Which display should go beside the door?
Lobby is the software. You buy the screen — from whoever you like, at whatever price you can find it, and you own it outright. We don’t sell hardware and we take no markup on any of it, which means we have no reason to talk you into the expensive option.
There are four realistic choices. Here is what each one actually costs once it’s on the wall.
Prices and specifications captured 29 August 2026, and rechecked quarterly.
Our pick: the Seeed reTerminal E1001, from $69.
A 7.5″ monochrome e-paper panel in a metal case, at about half the price of the nearest purpose-built alternative and roughly a tenth the all-in cost of a wall-mounted tablet. It hangs on a single screw — there’s a keyhole slot moulded into the back — or on adhesive strips if you can’t drill. It runs open firmware, and we don’t make a cent on it.
It needs about two minutes of flashing before it pairs. That’s the one thing a TRMNL device doesn’t ask of you, and it’s a fair reason to pick one instead.
The four options, side by side
Every figure below comes from a manufacturer-published page, captured on the same day. Where we couldn’t confirm something from a published source, the cell says so instead of guessing.
Prices follow the currency you pick. We sell none of this hardware and take no markup on any of it.
| Seeed E1001Seeed StudioOur pick | TRMNL OGTRMNL | iPadApple | Android tabletSamsung | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price (1 / 10+)1 | $69 / $62.99 at 10+ | $139 / $119 at 10+ | €499 | €279 |
| Screen | 7.5" mono ePaper, 800×480, partial refresh 2–5 s | 7.5" mono ePaper, 800×480 | 10.86" 2360×1640 IPS LCD, 500 nits | 11" 1920×1200, 90 Hz IPS |
| Enclosure | Metal | Plastic (PC / ABS) | Aluminium | Plastic |
| Processor / memory | ESP32-S3 · 8 MB PSRAM · 32 MB flash | ESP32-C3 · 400 KB RAM · 4 MB flash | Apple A16 | MediaTek Helio G99 |
| Battery (standard)2 | 2000 mAh | 1800 mAh | 28.93 Wh | 7040 mAh |
| Battery life3 | 3–6 months | 3–6 months | ~10 h — mains power required | Mains power required |
| Weight | 218 g | 120 g | 477 g | 477 g |
| Power at the door | Battery / USB-C | Battery / USB-C | Mains or PoE required | Mains or PoE required |
| Mounting | Keyhole hanging slot + 4× M3 points + adhesive | Desk stand included, hook recess; U-Mount sold separately | Security-rated steel wall enclosure, sold separately | Security-rated wall enclosure, sold separately |
| Setup | ~2 min one-time firmware flash | Plugin-store install, no flashing | Supervised MDM enrolment for kiosk lockdown | MDM enrolment for kiosk lockdown |
| Kiosk lockdown | None needed | None needed | Supervised MDM required | Supervised MDM required |
| Certifications | FCC · CE · TELEC PSE · RoHS · UKCA | FCC · CE · RoHS | — | — |
| Warranty | Confirm with vendor | 1 year | 1 year | 1–2 years |
| Open firmware | Yes | Yes (GPLv3) | No | No |
| Recurring cost from us4 | $0 — Lobby is flat-fee | $0 — Lobby is flat-fee | $0 — Lobby is flat-fee | $0 — Lobby is flat-fee |
| 5-year cost per display5 | ≈$63 | ≈$119 | ≈$964–$1,309 | ≈$896 |
- 1 Both e-ink vendors bill in US dollars. Seeed prices its warehouses separately — the EU warehouse, which ships from Germany, lists lower than the US one — so the currency toggle picks the warehouse rather than converting. Tablet prices are the local list price in each region.
- 2 TRMNL offers a 2500 mAh battery as a paid upgrade. The figures above are the standard configuration both devices ship as.
- 3 Both e-ink figures are 3–6 months. TRMNL's is their own published spec; ours comes from running these as room displays. Seeed's own ~3-month claim is measured at four refreshes a day, which is not room-display cadence, so it cannot be compared directly.
- 4 Lobby never charges per display or per room, on any device in this table. What the hardware vendor charges is between you and them.
