Interactive Touchscreens Iiyama and Viewsonic

[jdg101]

Hi all,

 

We are currently looking to start moving in to using interactive touchscreen displays, rather than our current projectors and interactive boards. So I have no experience with them at the minute.

 

Looking at the cheaper end of the market due to budget restraints.

Is there anything to take note of when going for the cheaper models. In our case we are looking at the Iiyama 02 Series Specifically the Prolite TE7502MIS-B1AG and the ViewSonic 32 Series Specifically the IFP7532.

 

We would be using these in a windows environment.

If anyone has any experience with these two displays, have there been any issues or anything we should know before committing to either one?

 

Thanks

[DavR]

We've used the iiYama ProLite 65s extensively, they were our first round of touchscreen displays. They're cheap and cheerful and did the job for us. Not much in the way of features, bear in mind they are designed for corporate meeting rooms first, and found education second. I've heard that the front screen glass isn't as tough as education models, but it's not something that's been an issue for us.

 

What I will say though, is if you're looking at that price range, Promethean actually beat iiYama on price the last few that we did. This appealed to us, as it allowed us to continue using the ActivInspire software legitimately. This may or may not be an issue for you, but, whatever way you go you will want to bear in mind what presentation software you're using. Both Smart and Promethean aren't keen on you using their products on competitors screens.

[yac2016]

All depends on the software you want to use, take a look at Newline as well, 75" are about £1250-1400 I think.

[XiJ]

I’d say the software you want to use is one of the main considerations. As has been said, smart and promethian don’t like you using their software with other screens - at least without a hefty price attached.

 

We used ilyama 55 then 65 screens since interactive screens were in the their infancy and they’re still going strong. At one point I worked for an AV company and the only time we had a broken screen it was smashed by a pupils head - it was a SEND school and he was wear headgear i understand ! (Hope).

[Oaktech]

We had 8 Viewsonic 65s and had no end of problems with them.

 

* Touch would stop working randomly - pull usb put it back in and it worked again for a couple of days,

* Inputs would stop seeing perfectly legitimate signals - you could pull VGA, put it in another screen and it would work - if you turned the board off at the switch, left it for a few seconds and turned it back on it would recognize the signal immediately, HDMI over 5m would result in artefacts on the screen where it hadn't on the Smart 4065 they'd replaced.

* Leaving a board on freeze for more than 5 minutes would frequently cause the board to stop responding completely requiring a hard reboot.

* Very bright sunlight would cause spurious touch input.

 

We had engineers from Viewsonic out twice in 6 months and they did cure the freeze issue with a firmware update done off a stick, but the rest of the issues remained and eventually our distributor caved and swapped all of them for ex-display BenQs for free. Those boards are are still going.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Oaktech

[JRA]

Whatever you get try a demo model first. Have a cautionary tale in an interview we did back in the summer. We asked one guy a question on "what's the biggest mistake you've made in your career and how did you resolve it?" The poor bloke answered that he'd bought about forty interactive touchscreen TVs and whenever you exited a fullscreen Powerpoint it'd do something to them and they'd not see the PC input again until you restarted the TV itself. As you might imagine now we've started demo-ing that's the FIRST thing I tried out lol. Cannot for the life of me remember what the make was though.

[maxrebo]

We have recently purchased a number of the Viewsonic IFT7532`s to replace a number of rooms with IWB and Projectors - We have had similar issues to @Oaktech

 

The touch randomly failing, losing signal etc...all fixed with a hard power down.

 

I cant say ive been impressed with these so far, staff training has fixed a few of these issues, but these are workarounds and we shouldn't have to do this.

 

We have also had the issue where if you exit from a Powerpoint in slideshow mode the signal is lost to the PC.

 

Cheaper is not always the best option!

[SamanthaD]

We use Iiyamas extensively as our interactive display choice. Great panels, long lasting, no real troubles apart from a tiny batch that decided to boot to the root menu instead of the normal firmware once or twice. As we don't give our users remote controls we had to go and reboot the displays, but then they've been fine since. Also sometimes using the USB hub can be flaky with 4k cameras, but that's to be expected I guess!

[PotNoodleTech]

We looked around and visited a couple of schools and decided that as these type of devices only really get replaced once every 10 years, so is it really wise to buy the cheapest we can find? Decided not to not skimp on buying them in the first place.

 

Ended up going Smart GX 86" on our initial trial of 6 boards. Really good and the sound is really good too so no speakers or soundbars needed.

 

I would have a think about short term vosts vs long term costs as buying the cheapest you can get may end up costing you more in the long term. We made the same mistake with bog standard TVs in meeting rooms etc too and have to say that the cheapest noname ones be bought are all dead and we now have sony/samsung. Buy cheap buy twice? The saying does sometimes hold up!!!

[BenQ_Chris]

Hi,

 

Happy to arrange for someone to go through the merits of the BenQ interactive screens.

 

We have 3 core ranges RE (Essential), RM (Master) & RP (Pro); all available in 65", 75" & 86" and all come with a fixed wall bracket and pens.

 

If you register the units within 30 days of purchase your 3 year de/re-install warranty gets upgraded FOC to 5 years.

 

All have built in Android OS, you also get FOC Device Management Software & Broadcast software which is all manageable over the cloud, each screen has LAN sockets or you can purchase the optional wireless dongle (included as standard with the RP03).

 

As you move up the range you get additional features like eye care, germ resistant coating, CO2 sensor, air ioniser & NFC reader (for use with our free accounts system).

 

If you would like to know more, let me know and we can arrange a demo (either via VC or in person), if you do decide to go with BenQ we can also support with product training for staff & ICT.

[FN-GM]

 

All have built in Android OS, you also get FOC Device Management Software & Broadcast software which is all manageable over the cloud, each screen has LAN sockets or you can purchase the optional wireless dongle (included as standard with the RP03).

 

I am curious to know more about the update cycle please? How often are software updates for android released please? Do they include security updates? For how long is this supported please?

[BenQ_Chris]

Hi, in terms of the update cycle, I'll try and answer:

- the version of Android (e.g. 11) that is installed on the screen, will always be the the same version. However, for as long as Google provide security updates we will continue to integrate them in to our customised Android OS

- in terms of our customised Android OS and firmware, we will continue to support the device with updates throughout the lifetime of the product (minimum 3 years). Newer products receive more frequent updates (on average 3 or 4 times a year), these will include upgrades to latest versions of our own software as well as applying security updates

 

I hope that has helped answer your questions, if you have any other questions please let me know.