Renting or buying an LED screen

The question sounds the same from a venue, from an agency and from a company pricing a screen for the first time: rent or buy. The answer depends not on the figure on the first invoice but on how many days a year the screen will be switched on and who will be responsible for it in between.

Let us look at both sides honestly: what rental includes, what a purchase includes, and which cost items usually get forgotten.

What you get in each case

With rental the screen is a service. We bring the cabinets, assemble the canvas in two to four hours, connect it, set it up, stand by and take it away. Installation, dismantling and full setup are part of the job; an engineer stays on site until the event closes. Our own equipment and our own transport — hence the price: well-organised logistics saves up to 15 % of the order. The full contents are on the rental page.

With a purchase the screen is an asset. On top of the canvas itself come the steelwork, the electrics, installation, commissioning and training. Before the crew arrives the customer receives a technical specification for the electrics with the power and signal lines calculated, so the electrician can bring supply to the points in advance. At handover there is the certificate, a data sheet with the serial numbers of the cabinets and cards, a video report and a warranty of 2–5 years depending on the model.

The difference is fundamental: in the first case you pay for a day of the screen working, in the second you buy an asset that then has to be maintained.

When renting works out better

• A one-off event. A conference, a forum, a wedding, a company anniversary, an exhibition stand. The screen is needed for one evening or three days, and then the job is done.
• A seasonal venue. A summer stage, a city festival, a fan zone, a fair. The equipment works a few weeks a year, and the rest of the time it has to be kept somewhere.
• A screen for a day or two. Even if there are several events a year, if months pass between them renting is usually cheaper than owning.
• No place for a permanent installation. A rented hall, a historic building, a space where you cannot drill the wall or weld a frame.
• A technician is needed on site. When there is nobody to connect sources, watch the picture and sort out issues as the event runs — that is included in rental.
• You need to test an idea. Taking a screen for one event and seeing how it works in your hall is cheaper than buying one and discovering the size was badly chosen.

Indicative prices are published on the rental page: an LED screen from 25 000 ₸ per m², sound — a 1 kW package from 100 000 ₸, lighting — from 20 000 ₸ per fixture. That is a guide per day; the exact quote is worked out from the venue, the dates and the contents. There are also ready packages for typical halls: a hall for up to 80 people (two 750 W speakers, a mixing desk, two radio microphones, a 3×2 m LED screen, 6 LED Beam fixtures) — 500 000 ₸; a hall for up to 120 people (a 3×2 m LED screen, 6 LED Beam fixtures, cabling — when the venue has its own sound) — 350 000 ₸; a hall for up to 160 people — 900 000 ₸.

When buying works out better

• The screen runs regularly. A lobby, a sales floor, a reception, an assembly hall used every week. The screen is on every day, and pricing it by the day makes no sense.
• Advertising on your own facade pays for itself. An outdoor screen sells airtime or shows your own content — here it is not a cost but a source of revenue.
• You need your own configuration. An exact size for the opening, a non-standard proportion, a flexible canvas on a column, a screen built into the interior. That is assembled once and stays.
• The screen is part of the infrastructure. A control room, a studio, a lecture hall: the equipment has to be on hand around the clock, not arrive on request.
• A permanent screen replaces a projector. In a hall where presentations run every week the question of renting does not arise at all.

How to do the maths

The comparison “rental price × number of days versus purchase price” is far too crude. Ownership adds items that rental does not have.

Length of ownership. Our outdoor cabinets, transparent mesh and P0.93 are rated at 100,000 hours — about eleven years of round-the-clock operation. A screen running 8 hours a day will physically outlast the period over which it can be counted as paid off. So the figure to work out is not “how many days until it pays for itself” but “how many years the screen will be needed in this form”.

Maintenance. Under the contract: a scheduled inspection every six months (fixings, cabling, power supplies, cleaning of outdoor screens), remote condition monitoring, a call-out within an agreed time; for Almaty that is one working day. A warranty of 2–5 years, with spare modules and cards held in stock in Almaty. For networks of screens we recommend keeping spares of 2–3 % of the number of modules on site. All of this is described in the service and maintenance section.

Storage and logistics between events. The item forgotten most often. A screen of your own that works away from base has to live somewhere: a dry store, racking, transport cases with foam inserts, a vehicle to move it, people to load it. Rental equipment lives in a van and a warehouse, not on a wall, and every trip is a cost whether the screen was hired out or stood idle.

Wear. A screen on a facade hangs there and works; a screen assembled and dismantled dozens of times a year wears mechanically: latches, cabinet corners, ribbon cables, connectors. The warranty on rental cabinets applies when they are transported in cases and assembled to the diagram, while mechanical damage in transit is covered by the spares in the kit. That is normal use, but it has to be built into the calculation rather than come as a surprise in the second season.

What is already included. Rental includes installation, an operator and logistics — there will be no separate lines for those. A purchase includes the steelwork, the electrics up to the screen, commissioning, training and the warranty. What you compare must be the full packages, not the price of the canvas against the price of a day.

A separate case — your own rental fleet

There is a third scenario that is neither renting nor an ordinary purchase: a company buys 500×1000 mm rental cabinets for its own fleet and assembles the screens itself.

That is what rental companies, event agencies, concert venues, banqueting halls and houses of culture do — those who need a screen constantly and in a new configuration every time. The cabinet locks with tool-free latches, weighs 11–15 kg (indoor models 13–15 kg, the outdoor P3.91 11–13 kg), and a screen of any size that is a multiple of 0.5 m goes up in two to four hours. The price list has five such models: P1.95, P2.6, P2.9 and P3.91 for indoors and an outdoor P3.91 in an IP68 housing.

What is worth knowing before buying a fleet:

• A fleet is built up in batches. Cabinets of the same model still join up a year later, so the first ten can easily be topped up to forty. The processor, though, is worth buying with spare ports from the start — otherwise it will have to be replaced as the fleet grows.
• A kit is more than cabinets. A video processor, power and signal cables, hanging bars or floor stands, transport cases and spares. Without those the fleet is incomplete.
• A module is replaced on site. It comes off the front on magnets — your own technician can change it in five minutes, not a service crew.
• On free days the fleet is sub-hired and works for its owner instead of sitting in the warehouse.
• The same format is also installed permanently. In the House of Culture in Aksay we built a 62 m² screen from cabinets like these, and at the I. Zhansugurov Palace of Culture in Taldykorgan 100 m² at P3 pitch. Part of the fleet can be fixed in a hall and part taken on the road.

A short guide

1. Work out how many days a year the screen will be switched on. Isolated events mean rental; weekly use means buying.
2. Check whether there is somewhere to install it and someone to look after it. Neither of those, and it is rental.
3. If the screen brings in money (advertising, selling airtime, a busy hall), price a purchase: it becomes an investment rather than a cost.
4. If there are many events and they are all different, price neither rental nor a one-off purchase but a fleet of rental cabinets of your own.
5. If you are unsure, hire a screen for one event. It is the cheapest way to check the size, the pitch and the location before committing.

Send us the dimensions of the hall or the opening and a photo of the site, tell us the dates and how many times a year the screen will be needed — we will price both options in the calculator on the site: a rental quote for your dates and the full cost of a purchase with frame, installation and warranty, so the figures can be compared side by side.