We hear a lot about creating more collaborative meeting spaces, for employees, remote workers and clients. But surely all that technology costs a pretty penny? Is it really possible to deliver the collaborative technology you need for just £2,000? Yes!
When it comes to innovation and inspiration, price is no longer such a barrier. Technology that once was kept just for cavernous boardrooms or showrooms is now accessible for smaller spaces at an affordable price.
Read on for all the essential meeting room technology you need to create a collaborative small meeting room, all for just £2,000.
Collaboration you can touch
If you’ve been set the task of producing a cutting-edge, collaborative space, let’s get straight to the point. Touchscreens are the ultimate collaboration tool in small meeting rooms, allowing you to share, capture and evolve ideas, train your staff effectively as well as save time and money.
Move seamlessly from video or audio conferencing, share information via wireless streaming and brainstorm using a whiteboard. You can achieve all this and more with a large format touchscreen.
As the UK’s leading touchscreen specialist, we know a thing or two about choosing the best meeting room technology. A couple of thousand is a decent budget to kit out a small meeting room so if collaboration is your key focus, then at this price point we’d recommend dedicating the bulk of your investment to the ViewSonic CDE5561T 55 inch Full HD touchscreen at £1,699 excluding VAT.
This 20-point touch-enabled display, paired with PC-less operation and pre-installed software, allows multiple users to simultaneously write or draw on the screen using fingers or styluses. This screen is also literally easy on the eye, with a decent level of brightness and Flicker-Free and Blue Light filter technologies offering a comfortable viewing environment. You’ll soon wonder how you lived without it!
With a built-in dual core processor and 8GB internal storage, as well as versatile connectivity including HDMI, VGA, RS232, RJ45 and USB ports, this display provides powerful computing for annotation and multimedia playback without the need for a PC.
While we can’t deny it’s worth the money, a touchscreen might still be stretching the budget a bit.
If you can’t justify the extra cost for touchscreen functionality, then go for a classic display screen installation instead. If you’re looking to keep your total spend under £1,500, we’d suggest the Hitachi CML55U01 at £799 excluding VAT.
With its stunning 4K UHD screen, it’s the perfect option for teams working with a lot of detailed content or those with the need to really impress with visuals that almost jump off the screen.
[Find out more about how to choose the right resolution display screen with our expert guide to resolution]
A sound decision
A central display or touchscreen will transform your smaller meetings, but don’t let everything grind to a halt the second your team need to add audio into the mix. It’s not easy to keep track of group discussions or to spark creative work when you can’t hear remote contributors or the audio track of the video material being discussed clearly.
We recommend the ConXeasy SB603 SoundBar to solve your audio problems. It’s the perfect audio solution in terms of offering excellent sound and value for money at just £129. It works well in corporate environments where high definition audio is a must-have and there’s also no need for a separate subwoofer.
Bringing it all together
With your sound and vision sorted, it’s time to tackle the final practical bits and pieces to ensure your setup is usable. Firstly, to get your screen up and on the wall, we recommend the BTech BT8422-Pro Universal Flat Wall Mount, perfect for screens between 50 and 80 inches in size and just £75 including VAT.
Most importantly, don’t forget your cabling and faceplates. What good is all that impressive tech if the team can’t connect to it? You needn’t push the boat out here, there are some great packages that will offer just about every cable and connector you could possibly need, all for minimal spend. Our advice would be to start with the TechConnect – TC3 – 5 metre module and cable package for £59.
So, there you have it: a collaborative, touchscreen, not to mention impressive, small meeting room solution for just under £2,000. To round off the solution with delivery and full professional installation – we’d allow an extra £500 or so in your budget.
We’d love to discuss solutions and packages with you to make sure you get the right meeting room technology fully installed. Talk to us to get the best deals on meeting room tech in the UK.
Run into an unexpected bit of extra budget? Fancy taking things up a level?
Read on for our recommendations on where to focus your additional investment.
Contribute at the click of a button
Speaking of efficiency in the meeting room, the Barco ClickShare family is another set of products we’d highly recommend taking a look at if you have some extra budget available. This simple device makes it incredibly straightforward for people to contribute during a meeting, no matter what device they’re connecting from.
PCs and laptops can plug in the ClickShare button to their USB port, while tablets and smartphone users can download the ClickShare app to their device. Then, when they’re ready to share the content from their device up onto the main screen in the room, it’s just a matter of tapping the app or pressing the button.
The different ClickShare base units are designed to cater for different sizes of teams and meeting environments. For a smaller meeting room, we’d suggest the CS100.
Moveable screens, flexible meetings
The BTech BT8422-Pro Universal Flat Wall Mount is a great installation solution to get your screen up on the wall as the focal point of your meetings. But if you can’t commit to keeping your new display screen or touchscreen in one location, then you might want to consider a trolley stand.
The Peerless AV SR598 Universal Trolley Stand allows you to move the screen from room to room, or to rearrange and re-orientate a single meeting room as you need. Price wise, you’re look at £699, but it could be a good investment if it means you can make a single screen serve several purposes around the office
For smooth running meetings
Control systems help streamline the use of audiovisual equipment and reduce the time spent messing around getting contributors and presenters connected. A good option for a small meeting room is the Neets Control – QueBec. The device allows users to switches automatically between HDMI and VGA signals so there’s no time wasted with remotes, buttons or switching around inputs during a meeting.
With research from Barco showing that two-thirds of staff have had to put meetings on hold in order to sort out technical issues, anything that makes your team’s use of AV equipment more efficient is surely a good investment.[vc_tta_section title=”Upgrade your room booking systems” tab_id=”1500886232388-9044dd28-2e04″]
Upgrade your room booking systems
Finally, here’s a bit of tech that can help save time and improve focus even before your team has sat down in the meeting room. Whilst you’re upgrading or kitting out your small meeting room, why not upgrade your room booking systems too?
With room booking panels, the user interface and built-in room availability functions change in real time to show room availability. Users can easily locate and book an available room directly from the panel. If that room is booked, users can quickly locate the nearest available room or the next available time with ease. Vision Free Space Room Booking App (VFSA) starts from just £595 excluding VAT.