For four years now, we have been testing and certifying touchscreen solutions from Dutch manufacturer Prowise. This year, Prowise sent us the latest generations of their flagship screens straight to the test lab: For the new top model, the Touchscreen Ultra, this is the test debut. We already tested the 2nd generation of the Touchscreen Ten last year – this year, the new 3rd generation underwent our extensive certification process.
We have already reported extensively on the devices themselves, their dimensions, features and excellent usability in previous tests. Although we have already set up the Prowise learning and teaching solutions several times in our test laboratory, we are still struck every year by the ease with which the devices can be operated. And even if this fact has no security relevance whatsoever, we cannot help but mention it every year. The operation of the huge IPS panels and the touch recognition also work absolutely flawlessly in the latest generations. From a security point of view, it is also worth mentioning that the new Ultra touchscreen is now supplied with the latest version 6.0 of the Android-based Prowise Central. The operating system developed by Prowise is based on modern Android 13. For the first time, users now also have the option to switch to a standard Android including Play Store and classic Google services – Google EDLA certification of the new generation makes this possible. Prowise is keeping its devices up to date and thus avoiding a large number of security problems with older Android versions all together.
Of course, this year we have once again worked our way through all the test points in all the test categories and put the devices through their paces. As we have now seen the devices (or rather their predecessors) several times and our tests naturally evolve from year to year, we can delve a little deeper with each test and even look for weak points whose practical relevance can be considered rather low. But even here there is not much more to discover for the Prowise solutions: The companion apps analyzed in the test, Presenter (v1.9.1), Reflect (v10.0) and ProConnect (v5.0.13), as basically every Android app ever tested by us, have minor theoretical flaws that should possibly be reviewed again. Overall, however, the applications are and were at an absolutely adequate security level. The same continues to apply to the devices themselves – all the security scans and attacks that we perform as standard in our tests were unable to identify any significant problems and all communication to and from the devices and apps as well as to the cloud was always properly secured.
In principle, we have hardly had anything to critique regarding data protection since the first test of a Prowise device. The solutions really are very data-efficient, with no signs of unnecessary or even excessive data collection. The companion applications also contain no trackers, advertising or retargeting modules. It is therefore not a problem that we were able to find minor inconsistencies between the different versions of the privacy policies that are displayed to the user via the device, the apps or directly on the Prowise website. For example, here and there we found an outdated link or an outdated version of the privacy policy. However, the essential information on data collection, processing and sharing is always included and since, as already mentioned, the company acts very sparingly in terms of data anyway, there is no need to be too critical of this fact. Apart from that, it should be easy for Prowise to make the necessary changes here.
All in all, the new versions of the Prowise touchscreens are once again completely convincing and, as ever, invite you to scribble and doodle to your heart’s content. In terms of security, there is nothing to complain about apart from a few marginal issues. The minor points concerning the privacy policy should be easy to fix. Accordingly, the Prowise Touchscreen Ultra G1 and Touchscreen Ten G3 deservedly receive our “Approved IoT Product” certificate. Congratulations!
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