When equipping a conference room, selecting the right display technology is essential for fostering efficient collaboration and communication. The display serves as the focal point of video meetings, presentations, and collaborative sessions. Whether you’re outfitting a small meeting room or a large boardroom, choosing between a conference room display and a monitor can significantly impact the effectiveness of your meetings.
Understanding the Importance of Display Quality
The display technology you choose must provide clear visuals, vibrant colors, and wide viewing angles to ensure that all participants, both in the room and remote, can easily engage with the content. Factors such as color accuracy, brightness, field of view, and image clarity play pivotal roles in delivering an optimal user experience.
Conference room displays and monitors offer various features tailored to different needs, and understanding the benefits of each option will help you make an informed choice for your space.
Conference Room Display Technology Options
Conference Room Displays
These are purpose-built solutions designed specifically for corporate environments. Modern displays offer a range of features that enhance collaboration, communication, and overall productivity in meetings.
Ideal for brainstorming sessions and presentations, interactive displays allow users to manipulate content directly on the screen. These displays integrate with cloud-based platforms and support real-time annotations, making them a powerful tool for collaborative work.
Projectors
Projectors show every detail with images up to 500 inch that are bright, glare-free, easy on the eye, and visible from anywhere in the room.
Unlike flat panel monitors, there’s no fixed screen size. Instead of zooming in and losing content, you can simply make the display bigger. These projectors are also light, compact and portable, making installation easy.
Achieving the optimal screen size means replicating the average desktop experience for all participants in your meeting, including those furthest away from the screen.
Key Considerations for Choosing a Conference Room Display
Meeting Purpose and Requirements
The nature of the meetings you conduct should be the primary factor guiding your choice of display.
If your meetings involve extensive collaboration, such as brainstorming, interactive presentations, or creative planning, an interactive conference room display with touch functionality and built-in collaboration tools would be ideal. These displays enable real-time annotations, content sharing, and more dynamic interaction between participants.
If your meetings are primarily focused on presentations or information dissemination, a high-resolution monitor with excellent clarity and color reproduction may be sufficient. Monitors offer simplicity while still providing a quality visual experience for presentations.
User Experience and Ease of Use
Ease of use is critical to ensuring that participants can focus on the content rather than struggling with technology.
Conference room displays with intuitive, touchscreen interfaces offer seamless interaction, making them ideal for team collaboration. Touch-enabled displays can greatly enhance engagement by allowing participants to manipulate content directly on the screen, making them suitable for interactive and creative tasks.
Monitors, although less interactive, are generally plug-and-play and easy to operate for traditional presentations. These are often used for straightforward information display and are generally easier for users who prefer traditional methods of content sharing via laptops or other connected devices.
Confererence Room Size and Layout
The size and configuration of your meeting room are critical in determining the ideal display solution.
Larger rooms benefit from large conference room displays to ensure visibility from every angle. In addition, larger displays offer high brightness and resolution, making it easier for participants at the back of the room to see fine details.
For smaller rooms or huddle spaces, a standard-sized monitor will suffice. A smaller display helps to avoid overwhelming the room while still delivering high-quality visuals.
Dual Displays
For larger rooms or for scenarios requiring multiple content streams, dual or multi-screen setups allow for easier navigation between presentation materials, video conferencing feeds, and collaborative workspaces.
This is particularly helpful in data-heavy presentations where participants need to reference multiple sources simultaneously.
Conference Room Display Screen Size vs Brightness
A key aspect of any conference room display is ensuring that the screen size is proportionate to the room size and seating arrangement. Choosing a display that’s too small will force participants to strain their eyes, while a screen that’s too large might dominate the space unnecessarily.
The screen should be large enough to ensure that everyone in the room can see the shared content without difficulty. A good rule of thumb is that the farthest participant should not be more than six times the vertical height of the screen away from it.
Brightness is especially important in rooms with large windows or strong overhead lighting. In such environments, a high-brightness display with high nits (measurement of brightness) or lumens (for projectors) ensures content is visible even in bright conditions. Look for displays with at least 300-500 nits or projectors with high lumens ratings for such settings.
Single or Dual (Multi-Screen) Displays
Many modern conference rooms benefit from dual-display setups, particularly in larger spaces or rooms designed for hybrid meetings. Dual displays enable:
One display can be dedicated to the video feed, showing remote participants, while the other displays shared content such as slides, documents, or videos. This helps keep everyone in the room engaged and ensures smooth transitions between different types of content.
In complex presentations where multiple charts, graphs, or applications need to be visible simultaneously, multi-screen setups provide flexibility. For example, financial or technical presentations often benefit from showing different data sets side by side.
Mounting Options
The way your display is mounted can significantly impact the room’s functionality and appearance.
This is the most common setup for large displays in conference rooms. Wall mounting provides a clean, professional look while saving valuable table space. For a single display, it’s important to ensure that it is centered on the wall and positioned for easy visibility from every seat at the table.
Mobile carts offer flexibility by allowing displays to be moved from room to room. This is particularly useful in environments where space is at a premium or when displays need to be shared between multiple meeting rooms.
For dual-display setups, the screens can be mounted horizontally with a gap in between or vertically to ensure maximum visibility.
Budget Considerations
When choosing between conference room displays and monitors, it’s important to factor in cost. Conference room displays tend to be more expensive due to their larger size, higher brightness, and interactive features.
Conference Room Displays come with additional functionalities such as touchscreens, real-time content sharing, and video conferencing capabilities, which justify the higher cost. However, if your meeting space requires these advanced features, the investment can be well worth it.
Monitors: If your budget is more limited, a high-quality monitor might suffice. Monitors are generally more affordable, and they work well in smaller spaces or for straightforward presentations.
Future Scalability
When investing in display technology, it’s crucial to consider the future needs of your organization. If you expect to scale your video conferencing capabilities, add advanced collaboration tools, or integrate with cloud-based platforms.
Many conference room displays come with built-in tools for video conferencing, wireless content sharing, and interactive whiteboarding, making them a robust solution for growing businesses.
Projectors, on the other hand, offer scalability through adjustable screen sizes, making them suitable for larger rooms or different room configurations.
