer exactly one option.