SMART Board® MX series review by a teacher! Surprising results

[kennysarmy]

We installed a SMART Board® MX series panel in one of our Math's rooms and have had the following feedback from a teacher:

 

- The screen becomes dirty quickly so constantly needs cleaning

 

- The screen reflects so it is difficult to see from an angle

 

- It sticks out from the wall see the angle is exacerbated

 

- Being a hard surface the pen makes a banging noise when writing on the board

 

- The pen is slow to react to movement meaning that you can only write slowly

 

- The board is maybe 12 inches shorter which makes a huge difference to the amount of work that can be presented.

 

 

We had envisaged rolling the panels out to all the Maths rooms this summer - guess that's on hold now!

 

 

Has anyone rolled panels out to replace IWB's and had positive feedback?

[localzuk]

I've had no negative feedback from anyone - we've installed CleverLCD (4 of them 7 years ago) and SMART (about 12 of them) touchscreens, some of the older models and some of the new MX ones. The teachers love them - the clarity of the image far surpasses that of projectors.

[mrwoberts]

In my experience, once teachers have used a touchscreen they never want to go back - teach in a classroom that doesn't have one.

 

Looking at some of those issues, I'd say the angle thing is probably quite common across the three different brands I've installed, but it's never been a show stopper.

 

I do think the SMART screens are not as amazing as I had hoped they would be, and I agree there can be a slight delay sometimes. Double clicking on the SMART screen is painful - hit and miss as to whether it worked, so teachers tap 50 times to be sure (exaggeration)

 

The screen I've kind of settled on for now is the BenQ RM6501K. Not premium, but they just do the job really well. Plus the sound bar below the screen is way better than the SMART screen sound.

 

Edit: Forgot to add that the SMART screens are also very very fussy about things being pinned around the bezel of the screen. Lost count of how many times I've been called to a classroom to investigate 'random' touch interference, only to find the teacher had pinned phonics cards or other such stuff in the way of the bezel sensors. This shouldn't really be done on any IR based touchscreen, but I just think the SMART screens are more fussy about it.

Edited July 4, 2019 by mrwoberts

[XiJ]

We’ve used iiyama for many years and 99% of teachers love them.

 

In the days before iiyama, when interactive screens were new, we did have a school cautious about using them in the upper primary age. For maths in particular the 42” wasn’t physically big enough. Of course the minimum we usually install these days is 65” so that negates the problem some what. And touch response is fantastic. Thinks pinned in the bezel can cause a false touch - but less so these days.

[DrBeaker]

We have SMART boards, they moan about them. Even when some of them are unplugged and they don't use the interactive feature.

We have TVs, they moan about them.

 

You try to improve things, they moan.

You change things, they moan.

You leave things the way they "like them", they moan.

 

You can't bend to the whim of individual teachers. E.g. I've liaised with one teacher in his room to improve and change his setup, we finally got it sorted out. He left within a month after that! So the setup needs to suit the room and curriculum, not the individual teacher.

 

Sometimes you just can't win.

[Zourous]

We just stuck with projectors and just replaced them with LED ones as the bulb ones got old. For size of the display and a cost of less than £500 each it seemed the common sense option for us, and easier to replace if you do have problems. For most part interaction isn’t used so why waste money on it. There are some touchscreens and TV’s where it makes sense, like high ceilings for example.

[TechMonkey]

We have gone to Prowise boards and not had any major gripes. We moved from a couple of SMART screens as I didn't feel they were great. I keep meaning to try Sharp touch boards as I've heard good things, just not had a chance and want to keep standard as much as I can.

 

There is an issue with a lot of boards and the viewing angle, you have to be really careful and as a lot of the brands don't make manufacture their own panels it can change and a board that was OK can seem to be worse. The prices on bigger and bigger panels are dropping so it is getting more viable to stick a bigger screen in a room and make it more viewable.

[synaesthesia]

Having good results with promethean boards; no viewing angle, glare, reflection or cleaning difficulties (yet!, only been in a few weeks). It's a bonus for us not having to stick to 4:3 monitors for classrooms for the sake of not having it squashed when set to widescreen!

[Rob_D]

- The board is maybe 12 inches shorter which makes a huge difference to the amount of work that can be presented.

?

 

Out of interest, 12 inches shorter than what?

 

We've nearly finished replacing all our old projector/IWB combos with Smart SB6065 screens (which I think are the predecessor to the MX line). The only complaint we've had is the lack of remote, which means the teacher has to get up and walk over to the board to freeze it. We sold them on using extended display instead and they seem to really like that.

Not having a remote dose seem like a silly decision on Smart's part and I'm surprised your teacher didn't bring that up as well. Or do the MX boards have remotes?

[kennysarmy]

Out of interest, 12 inches shorter than what?

 

We've nearly finished replacing all our old projector/IWB combos with Smart SB6065 screens (which I think are the predecessor to the MX line). The only complaint we've had is the lack of remote, which means the teacher has to get up and walk over to the board to freeze it. We sold them on using extended display instead and they seem to really like that.

