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 how they compare on price and build, and what each one takes to get onto 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. 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 take no markup on it.
It needs about two minutes of flashing before it pairs. A TRMNL device doesn’t, and TRMNL devices work with Lobby exactly as they always have.
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.
| Our pickSeeed E1001Seeed Studio | 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 |
- 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.
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. E-ink also draws roughly a thousandth of the power, though that only comes to about $6 a year — what you actually save is the installation.
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.
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.
- 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.