Every integrator's page says "contact us for a quote", and so does ours, because the honest answer is that two rooms of the same size can cost very different amounts depending on five decisions. Hardware prices also move with the exchange rate and vendor promotions, so any number published today is wrong within a quarter.
What you can know before you talk to anyone, including us, is what drives the number. This guide walks through each driver so that when a quote arrives, you can see exactly why it says what it says.
The three room tiers
| Room size | People | Typical build |
|---|---|---|
| Huddle room | 2–5 | One 55–65" interactive board, or one display plus an all-in-one video bar. Teams Rooms compute built in. Wireless sharing. |
| Medium meeting room / boardroom | 6–14 | Dual 86" displays or one 98", or a large interactive board. Ceiling or table mic array, PTZ camera, touch controller. |
| Large boardroom / training room | 14+ | Multiple displays, multi-zone ceiling mics, multiple cameras, DSP, room control, booking panel. |
Each step up roughly doubles the hardware and adds a day of installation. The rest of this guide is about the decisions inside each tier.
What is actually in the price
A Teams Room is five things bought together. This is where quotes diverge, so it pays to know what each line does.
1. Display, or interactive board
The single biggest hardware line, and the first real decision.
Interactive board. A MaxHub XBoard or V Series board puts the 4K touch display, camera, microphone array, speakers and Teams Rooms compute in one unit. One mount, one power point, one cable. Microsoft Whiteboard runs natively, so in-room sketching is shared live with remote participants. For huddle rooms and medium meeting rooms it is the simplest and cleanest option, and it is what we install most.
Commercial display plus video bar. A commercial-grade display (rated for 16 to 18 hours a day, with a proper warranty; consumer TVs are neither) paired with a separate Teams Rooms bar such as the MaxHub XBar. Dual displays in a boardroom are worth it if you use content sharing heavily: remote participants on one screen, the presentation on the other. Dual-display layouts require Teams Rooms Pro.
Recent offices we have fitted out in Melbourne and Sydney run on MaxHub XBoard V7 boards in the meeting rooms and MaxHub XBar V50 or V70 bars with displays in the larger rooms, with a single 65" XBoard V7 covering a focus room. Two hardware families, one vendor to support.
2. Compute and video bar
If you are not using an interactive board, this is the "Teams Room" part. Two architectures.
Android appliances bundle the compute, camera, microphones and speakers into a single bar. They are cheaper, quieter, and boot in seconds. MaxHub XCore Kit and XBar are our go-to; Yealink MeetingBar, Logitech Rally Bar and Poly Studio X are alternatives when a room or budget calls for them.
Windows-based Teams Rooms use a small Windows PC (MaxHub XT Series, or Yealink, Logitech and Crestron Flex equivalents) plus separate camera and audio. They cost more, and they suit large rooms, multi-camera setups and rooms that need deep third-party AV integration.
For most Australian SMB rooms under 14 people, an interactive board or Android appliance is the right call. It removes a Windows device from your patching scope and takes a meaningful amount off the quote.
3. Audio
The item people under-spend on and regret. A video bar or board covers a table up to about 4 metres. Beyond that you need table expansion microphones or a ceiling microphone array (Shure MXA, Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling, or MaxHub's own), and large rooms need a DSP behind it.
If remote participants say "we can hear you but it sounds like you are in a bathroom", the room needed a ceiling array and acoustic treatment, not a better camera.
4. Installation and cabling
Labour, mounts, cable runs, and the pre-configuration work. A huddle room is half a day, a medium boardroom one to two days, a large boardroom two to four days, often with a control programmer.
Licensed electrical work is separate. If the display needs a power point behind it or the ceiling mic needs a data run, that is its own line on the quote.
5. Licensing
Every room device needs a Teams Rooms licence assigned to its resource account. It is not covered by your user licences.
| Licence | Price | Limit | Key inclusions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teams Rooms Basic | Free | 25 rooms per tenant | One-touch join, content sharing, calendar, single display |
| Teams Rooms Pro | Paid, per device per month, quoted in AUD at current CSP pricing | Unlimited | Dual display, Front Row, intelligent camera and speakers, Pro Management portal, Conditional Access, analytics |
Pro is money well spent for boardrooms and any room you want under Conditional Access. It is money wasted on a huddle room that only ever does one-touch Teams calls. We cover the decision in detail in Teams Rooms Basic vs Pro.
The costs that blow out budgets
These are the items missing from cheap quotes.
- Room booking panels. A panel outside the door showing availability and letting people book on the spot. Everybody wants one after the fact.
- Acoustic treatment. Glass-walled boardrooms are echo chambers. Panels fix what no microphone can.
- Network. The room needs a wired port with PoE for the controller and panel, on a VLAN that can reach Microsoft 365. If the switch is full or PoE-less, that is a network job.
- Tenant configuration. Resource account, calendar processing, licence assignment, Conditional Access, Intune enrolment, Pro Management portal onboarding. Two to four hours of Microsoft 365 admin work that AV-only installers do not do and IT-only providers often do badly.
- Firmware and support. Somebody has to apply firmware out of hours and answer the call when the room says "sign in required" at 8:55am. Managed support starts from $50 per room per month.
How to keep the cost down without regretting it
- Match the platform to the room. An interactive board or Android appliance for rooms under 14 people; Windows only where the room genuinely needs it.
- Use Basic where it is enough. Huddle rooms and small meeting rooms on Teams only rarely need Pro.
- Standardise. Three rooms on the same MaxHub kit are cheaper to buy, configure, and support than three different brands.
- Do the electrical work once. Put the power and data behind the display during the fit-out, not after.
- Get the audio right the first time. Adding a ceiling array after the ceiling is closed costs more than specifying it up front.
Getting a real quote
We supply and install Microsoft Teams Rooms Australia-wide, MaxHub-led, integrated with your Microsoft 365 tenant. A room assessment is free, on-site or from floor plans and photos. You get a fixed-price proposal with every line item above listed, so the number you budget is the number you pay.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest way to set up a Microsoft Teams Room? A single MaxHub interactive board or a MaxHub XCore Kit on one commercial display, licensed on the free Teams Rooms Basic tier. One unit, one mount, one power point. Anything cheaper usually means a consumer webcam and a laptop, which is not a Teams Room.
Is the Teams Rooms licence included in Microsoft 365? No. Teams Rooms Basic and Pro are separate device licences assigned to the room's resource account. Basic is free for up to 25 rooms per tenant; Pro is a paid per-device monthly licence, quoted in Australian dollars at current CSP pricing. Your user licences (Business Standard, E3, E5) do not cover room devices.
Why is a Teams Room so much more expensive than a webcam and a TV? Because you are paying for a purpose-built compute appliance, beamforming microphones that cover the whole table, a camera that frames the room automatically, a certified touch controller, professional mounting and cabling, tenant enrolment, and someone accountable when it stops working. The webcam-and-TV setup is cheap and fails in front of clients.
Do I need an electrician for a Teams Room install? Often, yes. Wall-mounted displays and boards need a power outlet behind the screen, and ceiling microphones need a data run to the ceiling. If outlets and data points are not already where the design needs them, licensed electrical work is a separate line on the quote.
What ongoing costs should I budget for after installation? The Teams Rooms licence (free on Basic, paid monthly on Pro), managed support from $50 per room per month for monitoring, firmware and same-day help, and a hardware refresh every five to seven years.