Welcome to the review of AirTame, a screen mirroring tool designed for businesses.
The unit is quite small and fits easily in a hand. On the body is the HDMI port to plug into a TV, a port for power (the power cord is 3 feet long), a factory reset button, and an Ethernet port (Ethernet adapter sold separately).
One thing I confirmed with AirTame support is that if their cloud console were to ever go down, it won’t impact the content you’re mirroring.
By default, when the unit is plugged into the TV, you’ll get some nice wallpapers and an IP address on the screen. The IP address is the site to connect to, to mirror content.
After installing the AirTame app on a computer, you also have the ability to bring up the AirTame console. On Windows, the app will always display an icon in the taskbar for quick access.
The admin console is easy to navigate and manage items such as meeting rooms that are connected with AirTame. The list of meeting rooms will also be available for staff and allows the option to even mirror audio (if you’re playing a YouTube video for example).
The best part of the cloud console is that there is no additional cost, once you buy the hardware, you’ll have access to the console forever.
The console allows for office grouping, so for example you can group AirTames in the Toronto office separately from the Seattle office.
Groupings allow for mass changes such as remote updating. For example, you can update the Toronto units after-hours at 9pm local time (which would be 6pm Seattle), so the Seattle units can be updated at a different time.
You can also make additional changes such as choosing the type of screen saver wallpaper, change the unit name (to even match the meeting room name), change the SSID the unit is connected to, lock settings with the admin password, adjust resolution, and even a small splash screen.
The splash screen can display items such as the WiFi network to connect to, where to download the AirTame app and the meeting room name (or IP) to connect to. This is especially great for guests visiting an office.
One of the most important features is the mirroring lock. For example, if there’s a large client meeting happening and what’s presented on the screen is critical, to over-take screen sharing would require a PIN that’s only displayed on the TV in the meeting room. This prevents anyone in the office from randomly displaying content to that important meeting.
One of the cool things about network connectivity is that AirTame can interface with connections on an external office guest network but still communicate with staff devices on an internal VLAN network.
In terms of mobile projection currently, AirTame only supports Android screen mirroring and iOS screen mirroring is still in development.
When it comes to projecting content, it works well with websites but there is a catch. If a site is password-protected, AirTame can’t integrate with the URL. For example, if you have an internal ticketing system that can display team statistics, there’s no ability to login with your ticketing system portal credentials to allow AirTame to display the content.
When it comes to mirroring content such as YouTube videos, I notice about a quarter of a second delay when I fast-forward the video.
If for some reason the AirTame loses WiFi, it takes about 2-3 minutes before it’ll allow screen sharing again. This might not sound like a big deal but for businesses, time is money, and waiting a few minutes for a screen sharing solution to load is quite a bit of time. Ideally, a minute or less would be better.
Score:
8/10
Pros:
-Compact
-HDMI flex adapter
-Ethernet option
-Screen PIN
-Windows, Android, iOS and macOS support
-Cloud console
-Settings password lock
-Custom wallpaper
-Display public URL pages
-Update devices remotely
-Computer client is small and easy to use
-Price compared to competition
-Display custom connection messages
-Great response time
-Additional app compatibility growing
Cons:
-Cant’ display URLs requiring a login
-When restoring lost connection, for a couple of minutes AirTame thinks it’s still displaying
