A wall display for the family: which hardware suits the kiosk

A screen in the kitchen that shows the day: who is where and when, what's for dinner, what still needs buying. Ready-made family displays cost €300 to €700 and often want a subscription on top. The patchio kiosk is a web page that runs on any device with a current browser that stays full screen. You choose the hardware yourself. This article goes through the three device classes, names specific models for each, and says what doesn't work.

All prices below are German prices in euros, and the links go to amazon.de. If you live in Austria or Switzerland, check the local price and whether the model is sold there.

A word on how reliable this is: we haven't had every device on a wall ourselves. The assessments rest on manufacturers' specifications, tests and experience reports from smart-home communities, where tablets as wall panels have been an everyday thing for years. Prices are as of September 2026 and move with every promotion.

First question: how far are you from the screen?

Size follows distance. For a line to be readable in passing, it needs about 9 millimetres of character height at 1.5 metres, and about 15 at 2.5 metres. For a glance across the kitchen counter, 10 to 11 inches is enough. For a hallway where you read from three or four metres, a 24-inch monitor is the better choice. For every layout, the kiosk keeps a landscape and a portrait version and automatically takes the right one.

Class A: a tablet on the wall

The normal case, and the right choice for most families. A tablet brings screen, computer, wifi and touch in one device, is quiet, hangs just as well upright as sideways and draws about 3 to 5 watts with the display dimmed. At 35 cents per kilowatt hour, that is €10 to €15 of electricity a year.

Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023)(Anzeige / ad) is the cheap way in, usually €80 to €120. 10.1 inches, Full HD, sturdy casing. The catch: Fire OS has no Play Store, so you install the kiosk browser by hand as the Fire OS variant. That takes ten minutes, once you've unlocked developer options. The advertising of the "with ads" version sits on the lock screen, which a kiosk never shows.

Lenovo Tab M11(Anzeige / ad) costs €150 to €180, 11 inches, 400 nits, Play Store, updates promised until 2028. The brightness sensor is a real advantage on a wall: the display adjusts to the room light without you setting anything. A charger isn't included. Any USB-C charger with Power Delivery will do.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+(Anzeige / ad) costs €160 to €230 depending on promotions, 11 inches, 90 Hz. The reason to spend more is battery protection: Samsung lets you set a charge limit between 80 and 95 per cent. That is exactly what a tablet that hangs on a cable for years needs.

An old tablet from the drawer? That works: iPads from iPadOS 16.4, Android with a current Chrome. A battery that lay empty for years can swell on permanent power, though. Check after a few weeks whether the display is bulging.

At a glance

• Fire HD 10: €80–120, 3–5 W, Full HD, install the kiosk app by hand. For a small budget.
• Lenovo Tab M11: €150–180, 3–5 W, brightness sensor, Play Store. The balanced middle way.
• Galaxy Tab A9+: €160–230, 3–5 W, adjustable charge limit, long updates. If the device is to hang for five years.

Mounting, power, software

A wall mount for 7 to 11 inches costs from about €10. Models such as the AboveTEK mount with lock(Anzeige / ad) turn through 360 degrees and secure the tablet against small hands. Power comes via a flat USB-C cable in a cable duct, a socket behind the mount, or a PoE splitter on the network cable.

The battery is the only wear point: staying permanently at 100 per cent ages it quickly. Either you set a charge limit in the system (Samsung: battery protection; other makers: look under Battery for "charge optimisation"), or a smart plug charges only between 20 and 80 per cent. For that, Fully Kiosk Browser reports the charge level to Home Assistant or ioBroker.

Fully Kiosk Browser is widely used on wall tablets: autostart after a restart, full screen without an address bar, no leaving the page. The basic version is free. The Plus licence (a one-off of about €11 per device, €8.90 plus VAT) brings a screen schedule, waking by camera and brightness control. On Fire tablets you download the Fire OS version from the maker's site. It works without Fully too (Chrome, "Add to home screen", sleep set to the highest value), but then the page doesn't start by itself after a restart.

Class B: an old monitor or TV plus a mini computer

For the big screen in the hallway. The monitor is often there already. Only the computer is missing that starts the browser in kiosk mode.

Raspberry Pi 5 is the robust solution for continuous operation: no battery, no screensaver that an update switches back on, no browser that jumps back to the home screen after ten minutes. Prices rose in 2026 along with memory prices. The 2 GB version(Anzeige / ad) costs about €70, the 4 GB version(Anzeige / ad) about €140 (as of 4 September 2026). 2 GB is enough for the kiosk, as Chromium needs at least 1 GB. Add a power supply (27 watts), a case with fan and a microSD card, together €30 to €40. Setup: Raspberry Pi OS, Chromium with --kiosk and the kiosk address in the autostart of the Wayland compositor. Ready-made scripts do this in one go, including hiding the cursor. The Pi draws 3 to 4 watts at idle, with a 24-inch monitor adding 15 to 25 watts. If you want something small for a shelf, the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2(Anzeige / ad) is a 7-inch touchscreen, natively upright, connected straight to the Pi.

Fire TV Stick works, with limits. Only the models with Fire OS are suitable: the Fire TV Stick 4K Plus(Anzeige / ad) (list price since August 2026: €84.99, often reduced) and the 4K Max. They run the Silk browser, and Fully Kiosk can be installed by sideloading. The 4K Select and the Stick HD run Amazon's new Vega OS: no Android apps, no Fully Kiosk, so unsuitable even though they are cheaper. Against every stick: no watchdog restarts a crashed browser, overnight updates reset the screensaver and start app, and many TVs go to standby after four hours. And the TV draws 30 to 100 watts. It is the power hog, not the stick. For "on in the evening, off at night" that is fine. For weeks of operation without supervision it isn't.

