Key Takeaway
SMART Board has been a popular choice for school districts, but they offer tiered functionality that requires multiple subscriptions or licenses. Make sure that you have a full understanding of the functionality that you’re getting with the included software.
How much does a SMART Board cost?
SMART Board prices start at $4,999 for the 6000 series boards, with additional software costs. Depending on whether you’re using the board in a business or education setting, users can select from the MX, 6000, or 7000 series, etc.
SMART Board Highlights
SMART Board is available in a range of sizes with varying functionalities. SMART Board 6000 series includes SMART Notebook® basic version. Multiple people can work together directly on the board. SMART Board 6000 series responds to up to eight touchpoints and can detect whether the user is drawing with a stylus or erasing by hand. You can connect up to eight devices simultaneously for screen sharing. SMART Technologies ULC puts a lot of emphasis on the board as an educational tool, which makes the free one-year subscription to the SMART Learning Suite software with the purchase of a board a nice bonus for educators.
Business users can make the most of their board’s capabilities with features like SMART Meeting Pro® and SMART TeamWorks™, which provide access to a limited number of apps, such as Microsoft 365 and most video conferencing apps.
What’s Missing
The SMART Board has many interesting and useful capabilities; however, nearly all of the best features that set the SMART Board apart from other digital whiteboards require several subscriptions or licenses.
For businesses, the SMART TeamWorks™ software enables groups to meet and collaborate, but there are different levels of access.
- The Rooms edition allows you to work with people in the same room, and you can screen share with up to eight devices, but those devices can’t contribute to a shared workspace.
- The next level up, Connected, lets other devices contribute to the workspace but they all have to be on the same network.
- Users have to add a Server subscription to the Connected edition before they can allow remote workers to join in.
As previously mentioned, classrooms receive a one-year subscription to the SMART Learning Suite service with purchase of a board but will have to pay for Learning Suite access after that year. The basic plan still has nice features, but without the Learning Suite the board’s functionality (primarily the collaboration tools) feels incomplete.
Another missed opportunity for the SMART Board is the ability to save your work to the cloud. Users need to email or save a PDF of their whiteboard content if they plan on sharing it.
