Guide · 7 min read
Last reviewed
Cabinet or Magnetic? Measure Behind the Wall First
The build choice nobody explains, decided mostly by one measurement almost no quotation asks for: how much space there is behind the screen.
- Manufacturer warranty
- GST invoice
- Pan-India delivery
- On-site service in Karnataka
- Transparent, published pricing
Two quotations for the same screen can be built completely differently, and the word that distinguishes them — magnetic or cabinet — usually appears once, without explanation. It is not a minor specification. It decides how the screen is serviced for its entire life, and whether it can be serviced at all once it is on the wall.
The three ways a screen gets built
| Magnetic modules | Rear-service cabinet | Front-service cabinet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How it is built | Modules held magnetically to a fabricated steel frame | Modules pre-fitted into cabinets that bolt together | Same, but each module releases from the front |
| Serviced from | The front | Behind — someone has to get back there | The front |
| Rear clearance needed | None | Whatever the cabinet maker specifies — about 2 ft as a survey rule of thumb, and permanently, not just on install day | None |
| Joint line | Good, and depends on how well the frame was made | Flattest and most consistent | Very good |
| Relative cost | Lowest | Middle | Highest |
| Usually seen on | Shop frontages, mall units, anything flush to a wall | Large screens, stages, rooftop and pole structures | Fine-pitch indoor walls, tight sites, retrofits |
The line that matters is the third one. A rear-service cabinet is a good product, and it is the wrong product for a screen bolted flat to a shop wall, because when a module eventually fails — and over a screen’s life one will — nobody will be able to reach it.
Why two feet
It is roughly the space a person needs to stand behind the screen, open a cabinet and lift a module out without taking the wall apart. Treat it as a survey heuristic rather than a standard: the real requirement comes from the cabinet design — how deep the cabinet is, whether modules hinge outward or lift straight back, and how much slack the power and data connectors have — and the manufacturer states it for their own product. Some designs want more than two feet, a few want less. Ask for that figure and design to it.
What does not change is the consequence of getting under it. Below whatever the manufacturer’s figure turns out to be, the service route is not made awkward, it is gone.
This is why mall units are usually magnetic. A tenant fit-out gives you a wall and no space behind it, and the landlord is not going to give up floor area so a screen can be serviced from the rear. The same applies to most shop frontages, most reception walls and anything built into joinery.
What a cabinet actually buys you
Where there is room for one, a cabinet build is better in a specific and visible way: the joint line. Cabinets are machined to a tolerance and bolt to each other on registered faces, so the seams between them are consistent across the whole screen. The result reads as one surface rather than an assembly.
A magnetic build depends much more on the frame behind it. A well-made frame gives a joint line most people will never notice; a poorly made one gives a screen with a slight step every few hundred millimetres, and that catches the light from an angle in a way you cannot unsee. So with magnetic, you are buying the fabricator as much as the panels.
On a large screen or one viewed close up, that argues for a cabinet. On a shop board read from across a footpath, it rarely justifies losing the ability to service it.
Where the structure decides for you
- Pole-mounted and gantry boards are cabinet builds. The cabinet is doing structural work, not just holding modules, and a magnetic frame is not designed to carry a screen in wind at height.
- Free-standing and stage screens are cabinets, for the same reason plus the fact that they are moved.
- Double-sided boards are cabinets — the two faces need a rigid spine between them.
- Anything flush to a wall, in a recess, or inside joinery is magnetic or front-service, because nothing else can be maintained.
- Curved and column-wrapped screens use flexible modules on a fabricated former, which is a different construction again.
The compromise most people should know about
Front-service cabinets are the answer to "I want a cabinet build and I have no rear access", and they are under-offered because they cost more and few buyers ask.
They are worth the premium in two situations. The first is a fine-pitch indoor screen viewed from close up, where the joint line is visible and the wall is solid behind it. The second is any screen where a service visit is genuinely disruptive — a hotel lobby, a hospital, a bank branch — because being able to change a module from the front means fixing it in ten minutes rather than closing an area.
What to send us
- A photograph of the wall or structure, taken far enough back to show what is around it.
- How much space there is behind it, and whether that space stays accessible after the fit-out.
- Whether the screen sits flat on a wall, in a recess, on a pole, or free-standing.
- How far the nearest viewer stands — that sets the pitch, which is a separate decision from this one.
- Whether anyone can close the area for a service visit, or whether the screen has to be fixed in place while the business runs.
We work through this at the site assessment and put the answer in writing before anything is fabricated, because it is the decision that is hardest to reverse. The pitch can be argued about; the service access is set the day the frame is made.