LED Wall Calculator

Pick the cabinet and how many you use, the size you want in metres or the pixels you need. You get the exact resolution, actual size, aspect ratio, viewing distance, processor ports, weight and power draw.

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Your LED wall

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Calculate by
Weight and power per cabinet (from its datasheet)
Processor capacity per Gigabit port
Total resolution
0px

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Size
—cabinets (columns × rows)
—actual size (width × height)
—in feet
—diagonal
—area
Image
—aspect ratio
—decimal (width ÷ height)
—total pixels
—pixels vs 1080p
—pixels vs 4K UHD

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Viewing & signal
—minimum distance (1 m per mm of pitch)
—pixels no longer visible (1′ acuity)
—Gigabit ports (no redundancy)
Weight & power
—total weight (cabinets only)
—max power draw
—average power draw
Quick examples

How LED wall resolution is calculated

An LED wall is a grid of identical cabinets. Its resolution and size come from multiplying:

px = columns × cabinet px  ×  rows × cabinet px

What counts is the pixels per cabinet on the datasheet, not the pitch in the product name. "P2.9" is 2.976 mm rounded (168 px across 500 mm): 2.9 mm would give 172 px per cabinet, a 2.4% error that grows with every column. So the calculator works from the cabinet's side and its pixels, and the pitch it shows is the real one: side ÷ pixels. If you type a pitch, it fills in the pixels as round(side ÷ pitch) and you can correct them by hand.

In size mode it divides the metres you want by the cabinet side and rounds the way you choose: to the nearest (half a cabinet or more rounds up), without exceeding the size, or reaching it at least. In resolution mode it uses as many cabinets as needed to reach at least the pixels you ask for and tells you how many are left over. The aspect ratio is reduced with the greatest common divisor of the pixels, and the diagonal is √(width² + height²).

LED wall viewing distance: two rules of thumb

No standard sets the viewing distance of an LED wall, so we give the two best-documented references and treat them as what they are, rules of thumb:

  • Minimum distance ≈ 1 m per mm of pitch (about 3.3 ft per mm). Rental houses such as 4Wall use it, and Daktronics gives almost the same (3 ft per mm): any closer and the picture breaks into dots.
  • Visual acuity distance = pitch ÷ tan(1′) ≈ 3438 × pitch. At that distance one pixel takes up one minute of arc, the limit of 20/20 vision: beyond it the pixels can no longer be told apart.

Ports are counted in whole cabinets: each Gigabit port takes as many cabinets as fit within its capacity: 650,000 px on NovaStar at 8 bits, 320,000 at 10 bits, and 525,000 on Brompton at 8 bits and 60 Hz. It is the minimum, with no redundancy and without each processor's width and height limits per port. Weight and power are the cabinets' figures times their number; they leave out rigging, processors and cabling.

Example: a 16 × 9 cabinet P2.6 LED wall

16 × 9 cabinets of 500 × 500 mm with 192 × 192 px each:

  • Resolution = 16 × 192 by 9 × 192 = 3072 × 1728 px (5,308,416 px, 2.56 times 1080p).
  • Size = 16 × 0.5 by 9 × 0.5 = 8 × 4.5 m (26.2 × 14.8 ft), 36 m² and a 9.18 m (361″) diagonal.
  • Aspect ratio = 3072 : 1728 = 16:9 (GCD 192).
  • Real pitch = 500 ÷ 192 = 2.604 mm → minimum distance ≈ 2.6 m; pixels invisible from ≈ 9.0 m (29.4 ft).
  • Ports: 650,000 ÷ 36,864 px = 17 cabinets per port → 144 ÷ 17 = 9 ports.
  • With the INFiLED IRX2.6 mk3 Pro (7.7 kg, 150 W max and 50 W average per cabinet): 1,109 kg, 21.6 kW max power draw and 7.2 kW on average.

To make that wall true 4K UHD (3840 × 2160) you would need 20 × 12 cabinets: 10 × 6 m and 3840 × 2304 px, with 144 px of height to spare.

Methodology & sources

Every result is computed in your browser with the formula shown above — nothing is sent to a server. The numeric model is based on this data and these references:

Formula reviewed and verified against real-world cases.

LED wall FAQ

How do you calculate the resolution of an LED wall?
Multiply the cabinets by the pixels in each one: columns × the cabinet's pixel width, by rows × its pixel height. 16 × 9 cabinets of 500 × 500 mm with 192 × 192 px give 3072 × 1728 px and measure 8 × 4.5 m. The cabinet's pixels come from its datasheet, not from the nominal pitch.
Why doesn't my P2.9 wall give the pixels I get with 2.9 mm?
Because "P2.9" is a rounded name. A 500 mm cabinet with 168 pixels has a real pitch of 500 ÷ 168 = 2.976 mm. Dividing 500 by 2.9 gives 172 pixels, so ten cabinets would come out at 1720 px wide instead of the real 1680. The same goes for P3.9 (3.906 mm, 128 px), P2.6 (2.604 mm, 192 px) and P1.9 (1.953 mm, 256 px).
What is the right viewing distance for an LED wall?
There is no single standard. The most repeated rule of thumb is 1 metre per millimetre of pitch as the minimum: at 2.6 m a P2.6 wall already forms an image, though the pixels are still visible. The distance at which someone with 20/20 vision stops seeing them is the visual acuity distance, pitch ÷ tan(1′) ≈ 3438 × pitch: about 9 m (29.4 ft) for P2.6.
How many processor ports does my LED wall need?
Each Gigabit port on a NovaStar processor drives up to 650,000 pixels at 8 bits (320,000 at 10 bits), and what you split between ports is whole cabinets. With 192 × 192 px cabinets, 17 fit on one port, so 16 × 9 = 144 cabinets need 9 ports, not counting spares if you want redundancy.
What pitch do I need for an LED wall 3840 pixels wide?
Divide the width by 3840. Over 10 m that is 2.604 mm, exactly a 500 mm P2.6 cabinet with 192 px: 20 columns give 3840 px. Over 8 m you would need 2.08 mm, so a P2.6 wall stops at 3072 px and you need a finer pitch or a wider wall.