LED screen repair
Pixel pitch, explained from the bench
Pitch is the distance from the centre of one LED to the centre of the next, in millimetres. A P2.6 panel has 2.6mm between pixel centres. That single number decides how close an audience can stand, what a panel costs to own, and whether a broken module can be repaired at all or has to go back to the factory.
What the number actually means
Smaller pitch means more pixels in the same square of panel. It is not a measure of quality and it is not a resolution: a P1.6 panel and a P6.9 panel can carry the same number of pixels, with the P6.9 wall simply being much larger. What changes is density, and density is what decides viewing distance.
How close people can stand
The working rule in this trade is that the pitch in millimetres is roughly the closest comfortable viewing distance in metres. P2.6 looks solid from about two and a half metres back. P6.9 wants seven metres or more. It is a rule of thumb rather than a specification, and content matters: large type and video survive a coarse pitch far better than fine detail or small text does. Use it to sanity check a room, not to sign off a design.
The same rule works backwards, and this is the version worth remembering. If people will be within three metres of the screen, a pitch coarser than about 3mm will look like a grid rather than a picture.
How to find the pitch you have
Most enquiries that reach us cannot name a pitch, which is normal. The label went years ago and the paperwork went with the hire company that bought the wall. There are three ways to find it, in order of how quickly they work.
The label on the back
Panel and module labels almost always carry it, written as P3.9 or 3.9mm or sometimes just 3.9. The model name usually carries it too, which is why so many panels are named after a number.
The invoice or the hire sheet
Faster than a torch and a stepladder. Anything that recorded the purchase or the hire will name the pitch, because it is the number the whole product is sold on.
Measure it yourself
Span ten pixels centre to centre with a steel rule, then divide by ten. Never measure a single gap: a millimetre of error on one pixel is a millimetre of error in the answer, and a millimetre is the whole difference between two bands.
The bands, and what each one is for
Pitches run in bands rather than a continuum, because panels are built to serve a purpose. These four cover almost everything that comes through the door.
Fine pitch indoor
P1.2 to P2.6
Broadcast sets, corporate stages, boardrooms and high end retail. Dense enough that one dead pixel is visible from the front row, so tolerance for faults is close to zero. Repairs are done under a microscope with hot air, not an iron.
Indoor rental and touring
P2.6 to P3.9
The bulk of what comes back to us after a season. Transport damage, dead clusters and receiving card faults, and usually across a batch rather than one unlucky panel.
Outdoor rental and events
P3.9 to P6.9
Weather, heat and water ingress on top of the usual mechanical damage. On these, the condition of the gaskets and the sealing matters as much as anything electronic.
Large format and fixed outdoor
P6.9 to P10 and coarser
Long throw screens, stadium walls and permanent installs. Often on site work rather than send in, because the screen is bolted to a building and is not coming down for us.
What pitch changes about a repair
This is the part the manufacturer pages leave out, and it is the part that decides what a fault costs you.
Finer pitch, smaller everything
At P1.5 and below the LED packages and their pads are small enough that reworking one without disturbing its neighbours needs factory tooling. Around 1.6mm is where careful bench work stops being possible and starts being a gamble with equipment that belongs to somebody else.
The tolerance drops as the pitch does
A dead pixel on a P6.9 stadium screen is invisible from the crowd. The same fault on a P1.6 broadcast wall is on camera. Finer walls come in sooner, for smaller faults, and go back with less margin for error.
Spares do not cross bands
A P3.9 module will not go into a P2.6 wall, whatever the frame looks like. Anyone holding spares is holding them per pitch, per make and often per production run, which is why a repair is usually cheaper than a replacement panel.
Same pitch is not the same panel
Two panels at the same pitch and the same part number can still differ in brightness and colour if they came from different production runs. We can tell you whether a set will match before it goes up, which is more useful than finding out on site.
Coarse outdoor pitch is a sealing job
On outdoor walls the electronics are often fine and the water got in anyway. The repair is as much about gaskets, glands and drainage as it is about components.
If the pitch is 1.6mm or coarser, it can come to the bench. Finer than that we will look at it and give you an honest answer rather than take the work and hand back something worse.
Questions we hear a lot
Is a smaller pixel pitch always better?
No, and it is an expensive assumption. Pitch should match viewing distance. A fine pitch wall in a room where nobody stands closer than ten metres costs several times what it needed to, uses more power and is more fragile to own. The right pitch is the coarsest one that still looks solid where people actually stand.
What does the P in P2.6 mean?
It just stands for pitch. P2.6 means 2.6mm between the centres of neighbouring pixels. Some manufacturers write it as PH2.6 or 2.6mm instead, and a few use their own product code with the number buried in it, but they all describe the same measurement.
Can you mix pitches on one wall?
Not in the same surface. Two pitches side by side will read as two screens, because the pixel density changes across the join and the eye finds it immediately. Separate surfaces in one design are fine, and common. What we get asked far more often is whether panels of the same pitch from different batches can be mixed, and that is worth checking before the wall goes up.
Do you need to know my pitch before I send a panel in?
It helps, but it is not a blocker. Send a photograph of the back of a module and the front of the panel and we can usually tell. If you can measure ten pixels and divide by ten, that is better still, because it tells us straight away whether the job is bench work or something we should talk about first.
My screen is fine pitch and out of warranty. Is it worth repairing?
Usually yes, because the alternative is a panel price. Fine pitch modules are the most expensive to replace and the most worth reworking, and that is exactly why manufacturers tend to quote for a whole board. We work at component level, so a driver fault is a driver fault rather than a new module.
Send it in
Panels and modules to the bench
Pack a module, tell us the pitch if you know it, and we will come back with what is wrong and what it takes.
How send in worksOn site
Screens that are not coming down
Fixed installs and large format walls, worked on where they are rather than shipped.
On site serviceBack to LED screen repair.