- 5 At 10 rooms, per display, US pricing — device, mount, power, install, kiosk licensing and electricity. Hardware and its installation only; software is not included on any row.
Read the table honestly and it doesn’t sweep. The Seeed wins on price, enclosure, silicon, standard battery and certifications. TRMNL wins on setup and on weight — it installs from a plugin store with no flashing step, and it’s a third lighter. Tablets win on colour and touch. If those are what matter to you, buy those instead; Lobby runs on all of them at the same price.
Why not just use a tablet?
Plenty of people do, and Lobby runs on one perfectly well — if you already own tablets, use them, on the free plan, and stop reading here. The problem isn’t the tablet. It’s everything the tablet needs before it can live on a wall.
A tablet by the door needs a security-rated enclosure, a PoE splitter or a power adapter, and — unless there happens to be an outlet at door height — an electrician. That last line is $138–$320 a room in the US, and it’s the one people forget when they budget. Then it needs supervised MDM enrolment, because Guided Access isn’t a kiosk mode: it has its own auto-lock timer and every way of starting it is physical, so a room display running on it will eventually be found asleep.
The e-ink alternative is: hang it on a screw, charge it a couple of times a year. No outlet, no cable run, no enrolment, nothing to lock down. That’s the actual argument — not the electricity. E-ink does use roughly a thousandth of the power, but in absolute terms that’s under $6 a year and it would be silly to pretend it’s the reason.
Why we changed our recommendation
We used to point everyone at TRMNL, and their device is still fully supported — if you own one, or buy one, it works with Lobby exactly as it always has. It’s a good product and it is genuinely simpler to set up than our current pick.
It also costs about twice as much for the same 800×480 monochrome panel, in a plastic case rather than a metal one, on slower silicon, with a smaller standard battery. Once a second device could do the same job for half the money, carrying on recommending the dearer one would have needed a reason, and we didn’t have one. That’s the whole argument — it doesn’t need help.
One flat fee, whatever happens
Lobby is $0 up to three displays, then $30 a month flat for unlimited rooms and unlimited displays, and $60 for Pro. Not per room. Not per display. Ten rooms or a hundred, the bill doesn’t move. That’s the whole pricing page, and it’s the reason the company exists — it was started by someone who got charged more for growing.
Most room-booking products charge per room, per month. Before you commit to any of them — including ours — multiply their per-room price by your room count and by 36 months. We’re comfortable with how that comparison goes.
- Per-room pricing, over 3 years10 rooms × $6/mo × 36 months
- $2,160
- Lobby, over 3 years$30/mo flat, billed annually, any number of rooms
- $1,080
- You keep
- $1,080
Software only — hardware is a separate one-time buy on either side, and we don’t sell it. Lobby’s figures are our published prices; the per-room figure is whatever you typed. If a vendor you’re considering comes out ahead here, that’s worth knowing before you commit.
What we’d rather you heard from us
Everything above is the case for our pick. Here is the case against it, so you don’t discover any of it after ordering twenty.
- It needs a firmware flash before it pairs — about two minutes, once, per device. A TRMNL device doesn’t. If you’re buying one display and want it working in five minutes, that difference is real.
- Running that firmware means turning off automatic updates, because the over-the-air updates target official TRMNL hardware and can leave a Seeed unresponsive. You update it deliberately, not automatically.
- It’s heavier — 218 g against TRMNL’s 120 g. Both are well inside what adhesive strips hold, so it rarely matters, but TRMNL is the lighter device and we won’t imply otherwise.
- Seeed sells no wall-mount accessory. The keyhole slot and the free community frames cover it, but there is no boxed bracket to add to the order.
- We couldn’t confirm Seeed’s warranty term — their published policy page is broken. TRMNL states one year. Don’t assume the Seeed matches it; ask them.
- Our 3–6 month battery figure comes from our own testing at room-display refresh rates. Seeed’s own published figure is measured at four refreshes a day, which is a different thing entirely, so we don’t quote it.
- Prices vary by warehouse region and move more often than you’d think. Prices and specifications captured 29 August 2026, and rechecked quarterly.