Advice on Investing in Your First Teleprompter

Investing in your first teleprompter is such an important decision for a video professional. You are making a choice on a product that can either make or break your productions. And most likely it is a product that you will be living with for many years. After all, few people buy a teleprompter every year! It is a major investment and requires a lot of thought. 

When you are thinking about which teleprompter is for you and your staff, you should think quality first and foremost. You want a product that is well built, reliable, easy to use, lightweight yet strong, and has great software.

We think that the products from Telmax fit that definition perfectly. Telmax teleprompters, Inc is an American manufacturer who uses true American quality in every aluminum and steel machined piece. These products are proven time and again to be perfectly reliable every time you use them. Also a Telmax is made of very lightweight yet strong aluminum. Also, the Zaprompt Pro Software that comes with this product gives you perfectly reliable and readable text every time you turn on the device.

Once you have decided on the brand, you should consider the size of the product you need. How far away will the device be from your talent? If it is a small shoot, the outstanding G2-15 should fit your needs perfectly. It has a 15” screen that will work well if your speaker is 8-10 feet away from the camera. For larger shoots, we recommend the G2-17, with the 17” screen, or the G2-19, with the 19” face.

If you are an iPad fan, Telmax also has the product for you. The Pro-iP is designed to connect to your iPad perfectly. This will make your next shoot extremely easy, as there is no need to transfer your script to the device. It’s right there in your iPad.

The other aspect you should consider when investing in your first teleprompter is the level of service backing the product. Many fly by night companies out of China or India will make an ok product. But what happens to your shoot if the software keeps crashing or a piece on the device breaks? We do not think you will have problems with a high quality teleprompter, but sooner or later, you might have an issue that you need support to fix. It is much better to have a high quality company like Telmax to rely on than some company that is 12 time zones away.