Top 5 Reasons Not to Deploy the ScreenBeam Mini2 in your School or Office - You won't believe number 3!

The ScreenBeam Mini2 is a wireless display receiver designed for home/consumer use.  While it's a great product for home use, it's not the right choice when you're looking for a wireless display solution to deploy at your School or Office.  While the lower price-point of the Mini2 may be tempting to the cost conscious, it simply isn't the right product for enterprise wireless environments.

#1 No option for PIN on connection

The ScreenBeam Mini2 doesn't have any configurable options for requesting/requiring a PIN when a user goes to connect to the receiver.  This means that any user in RF range of the ScreenBeam Mini2 can connect and start sharing content, even if they aren't in the same room as the Mini2.

Our ScreenBeam commercial products have configurable PIN settings managed by your administrator.  The ScreenBeam can use a 4-digit or 8-digit PIN, it can be required on the first connection only, or on each connection.  We even have the ability to use a static "hidden" PIN, which is set by the administrator and not shown on the display, so only users that know the PIN are able to connect. 

#2 No wireless channel/transmit power management

The ScreenBeam Mini2 operates in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless bands using the same channels that your infrastructure WiFi network is using, in fact, when a Windows or Android device connects to the Mini2, it will use the same channel that the access point is using, creating co-channel interference.  There's no option to change the transmit power on the Mini2 to scale down for smaller office or conference room type spaces, or scale up for large auditoriums.

Our ScreenBeam commercial products offer administrators the ability to set the wireless channel used by the ScreenBeam.  Administrators select a single 20MHz channel for wireless display.  When a Windows or Android device connects to the ScreenBeam, the wireless card on the device maintains separate concurrent connections to the ScreenBeam for wireless display and the infrastructure network for internet access.  Our commercial products also have adjustable transmit power.  Your network administrator will love (or at least grumble less about) the ability to keep wireless display traffic from interfering with your existing infrastructure.

#3 Unsecured device administration

The ScreenBeam Mini2 is managed using the ScreenBeam Configurator app, which is available to anyone through the Microsoft Store or Google Play Store.  Once someone has downloaded the app, all they need to do is connect to the Mini2 (which is easy, because there's no PIN) and then they  can change settings on the ScreenBeam like the background image or the receiver name... yikes.

Our ScreenBeam commercial products have multiple secured management options.  Each receiver hosts it's own password protected local management interface.  Our Central Management System (CMS) can be used to remotely manage your ScreenBeam deployment, traffic between CMS and the ScreenBeams is encrypted, and access to CMS is password protected.

#4 Only supports Miracast peer-to-peer on Windows 10 and Android

The ScreenBeam Mini2 uses peer-to-peer Miracast, a technology that is built in to Windows 10 and some Android devices (depends on OEM).  The only types of devices that can connect to a ScreenBeam Mini2 are Windows 10 and Android devices with Miracast support.

Our ScreenBeam commercial products provide best-in-class support for Miracast peer-to-peer, and can support additional types of devices, all with app-free wireless display.  The ScreenBeam 1100Plus, 1100, 1000EDU, and 960 support Apple devices (macOS and iOS) using their native Screen Mirroring and support Miracast over Infrastructure mode for Windows 10 devices.  The ScreenBeam 1100Plus, 1100, and 1000EDU support Chromebooks, Android devices, and any device with the Google Chrome browser installed using native Google Cast support. 

#5 No access to our Phenomenal ScreenBeam Commercial Support Team

The ScreenBeam Mini2 is a retail/consumer product, any questions are handled by our retail support team, they can be reached by phone or by submitting a ticket through this page.  Our retail products are not designed for use in Enterprise networks or with devices managed by Group Policy, our retail support team can't help with those types of issues.
Our ScreenBeam commercial products are supported by our global team, so no matter which timezone you are in there's a member of our team that can help.  We're all familiar with enterprise networks, complex deployments, and best practices to ensure a successful rollout of your new wireless display solution.  After all, we're the ones writing these articles 😉