Why one screen repair costs $99 and another costs $329

Repair pricing looks arbitrary from the outside. It isn’t — it’s mostly the part, and the part is mostly decided by the manufacturer. Here’s what moves the number.

The part is most of the price

For screens and batteries, the component is the majority of what you pay. That’s why a screen on a five-year-old mid-range phone can be under a hundred dollars while a current flagship is three times that: the panel itself costs what it costs, and no repair shop is buying it cheaply.

It’s also why prices fall over a device’s life. A screen for a phone released last month is at its most expensive; the same screen two years later is not.

What makes a part expensive

• OLED instead of LCD. Every flagship is OLED now, and OLED panels cost considerably more. This is the single biggest factor.
• The display and glass being bonded together. On most modern phones and iPads you can’t replace just the cracked glass — the whole assembly goes, because separating them reliably at scale isn’t practical.
• Size. A tablet panel is several times the area of a phone panel.
• Parts pairing. Some manufacturers tie components to the board, so replacing them requires extra steps to avoid warnings or lost features like True Tone or Face ID.
• Scarcity. Very new or very old devices are both harder to source for.

What makes labour expensive

Most repairs are priced with labour bundled in, but the labour genuinely varies:

• Adhesive and glass. Anything sealed for water resistance has to be heated, cut, cleaned and re-sealed.
• Soldering. A charging port on a phone, or an HDMI port on a console, is board-level work under a microscope — a different skill from swapping an assembly, and it takes longer.
• Teardown depth. On some devices the battery is the first thing you reach. On others the whole board comes out first.

Why we show OEM and aftermarket separately

For screens you’ll see more than one price. That’s a real choice, not a sales tactic:

• OEM is the manufacturer’s own panel. Identical colour, brightness and touch response to what you had.
• Aftermarket is a third-party panel. Good ones are very close. Cheaper ones can be dimmer, less colour-accurate, or slightly less responsive.

Both get the same 90-day warranty on the work. Which one is right depends on how long you’re keeping the device — on a phone you’ll replace next year, aftermarket is often the sensible call.

What the diagnostic costs

A flat $50, credited toward the repair if you go ahead. If the answer turns out to be “this isn’t worth repairing,” the $50 stands — you’ve paid for a straight answer instead of guessing.

What we don’t charge for

• Travel. No added charge across most of our New Jersey coverage area. Toward the outer edge a travel fee can apply — always quoted before the booking is confirmed.
• Quotes. Nothing starts until you’ve agreed the number.

Every price on the site is live from the same system the bench uses, by exact model — look yours up rather than taking a range on faith.