So Promethean have finally entered the world of touch technology! The new Activboard 500 Pro series is Promethean’s first touch-based Interactive Whiteboard and it’s very impressive.

It’s also very annoying for me as a reviewer. It means I’m going to have to rewrite dozens of articles where I mourned the board’s lack of human-touch and I even came up with a novel way to make the board touch-based back in 2008. But enough about my problems, let’s find out why Promethean may have just changed everything again.

Samantha Clewes demonstrates the new Promethean 500 at the IPPN Conference

I played around with the new Promethean board at BETT and at IPPN and found a few lovely features. It has four points of interaction. This means that up to four people can interact with the board at the same time. It also does gesture control very nicely. I was very impressed with the way one can rotate and scale objects in ActivInspire, (and even better than two people can use gesture controls too). Another great addition is the fact that the board recognises accidental touches.

Historically, Promethean and Smart are the two big names in the IWB industry and the debate between the two was always based on touch-interaction and child-friendly software. Now that Promethean has gone on to using touch, it leaves Smart with a problem. Are Smart now going to have to create software that is aesthetically pleasing to the primary school teacher but with the power of Smart’s current Notebook tool?

The timing of touch-based Promethean boards also coincides with the rise in popularity of interactive projectors. This new board should hold back their threat. The Interactive Whiteboard market has a new competitor in town and it’s made by the powerhouse that is Promethean.

The Promethean 500 board will be priced from €3,249, which includes the 500 Pro Range 87″ ActivBoard with Fixed Stand and DLP or LCD short throw projector – 2 x Teacher & 2 x Student ActivPen 50 included. For more details go to Promethean Planet or your local distributor.

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