Google TV Streamer: the Chromecast was discontinued in 2024, and the successor doesn't come with a browser. What remains is sideloading or casting a Chrome tab from a running computer. Not recommended. A retired laptop, on the other hand, costs nothing and brings a screen and a battery as a buffer: Chromium in kiosk mode, lid action set to "do nothing", done.

At a glance

• Raspberry Pi 5 (2 GB) plus accessories: about €100–110, 3–4 W plus monitor, portrait via configuration. The 24/7 solution.
• Fire TV Stick 4K Plus: about €60–85, 2–4 W plus TV, landscape only, updates interfere. For evening use.
• Old laptop: €0, 10–20 W, robust but bulky. Where looks don't matter.

Class C: smart displays (Echo Show, Nest Hub)

The obvious idea: an Echo Show already hangs in the kitchen, so why not show the kiosk on it? The honest answer: it only works to a limited extent, and it is getting worse rather than better. That is why there are no product links in this section.

Echo Show 8 (2025) and Echo Show 15 have Silk, a browser that opens the kiosk address. But Silk has no full-screen mode, and it closes after 10 to 15 minutes without a touch and returns to the Alexa home screen. Amazon prevented installing Fully Kiosk in 2024. What remains are scripts that play silent audio files to keep the browser awake, which are fragile and over with the next update. The Echo Show 15 is well made as a wall device (15.6-inch Full HD, a mount for upright and sideways in the box, list price €294.99), but it is built for Amazon's own widgets, not for a third-party browser kiosk.

Google Nest Hub (2nd generation) is in the Google Store, list price €99.99, 7 inches, and has no browser at all. A web page only gets onto it by casting from a computer that stays on, and without tricks the cast session ends after about ten minutes.

At a glance

• Echo Show 8 (2025): list price €199.99, about 8 W, no full screen, browser closes after 10–15 minutes. Only if you want Alexa anyway.
• Echo Show 15: list price €294.99, upright or sideways, same browser limits. A good device, the wrong purpose.
• Nest Hub 2: list price €99.99, no browser, only cast from a computer. Not as a kiosk.

Our advice: buy a smart display if you want Alexa or Google Assistant. As a patchio kiosk, a €90 tablet is the better and cheaper choice.

Burn-in, night, brightness, portrait, continuous operation

Burn-in. All the tablets and monitors named here have LCD panels. They don't burn in permanently. A static dashboard leaves at most an afterimage that disappears after a few minutes. It is different with OLED TVs: a dashboard that stands bright in the same place for hours is exactly the risk profile long-term tests warn about. If you use an OLED anyway, turn the brightness down and use photo mode and night mode so the picture changes regularly.

Night. The kiosk has a night mode of its own, preset from 22:00 to 06:00: an almost black background, only the clock, the next appointment and tomorrow's weather. That is kind to the panel and eyes, but doesn't switch the display off. On tablets it goes fully off via the schedule in the Fully Plus licence. On the Raspberry Pi, use a timer plug on the monitor, not at the Pi, and not by software. Switching off the HDMI output throws Chromium out of full screen, a known bug in the Wayland kiosk.

Brightness. 50 to 70 per cent is enough in most rooms and noticeably extends the life of the panel. A kitchen with a south-facing window needs 400 nits or more. A brightness sensor like the Tab M11's takes the readjusting off your hands.

Portrait. You simply turn a tablet, and the kiosk switches to the portrait version of the layout. On the Raspberry Pi you set the rotation with wlr-randr --transform 90, and the monitor needs a pivot or VESA mount. The Echo Show 15 can do both. A TV on a stick stays landscape.

Continuous operation. The kiosk fetches fresh data every minute, reloads itself at four in the morning, and in a power or network outage shows the last known state with a notice. On power: 4 watts around the clock is 35 kilowatt hours a year, a good €12. A Pi with a 24-inch monitor at 25 watts comes to about €77. A TV on a stick at 60 watts comes to over €180, a third less if it is off at night.

Our favourite for each budget

• Up to €150: Fire HD 10 plus a simple wall mount plus the Fully Plus licence. Ten minutes of fiddling during installation, then years of peace.
• Around €200: Lenovo Tab M11 plus a mount with a lock plus Fully Plus. Play Store, brightness sensor, no tinkering.
• Big screen: Raspberry Pi 5 with 2 GB on an existing monitor, about €110. Without a monitor: a used 24-inch with a pivot stand.
• Better not: smart displays, sticks with Vega OS and the built-in browsers of TVs. They are old, slow and forget the kiosk key every time they are switched off.

How to set up the kiosk

1. Switch on the module: Manage → Modules → "Kiosk". Any admin of your household can do this.
2. Create a layout: the assistant asks for the place, format and tiles, and builds a first screen from them. In the "Free design" tab you then move the tiles around the grid.
3. On the device: open the browser and go to app.patchio.de/kiosk. A six-digit code appears. Nobody signs in on the screen. The device gets a key of its own, which you can withdraw at any time.
4. In patchio: Manage → Kiosk → Devices → type in the code, name the device, assign a layout. The code is valid for ten minutes.
5. Set up the kiosk browser: full screen, no screensaver, no sleep mode, as described above for each device.

What never appears on the kiosk, however you set it up: finances, contracts, health, documents, phone numbers and addresses. That is built in permanently. Everything else is on the wall display page and in the help under Set up the kiosk, Pair a screen and Privacy on the kiosk.