Guide

Which tablet is suitable for the wall? Guidance for smart home and dashboard

06.09.2026 · 4 min read

A tablet on the wall is the simplest way to keep a smart home dashboard, a family calendar or a recipe view permanently in sight. The question that almost always comes first: which tablet should it be? The good news: for the wall you usually do not need a current flagship model. What matters more is the size, the right system for your home control and a few practical points that are hard to change later. This guide helps you choose. How to set up, mount and power the tablet afterwards is covered in the practical guide Tablet as a smart home hub on the wall.

Size: control panel or control center?

A rule of thumb that has proven useful: a tablet around 8 inches feels like a control panel on the wall, for example next to the light switch in the hallway or at the entrance. A tablet with 10 to 11 inches feels more like a control center that stays readable from a few meters away, for example in the kitchen or at the transition to the living room. Larger models from 12 inches are suitable when many tiles or a calendar with many entries should be visible at once. It is easiest to decide the size at the planned spot: how far away are you when operating it, and how much wall space may the tablet take up?

iPad, Android tablet or Amazon Fire: which system suits your home control?

The tablet's system should match the software you want to use on the wall:

  • Apple iPad: the obvious choice if your home runs on Apple Home. Many other smart home apps and browser dashboards are also available for the iPad. Older iPads are often still well usable for a wall dashboard, provided the desired app still runs on the installed system.
  • Android tablets from Samsung, Lenovo, Xiaomi or Honor: flexible in the choice of app, with kiosk apps that can restrict the tablet to a single display. Samsung tablets are a natural fit if you use SmartThings.
  • Amazon Fire tablets: a frequently chosen option for dashboards that run in the browser, for example with Home Assistant. Fire tablets use an Android-based system with its own app store, so check in advance whether your desired app is available there.

If your dashboard runs in the browser anyway, as is the case with Home Assistant, ioBroker or many KNX visualizations, the system plays a smaller role. Then size, the availability of a matching mount and your personal taste tend to decide.

Reviving an old tablet: what to look out for

A tablet from the drawer is often a good candidate for the wall, because it costs nothing and the demands of a dashboard are usually low. A few points are worth checking before deciding:

  • Updates: Check whether the device still receives system updates or whether the desired app runs on the existing version. If not, the tablet may still serve as a pure display device in your own network, but that is your call.
  • Wi-Fi and charging port: Both should work reliably, because on the wall the tablet is powered through its own charging cable, which is routed concealed inside the mount.
  • Display and touch: A small scratch hardly matters on the wall, a touch surface with dropouts does.

Portrait or landscape, front camera and buttons

Before buying the mount, decide whether the tablet should hang in portrait or landscape. A calendar or shopping list often looks tidier in portrait, a smart home dashboard with many tiles in landscape. Our mounts can be installed in both orientations, but the layout of your app will later follow this decision. If you want to use the front camera, for example for video calls or presence detection by your dashboard app, it remains uncovered with our mounts. With the enclosure line, the side buttons are covered by the frame, which can reduce accidental inputs.

Finally: check the fit before you buy

A wall mount does not fit all tablets but one specific model, because housing, camera position and port differ even at the same display size. So it is worth a look at the shop before you decide on a device: the model finder shows you which models currently have a mount, and the page Fits your model lists the supported devices. The selection by brand is here:

Once you have chosen your tablet, the setup follows: the practical guide to the smart home hub takes you from software and mounting location to the mount, and Home Assistant users will find the details on kiosk mode in the guide Home Assistant as a wall panel. How the charging cable reaches the wall unobtrusively is explained in the guide Tablet wall mount with charging function.

All brand and product names mentioned belong to their respective owners. They are used solely to describe which devices our mounts are intended for.

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