Touchscreens for Classrooms That Support Interactivity on Mac?

[Praxis]

We are looking into gradually replacing all of our projectors with touchscreens in the class rooms, the problem is nearly every device that will be used with them are Macbook Air M1's. I looked at a lot of screens at the BETT Show recently, and they all said they support touch using their own apps that are available on Apple devices, but I'm worried about latency and it just generally being a bit naff compared to a wired connection you'd get with something like a Windows laptop. I'm guessing this could be an issue when it comes to Apple devices as a lot of the drivers needed for this function are Windows only.

 

I don't think buying an optional Windows module for the screen will be an option, or at least it will be a very hard sell to staff who are used to Mac's.

 

We're looking at 75" minimum and as budget friendly as possible, although open to anything at the minute.

 

Can anyone recommend a screen that would enable us to use the touch functionality natively on Mac, mainly for web based activities like Education City, Numbots etc?

 

Thanks

[aleach2]

I was very impressed with the BenQ offering at BETT. Not sure if they would work with Mac's (I am pretty surethey will) but I know the BenQ education team will happily visit and demo their boards.

 

https://www.benq.eu/en-uk/business/ifp/education.html#features

[Mrpower]

Hello

We have a BenQ RP 65" touchscreen and the touchscreen function works fine with a MacBook Pro 2011 running MacOS 10.15. You can control the Mac just fine from the touchscreen, no drivers just plugin and play. I haven't tried it with a M1 Mac yet, I could try it on a MacBook Pro 2021 and see if its works. I have no reason to believe that it will not work.

We also have a newline 75" touchscreen, but I haven't tried any Macs out on that yet. I think there is limited amount of touch on Mac's, rather than 20 points I think it's down to one or two maybe. I did ask Smart at BETT and they where confident Macs would work on their touchscreens.

[Praxis]

Funnily enough they were the screens that I liked the most too, especially the BENQ RM7503

 

I will get in touch with them and get some more info but would like to hear from someone with a similar setup already and how it works for them.

 

Hello

We have a BenQ RP 65" touchscreen and the touchscreen function works fine with a MacBook Pro 2011 running MacOS 10.15. You can control the Mac just fine from the touchscreen, no drivers just plugin and play. I haven't tried it with a M1 Mac yet, I could try it on a MacBook Pro 2021 and see if its works. I have no reason to believe that it will not work.

We also have a newline 75" touchscreen, but I haven't tried any Macs out on that yet. I think there is limited amount of touch on Mac's, rather than 20 points I think it's down to one or two maybe. I did ask Smart at BETT and they where confident Macs would work on their touchscreens.

One or two inputs would be fine to be honest. Looking at Smart's prices always put us off in the past to be honest, they seem to be more expensive than everyone else.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Praxis

[Mrpower]

The only, gotcha issue with the BenQ screens is where you plug in the USB touch. If you plug in a VGA, the touchscreen usb is next to the VGA plug. if you plug in HDMI it a different usb touch plug, and if you plug in HDMI at the front its a different USB plug again. Depending where you put the video signal the usb touch plug changes. I can see this confusing staff. "it's plugin but it won't detect me touching the screen" IT response "Which video plug did you use?, Front, back, side..." I only discover this when I was plugged in to a usb socket labelled touch and nothing happened, and when back to the manual and discovered how to make the touch work with a VGA or a HDMI or DVI input. However this might be the same on all touchscreens and I just haven't discovered this yet.

[dhicks]

Looking at Smart's prices always put us off in the past to be honest, they seem to be more expensive than everyone else.

