If you are in the market for an interactive display, you’ve hopefully gotten a chance to try both a SMART Board (6000 or 7000 series) and a Promethean ActivPanel. This has most likely happened during a few minutes in a conference booth, or during a demo or trial onsite at your school.

What you probably have not seen or experienced is both panels in a side-by-side comparison. Now you might be thinking, “how different can they be?” They essentially do the same thing, right? They both come in similar sizes, both let you touch the screen to interact, and have pens to write over applications or onto a presentation.

At the most fundamental level, I think the differences will surprise you. In the following video, we took the most basic feature of these products – turning them on and simply using the pens – and compare them in real time.

Full disclosure, if you didn’t already know, Teq sells SMART Boards. We always knew the SMART Board was a better product, with more focus on creating an intuitive user experience and on how it will really be used in a classroom, but even we were surprised with the results of this video.

Note on the SMART Board how both Keriann and Emily can write and erase simultaneously without interfering with each other’s work. Or how they can easily select different pen colors to differentiate what they are writing.

Think about the lost instructional time, or the classroom management nightmare of waiting and waiting and waiting for your display to power up. Or of the display’s pens not working how you’d expect.

If you’d like to try a SMART Board and meet our friendly Teq Squad team, fill out this form, and we can bring one to your school. If you’d like to come to our Long Island showroom, we’d love to have you, just indicate that on the form. If you come around 2 PM, there will be snacks. Not from the New York/New Jersey area? Learn more at smarttech.com.

March 15, 2018, update: We’ve added another video to our site comparing a SMART Board to a Clear Touch 5075. It’s another example about how a technology choice can result in wasted instructional time and frustration for students and teachers.