Electronic shelf label comparison

This section gathers the site’s comparisons: vendors, displays, contract models and vendor dependence. All of them follow the same criteria, cite dated sources and state that the publisher is Keonex, a supplier in the sector. Here we explain how we work; the results live in each comparison.

What we compare and where to find it

Each buying question has its own page, and this one repeats none of them.

• Electronic shelf label vendors: who makes what, on which radio protocol, in which sizes and colours, and how open each platform is. The vendor table lives only there.
• LCD vs e-paper: readability, power draw, refresh speed and cost of each display type.
• Leasing vs buying: cash flow, ownership at the end of the contract and who pays for battery replacement.
• Vendor lock-in: what “open” really means when the label, the radio and the software all come from the same manufacturer.

If you are not yet sure what a shelf label is or how it receives its price, start with the basic guide. If you already know what to compare and want to put numbers on your own case, the TCO calculator runs the sums with your assumptions.

Criteria and rules for every comparison

The criteria are set before we look at the results, not after. A comparison is built around what actually decides a purchase in a store:

1. Label technology: display type, sizes, colours, radio protocol and power supply.
2. Openness: documented interfaces, export formats, and whether labels and software from different makers can be mixed.
3. Cost: label price, infrastructure and maintenance, always with the assumptions in plain view.
4. Evidence of use: public, verifiable references in Europe, including the UK and Ireland where they exist.
5. Support and continuity: local presence, lead times and warranties, where the vendor publishes them.

Rules that apply on every page:

• Every data point carries a source and a date read. With no linkable document, the cell is left empty or marked “not published”. We do not fill gaps with guesses.
• We prefer primary sources: vendor datasheets, annual reports and press releases, plus legislation in the Official Journal of the European Union or the relevant national gazette. Third-party opinions are labelled as such.
• We separate claimed from verified. A battery-life figure from a datasheet is what the vendor says, not what we measured, and we write it that way.
• There are no lab tests of our own, unless a page says so explicitly and describes the method.
• There are no overall scores and no “best”. The right system depends on store size, the retail management system and the budget; we give you the table and the reasoning so you can decide.

Who publishes this and how we handle bias

This site is published by Keonex, which sells and installs electronic shelf labels. That is an obvious conflict of interest and we treat it as one: it is explained in about this site and repeated on the comparison pages.

To limit its effect:

• The rules above apply to Keonex exactly as they do to everyone else. If a fact about Keonex is not public and verifiable, it does not go in the table.
• No claim about Keonex is published without first being validated with the company, and the comparisons carry no commercial links inside the tables.
• Anyone who spots an error can request a correction; changes show up in the update date.
• The full editorial process, including the role of AI tools in drafting, is set out in the editorial methodology.

To be frank, this reduces bias; it does not remove it. So always check the linked sources and ask more than one vendor for a quote.

How to read a date in a comparison

Every page shows two dates. The update date says when the text was last reviewed. The read date, next to each data point, says when the source was consulted. In a market where vendors launch new models and change platforms every year, a table more than a year old should be read with caution, even if we have not yet had the chance to revisit it.