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If You’re Not Considering Tablet Kiosks, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

decoration_windows_tablet_chassisTablet kiosks are becoming an increasing popular economic alternative to traditional standing kiosks.  They offer many advantages, chief of which is their affordability, but they also have several limitations which are worth considering.  My goal for this article is to help you decide if a tablet kiosk is a better fit for your kiosk project than a standard kiosk.

Advantages of tablet kiosks:

  1. The enclosures for tablet kiosks are much cheaper and can be purchased off-the-shelf.
  2. Multiple tablet kiosks can be deployed for a fraction of the cost of a standard kiosk.  For example Lowes uses tablet kiosks all over their store to educate customers on their products.
  3. Tablet kiosks offer a massive space savings over standard kiosks.
  4. Limited maintenance is required for tablet kiosks due to their relative simplicity and lack of moving parts.
  5. Smaller screens on tablet kiosks offer greater privacy than the larger screens on standard kiosks.
  6. Tablet kiosks can be mobile or securely fixed in place.  ArmorActive does a great job of demonstrating this with the following video.

Disadvantages of tablet kiosks:

  1. Easier to misplace, break or steal a tablet kiosks due to their small and often delicate form factor.
  2. Limited support for payment devices and user input devices due to their lack of a large enclosure.  It’s not practical or secure to bolt a large payment device like a bill acceptor to the side of a tablet kiosk.
  3. Screen sizes of tablet kiosks are typically limited to 7-11 inches in order to remain portable.
  4. Designing a touch-friendly user interface for a small screen tablet kiosk can be challenging.  Your tablet kiosk software needs to be optimized for the smaller screen size of the tablet kiosk.

Conclusion

Tablet kiosks can be a huge cost saving and are perfect for many kiosk projects, you just need to be aware of their limitations.  The cost of a tablet kiosk varies greatly and can range anywhere from $200 to $1500 largely depending on their durability and performance.  This is why it’s important to consider the environment your tablet kiosk will occupy so you can pick the perfect tablet kiosk for your location.

Andrew Savala
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Author: Andrew Savala

Andrew Savala is the CEO of RedSwimmer, with a background in designing and deploying complex payment kiosk systems. Andrew offers high-value, strategic consulting services to companies looking to develop their payment kiosks.