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Visual communication has been improving with each new development in digital technology. From personal computers to tablets and smartphones, you can now get your ideas across quickly and efficiently. Smart boards look to do the same by integrating some of the features of these devices to ideate, communicate and collaborate.
You can now bring your team into a room and collaborate on a smart board together on the spot. And if you want to bring in other people from a remote location, you can do it right away. Together you can take notes, scratch bad ideas, watch videos, and get online while sharing and saving it all.
If you are in the market for a smart board, this list will show you the best devices you can get right now.
Best Smart Boards for Collaboration
- Top Pick: Samsung Flip 2
- Runner Up: Vibe All-in-one Interactive Whiteboard
- Best Value: Sharp 70″ Class Interactive Display System
Samsung Flip 2
Top Pick: The Samsung Flip 2 comes from a global brand and leader in display and communication technology. This 65” 4K UHD digital flipchart has a pen-to-paper-like writing experience to make meetings and brainstorming more efficient and productive.
Touch out functionality lets you sync personal devices with the Samsung Flip for real-time content sharing and control. And you can store your meetings securely and share notes via email, network, thumb drive or printouts.
Vibe All-in-one Interactive Whiteboard
Runner Up: Vibe is a leading brand in this segment. Moreover, the feature-packed displays it offers are affordable. The company offers a robust app ecosystem for this 55″ 4K UHD touch screen. The Vibe OS supports multi-person and multi-device edit and sharing capability.
The screen has a 5ms response time, so your touch and pen respond like a traditional whiteboard and a marker. And when you make changes, you can use Vibe Cloud to save your content in real-time and make it available on Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box. This includes editing in real-time on your device of choice with a wireless screencast.
Vibe All-in-one Computer Real-time Smart Interactive Whiteboard, W/ 55″ 4K UHD Touch ScreenSign
Sharp 70″ Class Interactive Display System
Best Value: Sharp is known for its quality displays and this 70” ten-point multi-touch screen smart board doesn’t disappoint. It is a high definition Edge Lit LED display.
This board can support up to four simultaneous users with the Sharp Display Connect Software. The software simplifies connectivity with mobile devices and manipulation of multiple file types.
Sharp PN-C705B 70″ Class Interactive Display System” 4K UHD Touch ScreenSign
ViewSonic 98” ViewBoard
ViewSonic is another manufacturer known for its high-quality computer displays. This 98” board is big, without losing quality. The ViewBoard is a 4K Ultra HD interactive flat panel board with next-generation IR touch technology. The result is a 50% latency reduction with the 20-point touch capability for multiple simultaneous users.
Additional features include myViewBoard annotation software with enterprise-grade security, SmartPort USB function, and a sound system with 10W stereo speakers and a 15W subwoofer.
ViewSonic IFP9850 98” ViewBoard 4K Ultra HD Interactive Flat Panel
Microsoft Surface Hub 2 50″ PixelSense Display
The Microsoft Surface Hub 2 is a 50” device with a 4K PixelSense 120Hz touchscreen display with multi-touch/pen capabilities. The Hub 2 is basically a large computer and it includes Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, and 128 GB SSD along with a modular hub to increase capacity.
Wide-angle cameras on each side produce 1080P video and a four-element microphone array can capture what everyone in the room is saying. You can talk, draw, and share on the Hub using Microsoft Office applications.
Microsoft Surface Hub 2 50″ PixelSense Display
LG 75″ Touchscreen LCD Display
The LG touchscreen display lets you draw, write, and capture notes. You can also connect, display, and control different devices to bring other members of your team in to collaborate.
The UHD display has a capacitive touchscreen functionality with multi-touches of up to 40 points. This allows multiple participants to simultaneously use the touch features without any dead zones. And the LG webOS 3.0+ is powered by high-performance System-on-Chip/SOC. With this performance, you can execute several tasks at the same time without a separate media player or PC.
LG 75″ Touchscreen LCD Display
OneScreen 75″ Canvas Touch Screen
OneScreen is known for all the features it packs in its display. This includes a powerful built-in PC module with Intel i7 processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB SDD, and Windows 10 Pro OS. With this capability, the processing speed renders collaborative communication faster.
The computing power also makes the 20-point multi-touching technology seamless with a pen or your fingers. And according to the company, you can connect up to 40 different kinds of devices to create a connected environment.
OneScreen 75″ Canvas Touch Screen
What is a Smart Board?
Also know as an interactive whiteboard, a smart board is in most cases a large display resembling the traditional whiteboard. And as such, it can be used where the analog versions were used. This includes offices, boardrooms, classrooms, coaching, and planning projects.
Generally fixed to a wall, a smart board has a touch screen that allows you to use a smartpen or your fingers to interact with it. You can write on the board or integrate your computing device to show presentation, media, and other content. Additional features allow the smart board to connect with projectors, the internet, and other applications.
As part of the global interactive display market, this segment was valued at $14.63 billion in 2018. And according to Allied Market Research, it is projected to reach $29.19 billion by 2026. This is a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8.80% from 2019 to 2026.
Features to Look for In a Smart Board
- Size: Smart boards come in many different sizes. And how you use it is going to dictate the size you purchase. If it is purely remote, you can get away with a smaller screen size. If, however, you are going to be using it in your office, it needs to be bigger.
- Connectivity: The ability to connect with all the participants without any compatibility issues is extremely important. You want everyone to log on and participate whether they are on a PC, tablet, smartphone or even another smartboard.
- Compatibility: Once you are connected with the different devices, you need seamless compatibility on Windows, Android, iOS, and other platforms. With full compatibility, you can easily share the content on your screen and use native casting to stream any media you might have.
- OS: Make sure the operating system on the device is what you need.
- Cameras and other accessories: Not all smartboards have the accessories you might need to make collaborations possible. And if you have to buy the accessories, make sure you have enough ports to plug them all in.
- Multi-user Collaboration: You want your board to be able to bring multiple users and collaborate. This means they can write, erase, and move notes simultaneously. And it must do this with object awareness detection. This makes it possible to automatically allow pens to write, fingers to move, and palms to erase on the board.
- Write into files: Writing is one of the key features of smart boards. However, it must allow you to annotate into PDFs, Microsoft Office files, websites, and other programs. Not only that, but it should also save the notes in the most popular file types. The ability to convert notes to text is also a must.
Benefits of an Interactive Whiteboard
Efficiency is the name of the game when you adopt new technology. If it makes your workflow more efficient and your team more productive, then it is worth looking at.
The ability to quickly get on an interactive whiteboard and bring your team together is a huge benefit. This can take place in your office or with your remote team, wherever they happen to be.
The technology of this board allows you to save all your notes, discussions, and content automatically. And you can share, access, edit, and save all the material in a collaborative production while making changes in real-time. This means you can communicate your ideas quickly while you are in the meeting and email, print, and share your discussions when you are done.
When it comes to connectivity, you can connect the board with PCs as well as Android and iOS smart devices. This gives you more interconnectivity and data sharing with team members without having to worry about compatibility issues.
And on a lighter note, you will not have to get messy with the erasers and markers of traditional whiteboards.
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