Kitting Out a Meeting Room for Microsoft Teams: Licences, Kit and Room Sizes

5 min read889 words1st October 2026

The short answer: a Teams meeting room needs a certified device, a display, a wired network connection and a Teams Rooms licence. Teams Rooms Basic is free with a certified system, but it's limited to 25 rooms, one system per room, and it has no dual-screen support. Teams Rooms Pro costs around £30.80 per room per month and adds dual screens, Front Row, the large gallery and proper management.

Three ways to do a meeting room

Approach	How it works	Trade-off
USB, bring your own device	A camera and speakerphone plug into whoever's laptop is running the meeting	Cheapest. No room calendar, no one-touch join, no central management, and every meeting starts with someone hunting for the cable
Appliance	A video bar runs Teams Rooms on its own, with a touch console on the table	The usual answer for small and medium rooms. Simple to deploy and manage
Teams Rooms on Windows	A small PC runs the room, with the camera, audio and console attached	Most features and most flexibility, including features Android appliances don't get, but more to install and maintain

A shared meeting device needs a Teams Rooms licence. Microsoft is explicit that an ordinary per-user Microsoft 365 licence isn't permitted on a shared room device.

Teams Rooms Basic or Pro?

	Basic	Pro
Cost	No extra cost with a certified system	About £30.80 per room per month (check the current price)
Rooms allowed	Up to 25, one system per room	Unlimited, and it licenses Teams panels too
Joining meetings	One-touch join, proximity join, guest join to Zoom and Webex	Same
Dual displays	No	Yes
Front row and large gallery	No	Yes
Intelligent audio and video	No	Speaker recognition, multi-camera, noise suppression, people counting
Management and security	Basic inventory	Remote configuration, health monitoring, analytics, Intune and Conditional Access

Basic is a genuine option for one or two small rooms. If you want two screens, or you want to manage rooms properly, you need Pro. Note Basic can only be bought directly in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, not through a reseller.

Why certified devices matter

Microsoft certifies devices for Teams Rooms on Windows, for Teams Rooms on Android, and separately as peripherals used with a Windows room system. Certification tests audio and video quality, the interface, management and security. It doesn't guarantee every feature works, but uncertified kit misses out on management, firmware updates and support.

Certifications also expire, and some devices are listed with re-certification pending. It's worth checking a model's current status before buying several.

Matching kit to room size

Microsoft publishes maximum microphone-to-speaker distances, which is the most useful planning figure there is:

Room	People	Furthest person from the microphone
Focus, about 3 × 2.7m	2–4	1.5m
Small, about 4.9 × 4.9m	4–6	2m
Medium, about 5.5 × 6m	6–12	2.4m
Large, about 4.5 × 9.75m	12–16	3m, and the same for each extra microphone's coverage

Typical devices by room size:

Huddle rooms (up to about 6): Logitech Rally Bar Huddle, Cisco Room Bar or Poly Studio X30.
Small to medium (up to about 12): Logitech Rally Bar Mini, Cisco Room Bar Pro or Poly Studio X52.
Medium to large (up to about 20): Logitech Rally Bar, Cisco Room Kit EQ or Poly Studio X70, with extra microphones as the room gets longer.

Cisco's room devices can run Microsoft Teams Rooms, with the licence on the Microsoft side; a Cisco subscription is optional.

Sizing the display

Microsoft's rule of thumb is one inch of content height for every 1.5 inches of viewing distance:

Furthest seat	Display
3.6m (12ft)	65in
4.5m (15ft)	65in
5.5m (18ft)	75in
6m (20ft)	85in

Other display rules worth knowing: a maximum of two front-of-room screens; dual screens need a touch console and a Pro licence; only one of the two can be touch-enabled; and commercial displays are a safer choice than consumer TVs, which rely on HDMI-CEC to wake up and don't all support it.

The boring parts that decide whether it works

Wired network. Microsoft strongly recommends a wired connection, and suggests allowing 10 Mbps up and down per room. Put a network point at the display wall.
Power. Video bars are mains powered, so plan a socket at the display. Touch consoles are often powered over Ethernet, and Cisco bars can power their own console.
Cable runs. USB consoles have distance limits, and USB extenders drop USB 3.0 devices to slower speeds. A network-connected console avoids the problem.
Proxy servers. Teams Rooms doesn't support proxy authentication, so the room devices need exempting before go-live.

One more change worth knowing

Logitech stopped selling its packaged Teams-on-Windows room bundles at the end of March 2026. Appliance bundles continue, and for a Windows room you now buy the Logitech kit and the compute separately. If you've been quoted an old bundle part number, check it's still available.

Meeting room kit from Apaxon

Apaxon supplies room devices, speakerphones, cameras, mounts and displays through the Apaxon store, and can quote a complete room including the licence, display and installation. We also look after the Microsoft 365 side, including room resource accounts, as part of managed IT services and managed cloud services. request a quote or get in touch with your room dimensions and we'll suggest a specification.