Not having a remote dose seem like a silly decision on Smart's part and I'm surprised your teacher didn't bring that up as well. Or do the MX boards have remotes?

 

Than the existing Promethean ABV578PRO boards!

[localzuk]

Than the existing Promethean ABV578PRO boards!

The 75" MX275 is 165x92.8cm or 66.5x38 inches

The 78" Promethean 500 Pro is 162x117cm or 63.9x46.3

 

So, the difference is 6 inches. I'd suggest that is down to the aspect ratio being different though to be honest (plus the 3" difference in diagonal size), as the ActivBoard is 16:10 (to match the popular for the time 1280x800 resolution of the matching projectors), but the SMART (and most touchscreens) are 16:9, to match the more modern 1366x768 or 1920x1080 aspect ratio used by most devices.

 

If you found a 16:10 display or projector and board to project on, and projected at the modern resolutions, you'd just end up with black bars at the top and bottom anyway.

[sted]

i have gone off smartboard since they went "tv" the first ones i saw have an awful failure rate they all seem to eventually get phantom input, the last new ones i saw some numpty designed them without an off switch or remote, you can standby them but they have motion sensors so if anyone walks in front f it it turns on again. If it wasnt for teachers wanting smart notebook i wouldnt even entertain them personally at this point (and notebook 18 seems to be annoying installed it without the premium features and it complains about them 30 days later and unless the board is plugged in and turned on (so even on a pc with a smartboard attached but off it does it)it puts a watermark on the notebook file (this may be a misconfiguration by me but i dont think so)

[Rob_D]

the last new ones i saw some numpty designed them without an off switch or remote, you can standby them but they have motion sensors so if anyone walks in front f it it turns on again.

 

FYI, the motion sensor can be disabled in the menu, in which case the "stand by" button works like a normal off switch.

[telspar]

We have only one MX series board. After having it for a few weeks we felt that the SMART 6000 series was far better and worth the small difference in cost from our supplier. The feedback on the 6000 series has been mostly positive. We have had 2 boards die and get replaced under warranty out of about 50 so far.

We have not installed any other brands to compare these to, so I can't speak to that. We do have several LG and Vizio consumer TVs in places where touch would not be needed or used, these have worked well also and cost far less than an interactive panel.

[kennysarmy]

In my experience, once teachers have used a touchscreen they never want to go back - teach in a classroom that doesn't have one.

 

Looking at some of those issues, I'd say the angle thing is probably quite common across the three different brands I've installed, but it's never been a show stopper.

 

I do think the SMART screens are not as amazing as I had hoped they would be, and I agree there can be a slight delay sometimes. Double clicking on the SMART screen is painful - hit and miss as to whether it worked, so teachers tap 50 times to be sure (exaggeration)

 

The screen I've kind of settled on for now is the BenQ RM6501K. Not premium, but they just do the job really well. Plus the sound bar below the screen is way better than the SMART screen sound.

 

Edit: Forgot to add that the SMART screens are also very very fussy about things being pinned around the bezel of the screen. Lost count of how many times I've been called to a classroom to investigate 'random' touch interference, only to find the teacher had pinned phonics cards or other such stuff in the way of the bezel sensors. This shouldn't really be done on any IR based touchscreen, but I just think the SMART screens are more fussy about it.

 

Hi, thread revival, but we recently had a demo of the BenQ and wondered if you were still happy with the RM model and BenQ as a whole?

There seemed to be lots of talk of "things in development" - I guess that's both good and bad, good they are developing things and bad that the thing we might buy feels not quite "finished".

[mrwoberts]

I'd say we're happy with the BenQ boards, and with just one exception, we've always bought the RM models - we didn't need the extra features. They seem robust enough to cope in Primary schools, they come with a mounting bracket, and as long as you register the S/N within 30 days of purchasing you can have a 5-year warranty - this is a bugbear of mine since I believe they should honour a warranty regardless of the 30-day registration.

 

I've had to update the firmware on a few of them, but apart from that, they've been pretty solid. I think our buy price for a 65-inch is around £ 1,500.

[kennysarmy]

I'd say we're happy with the BenQ boards, and with just one exception, we've always bought the RM models - we didn't need the extra features. They seem robust enough to cope in Primary schools, they come with a mounting bracket, and as long as you register the S/N within 30 days of purchasing you can have a 5-year warranty - this is a bugbear of mine since I believe they should honour a warranty regardless of the 30-day registration.

 

I've had to update the firmware on a few of them, but apart from that, they've been pretty solid. I think our buy price for a 65-inch is around £ 1,500.

 

Thanks, sounds positive though.

 

So far we've had demo's from Smart, Clevertouch and this week BenQ, only Viewsonic to go. Ultimately I need just under 50 boards so it's important we make the right decision!

[mrwoberts]

Something that I've just remembered because another teacher mentioned this the other day....

 

Pay careful attention to the brightness of the room it will be installed in. I've had two instances where the BenQ screens were installed in very bright rooms (large windows around two sides of the room), and they struggle to give a bright enough image on sunny days. This is rare but could have been avoided if I had thought more about it. I think there would be a brighter screen out there that would have coped better.