What’s the Difference Between Commercial and Consumer Displays?

If your business needs a display for your conference room or digital signage you can choose between commercial displays and consumer displays. Their basic functionality is similar. Each display shows a visual message to the audience. However, the capabilities beyond that vary dramatically.

Companies often wonder what the difference is between commercial and consumer displays. Is a commercial display worth the investment?

What is a consumer display?

Consumer displays can be found at everyday department stores and big box houses. It’s your standard at-home TV. They have speakers built into the visual component for ease of use. They may also have a tuner and a table stand. These displays are designed for at-home use.

What is a commercial display?

Commercial displays are available through professional AV channels. They are manufactured using better, and more expensive, components. These displays have increased reliability, especially when used for extended periods of time each day. The warranties on commercial displays are far better than on the consumer products. Commercial displays are also brighter than the consumer products. This is an important feature when using the displays in brightly lit conference rooms or public meeting spaces. From an aesthetics perspective, commercial displays often have cleaner lines than their consumer counterparts.

Samsung has a great infographic comparing and contrasting consumer and commercial displays for digital signage use and is also relevant for conference rooms.

Can I use a consumer display in a meeting room?

Opting for a commercial display for digital signage is an easy choice to make once you see the difference between consumer and commercial functionality. Commercial displays offer portrait orientation, longer run-times, better control and more thorough warranties. With the heavy use of digital signage and costs associated with a down system, commercial displays are hands-down a better option.

But what about a conference room? Can displays be an easy place to cut costs without affecting user experience? There’s a balance between cost and benefit of displays. At what point does the law of diminishing marginal returns kick in and the added functionality just isn’t worth it?

While we can’t speak to your business case specifically, LightWerks has a lot of experience installing (and more importantly supporting) displays. Here’s what we’ve discovered from integrating displays in hundreds of meeting rooms.

Commercial is best. Even at the higher price point, we recommend it.

Conference rooms are typically used for group meetings, with many meetings a week. Now imagine the display goes out, and it will be three weeks until it can be replaced. No sharing content at internal meetings, no video conferencing with partners, no client presentations. Take it a few more steps, and you can easily quantify a loss of productivity caused by a down display. Commercial displays are one way to mitigate that risk.

Reasons to choose a commercial display

• AV systems are complex and choosing a commercial display reduces the risk of one variable in the system.
• With each display that goes down, there is lost time and productivity spent on troubleshooting the problem and arranging a repair or replacement.
• A commercial display may not cost as much as you think. The relative cost of display solutions has been decreasing drastically over the years as the technology has changed and improved.
• When you choose a commercial display, you’re getting a better quality product with greater capabilities. It’s a more rugged solution that the manufacturer stands behind and it’s designed to last through years of continued use.

Contact us at LightWerks today for more information on what we can do for your organization!