Every outdoor LED datasheet you are sent says IP65, and most of them are telling the truth. The difficulty is that IP65 proves less than the way the number gets used in a quotation. It is two lab tests on a dry, sealed sample, and the failures that take a screen off a wall usually happen somewhere the test never looked.
What the two digits actually mean
IP65 comes from IEC 60529 and it is two independent ratings written next to each other. The first digit covers solids, the second covers water. A product can be strong on one and weak on the other, which is exactly what happens across an LED range.
- 6 — dust tight: no dust enters the enclosure at all. The step below, 5, allows some dust in as long as it does not stop the equipment working.
- 5 — protected against water jets: a 6.3 mm nozzle, 12.5 liters a minute, 30 kPa, held about three meters away for three minutes.
- 4 — protected against solid objects over 1 mm. This is the first digit on an indoor cabinet, not the water digit.
- 3 — protected against water sprayed at up to 60 degrees from vertical. This is the water digit on an indoor cabinet.
Read the last two lines together and an indoor panel is IP43: safe from a finger and from a spray angled down at it, not from a splash from below and not from a hose.
An IP43 cabinet is not nearly IP65
Sellers sometimes describe an indoor cabinet as almost IP65. It is not a matter of degree. Moving from IP43 to IP65 means closing the dust path completely and surviving a directed jet, which changes the gasket, the module seal and the weight. On the 500 × 1000 rental cabinet the same box goes from 11 kg at IP43 to 15.5 kg at IP65, and from 900 nits to 4,500–5,500 nits. That is 4.5 kg a box, 41 % more, and it is the honest measure of what sealing costs.
Gap one: the cable entry
The cabinet is tested as a closed box. The moment an installer cuts a gland, pushes a power cable and a data cable through the back and tightens a connector, the rating is only as good as that fitting. In the field this is the most common way water gets in, and it usually fails a year or two later, after the rubber has taken a summer of heat. Two questions worth asking before the order: are the glands and connectors rated to the same IP as the cabinet, and do they ship with it or get bought locally?
Gap two: rain is not the problem, condensation is
A sealed cabinet outdoors does not sit at one temperature. Sun on the face pushes the inside up, night drops it, and the air inside expands and contracts. Any path that lets it breathe also lets moisture in, and that moisture condenses on the coldest surface, which is usually the back of the module. It does not need a storm to happen. This is why outdoor cabinets are specified with a pressure-equalisation vent or desiccant, and why a screen that fails in a humid coastal city often has no water marks on the outside at all.
Gap three: UV, salt and heat
IP says nothing about sunlight. A gasket that hardens and shrinks in UV is no longer a seal, and no IP test would catch it, because the test is run on a new sample indoors. Salt is the same story: IP covers water pressure, not chloride corrosion on screws and cabinet edges. Our stadium range is therefore specified as IP65+ with UV-resistant materials rather than plain IP65. The plus is about materials surviving years of sun, not about a higher water number.
Gap four: what you clean it with
A high-pressure washer will put water past IP65 seals. So will a solvent that softens the gasket. The specification sheet rarely mentions this and the maintenance contract usually does not either, yet cleaning is where a five-year-old screen starts taking water. Wash at low pressure, from the top down, with a neutral cleaner, and keep the jet off the joints.
The module and the cabinet are rated separately
A cabinet rated IP65 can hold modules rated lower, and the joint between them is another seam. When a module is swapped on site that seal is disturbed, so the rating of the wall after maintenance depends on how the module was refitted. Keep spare modules in the same build and with the same gasket, or the number on the datasheet stops describing the screen that is on the wall.
IP66 is not the upgrade it sounds like
IP66 raises the water test from a 12.5 liter jet to 100 liters a minute at 100 kPa. For a display on a building that is rarely the limiting factor, because the water that kills it arrives as vapour or through a fitting rather than as a directed jet. If a supplier leads with IP66, ask what changed in the gasket and the breather, and whether the weight went up with it.
What IP65+ means on a stadium screen
Perimeter and stadium boards meet all four gaps at once: full sun, rain driven sideways, and cleaning crews working around seats. Our stadium cabinets are rated IP65+ with UV-resistant materials at 6,000 to 6,500 nits, which is the brightness a broadcast camera needs at a fixed shutter. If a supplier offers IP65 and nothing else for a stadium, ask what the gasket and the housing are made of, because the number alone will not carry eight seasons.
What IP65 costs you in kilos
Weight is the part buyers forget. The same 500 × 1000 rental cabinet is built both ways:
- IP43 indoor — 11 kg a box at 900 nits, for stages and ballrooms.
- IP65 outdoor — 15.5 kg a box on a 500 × 1000 × 80 mm cabinet, 4,500 to 5,500 nits, same beams and locks.
A 20 m² wall on these 0.5 m² cabinets is 40 boxes. Choosing the sealed build adds 180 kg to the truss before ballast. That is the number to hand the rigging engineer, and it is the reason an indoor cabinet is the right answer for an indoor job even when the outdoor version exists.
How to put it in a purchase order
- Write the IP as two digits and say where it applies: IP65 front, or IP65 front and back.
- Require the glands and connectors to match the cabinet rating, and to ship with it.
- Ask for the gasket material by name, not by color.
- Specify cleaning: low pressure, neutral cleaner, no solvents.
- For coastal or stadium sites, ask for UV and salt-spray evidence, not only the IP number.
- Ask what the cabinet weighs in the build you are buying, because the sealed version is a different number.
What we build, and what we do not claim
The 1000 × 1000 × 70 mm outdoor chassis is rated IP65 at 5,500 nits from P3.906 to P6.25. The fine-pitch COB indoor panels take IP65 on the front face because the surface is encapsulated rather than left as exposed lamps. Indoor SMD cabinets are IP43 with three-proofing paint, or GOB where the panel will be touched. None of that makes a screen submersible, and none of it replaces sealing the cable entry on site. If a specification you have been sent claims more than this, ask which test it came from.