A portable LED poster looks like the simplest product in an LED catalogue: one column of modules, a base with four castors, plug it in. It is also the screen most often bought badly, because almost nothing that decides whether it works in year two is printed in the pixel-pitch column.
The panel is the easy part. What follows is the list of things that actually decide the purchase, written from the side of the buyer who has to stand the thing in a terminal concourse or a mall aisle and keep it there.
The product is a cabinet, a baseplate and four castors
Strip the marketing away and a 640 x 1920 poster unit is three parts: a module strip, a steel frame, and a weighted base. The modules are commodity — P1.8 to P2.5 indoors, and the difference between them is a viewing-distance argument you have probably already had.
The base is where suppliers diverge. A thin decorative plate that looks elegant in a render and a 25 kg steel plate that keeps a 2 m column upright when a cleaning trolley clips it are not the same product, and the datasheet rarely distinguishes them.
Ask for the footprint in millimetres and the total weight, then check both against the floor you are standing it on.
Brightness is set by the room, not by the spec sheet
An indoor poster screen is typically quoted at 800 to 1,200 nits. That number is nearly meaningless until you place it in the room.
A glazed airport concourse in the afternoon runs into five figures of lux. A dark retail interior runs under 300. The same 1,000 nit screen is over-bright in one and washed out in the other, and the fix is not "buy the brightest" — it is anti-glare surface treatment plus a brightness curve you can set on site, not a factory preset.
The practical test: ask for a photo or a site visit of a unit running in comparable ambient light. If the supplier can only show you a dark showroom shot, you are buying a number, not a result.
Contrast matters more than peak nits here. A poster screen facing a bright window needs a matte face and a deep black level; a glossy face at 1,500 nits will still read as grey.
Floor loading, clearance and the tip-over question
This is the part facilities managers raise after delivery, and it is the part buyers usually skip.
- Point load. A 60 to 90 kg unit on four small castors puts a surprising load on raised floors, stone tile and floating timber. Shopping centres with access floors have limits, and the answer is often a spreader plate.
- Clearance. Aisle width rules in most venues assume about 1.2 m of clear passage. A poster unit plus a queue barrier plus a fire exit route can fail an inspection that has nothing to do with the screen.
- Stability. A narrow base on a polished floor is fine until someone leans on it. Braked castors are not optional in a public space; a replaceable castor set is the cheapest insurance in the whole order.
Front service decides your maintenance model
Modules fail. When one does, the question is whether a technician removes two magnets and a module in ninety seconds, or unbolts a 2 m cabinet from its base and lays it down.
Front-service modules are the difference between a maintenance contract that is a phone call and one that is a morning with two people and a trolley. On a portable unit this matters more than on a wall, because the screen is usually in a public space where you cannot leave a cabinet open for an afternoon.
Power, cable and the thing nobody draws on the plan
One unit, one circuit. A poster screen draws very little, which tempts people to chain six of them onto a single 13 A spur. That works until the venue adds a coffee machine to the same ring, and then the screens reboot during the busiest hour.
The other half of the problem is the cable itself. A trailing lead across a concourse is a trip hazard and a fire officer's objection in one. Plan the floor box position before you order the units, not after, and specify whether the lead exits the base or the frame.
The creative is not 16:9, and that is a budget line
A 640 x 1920 canvas is 1:3. Every asset your agency supplies will be 16:9 or 9:16, and neither fits. Letterboxing a horizontal video into a poster leaves two thirds of the screen black; cropping it loses the product.
The fix is a re-cut, and a re-cut costs money on every campaign. Buyers who plan for a portrait-native template — one headline, one product, one call to action, stacked — spend far less over a year than buyers who re-edit each flight.
When a poster beats a fixed wall — and when it does not
A portable poster is the right purchase when the location is temporary, the space is leased, the campaign rotates every few weeks, or the same screen has to appear in three venues in one month. It is the wrong purchase when you are covering a permanent wall, when the screen will be in place for five years, or when the surface needs structural mounting.
The tell is simple: if you would have to hire a van to move it, you probably wanted a fixed installation.
What to put in the RFQ
- Nits measured on the finished face, plus the surface treatment (matte, anti-glare, glossy).
- Total weight and baseplate footprint in millimetres.
- Front-service modules: yes or no.
- Refresh rate at 1,920 Hz or above, so phone cameras do not band it.
- Control: standalone player or network, and whether scheduling is per device or per fleet.
- Castors: braked, replaceable, and a spare pair in the crate.
- Packing: flight case or carton, and how many units fit in one case.
None of these are exotic. All of them are cheap to specify before the order and expensive to retrofit.
The P5 portable LED poster unit is the version of this product we build — a double-sided 640 x 1920 column on a weighted, braked base, front-service modules, standalone or networked playback:
https://www.mlxled.com/product/p5-led-advertising-machine-poster/
Two double-sided units at 900 nits, or one single-sided unit at 1,500 nits for the same budget in a glazed concourse — which would you sign off, and why?
I work with MuenLED, a Shenzhen LED display manufacturer. #MuenLED
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