Google has been getting serious about making hardware recently, what with a couple of new phones, a smarthub, and a wireless router. Now it’s looking to tackle the office too.
The company today announced Jamboard, a $6,000, 55-inch whiteboard that is of course connected to the cloud and the recently revamped G Suite. It’s basically a 4K touchscreen computer that you can use like your standard digital whiteboard, but with extra collaboration and cloud tricks.
Your sketches and notes are saved as ‘jams’ to your Drive folder automatically, and you can import content from the Web or other G Suite apps. This being Google, you can then of course share your notes with coworkers on other devices, and there’s full-fledged Hangouts support too.
Perhaps more importantly, remote teams can also send in items so you can work together in real time, and if you have an Android or iOS tablet, you can access all the same features available to the full-sized Jamboard.
There are also a bunch of tools like sticky notes and stencils to help express your ideas more clearly. Google says the display features “best-in-class response time,” so writing on it should hopefully feel fairly natural. You can even use your fingers to wipe off notes like a real whiteboard, but without the mess.
Jamboard will be available for purchase in 2017 at “under 6,000.” You can sign up for more at Google’s Jamboard landing page.
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