 

Their newer GX models seem to be priced more in line with other manufacturers - I think we paid around £1,700 for a 75" screen around a year ago (that price includes VAT). We generally use Windows PCs in classrooms, but the couple of times we've plugged a Smart board into a Mac in they seem to have worked just fine with no drivers needed. For all manufacturers, I'd ignore their software and use something you can use across all devices / platforms - we use Kami. I've not seen anyone use any features or gestures that make use of more than two touch points (click, drag, swipe, pinch-to-zoom, maybe rotate, that's about it), so I wouldn't worry too much about the number of touch points supported. The same goes for snazzy features like being able to use two pens simultaneously, which I think some of the Smart boards could support - I don't think anyone actually used that. If you're using third-party software and not relying on the special pens that come with the board for particular features you can use generic styluses, too - the 50p-each ones from Amazon work well on a large display (although they are rather clunky to use on smaller laptop touch screens), so you don't have to worry about people loosing the pens.

[Praxis]

The only, gotcha issue with the BenQ screens is where you plug in the USB touch. If you plug in a VGA, the touchscreen usb is next to the VGA plug. if you plug in HDMI it a different usb touch plug, and if you plug in HDMI at the front its a different USB plug again. Depending where you put the video signal the usb touch plug changes. I can see this confusing staff. "it's plugin but it won't detect me touching the screen" IT response "Which video plug did you use?, Front, back, side..." I only discover this when I was plugged in to a usb socket labelled touch and nothing happened, and when back to the manual and discovered how to make the touch work with a VGA or a HDMI or DVI input. However this might be the same on all touchscreens and I just haven't discovered this yet.

 

That sounds like a bit of a nightmare for certain members of staff! Thanks for the warning.

 

Their newer GX models seem to be priced more in line with other manufacturers - I think we paid around £1,700 for a 75" screen around a year ago (that price includes VAT). We generally use Windows PCs in classrooms, but the couple of times we've plugged a Smart board into a Mac in they seem to have worked just fine with no drivers needed. For all manufacturers, I'd ignore their software and use something you can use across all devices / platforms - we use Kami. I've not seen anyone use any features or gestures that make use of more than two touch points (click, drag, swipe, pinch-to-zoom, maybe rotate, that's about it), so I wouldn't worry too much about the number of touch points supported. The same goes for snazzy features like being able to use two pens simultaneously, which I think some of the Smart boards could support - I don't think anyone actually used that. If you're using third-party software and not relying on the special pens that come with the board for particular features you can use generic styluses, too - the 50p-each ones from Amazon work well on a large display (although they are rather clunky to use on smaller laptop touch screens), so you don't have to worry about people loosing the pens.

Thank you for the information

[BenQ_Chris]

Hi, happy to confirm the BenQ screens work seamlessly with Mac. If you use a direct cable connection there is no latency. We do offer a casting solution (utilising your existing network) that will support touchback. There are two groups of inputs on the side, each group has its own USB 3 Type B touch input (backwards compatible with USB 3 Type B). If use USB 3 from start to finish you can access the built in microphones (on RM03 series) and if connected a webcam from the PC. There is a separate connection on the front with HDMI, USB C with a dedicated touch port (designed around someone walking up and connecting). The multi input ports were put in place so that you can have 2 devices set up (fixed PC and a laptop connection) without needing to amend connections on the screen. In a lot of installs these go through wall plates. If you have any further questions or would like to know more let me know where we can arrange a remote demo or potentially an onsite one with one of our demonstrators.

 

Chris

[Praxis]

Hi, happy to confirm the BenQ screens work seamlessly with Mac. If you use a direct cable connection there is no latency. We do offer a casting solution (utilising your existing network) that will support touchback. There are two groups of inputs on the side, each group has its own USB 3 Type B touch input (backwards compatible with USB 3 Type B). If use USB 3 from start to finish you can access the built in microphones (on RM03 series) and if connected a webcam from the PC. There is a separate connection on the front with HDMI, USB C with a dedicated touch port (designed around someone walking up and connecting). The multi input ports were put in place so that you can have 2 devices set up (fixed PC and a laptop connection) without needing to amend connections on the screen. In a lot of installs these go through wall plates. If you have any further questions or would like to know more let me know where we can arrange a remote demo or potentially an onsite one with one of our demonstrators.

 

Chris

 

Thanks for this, as I said, the BenQ screens were the ones I liked most at BETT, at least from the ones I managed to see.