Every product has a desk where it fails. Thin clients fail loudly at video calls, local software and offline work. This is the honest list - check your desks against it before any bulk order, not after.
Thin clients have an excellent reputation in the jobs they suit - which makes it easy to over-apply them. A desk whose main work cannot live on the server will fight its thin client every single day. Four desk types should make you stop and choose something else.
👆 One strong signal is enough. Give that desk a PC and let the other desks enjoy the thin client economics.
Calls inside an RDP session pass the camera and microphone through redirection, and on standard-class hardware in a quiet office it is usable. But a desk that lives on Teams or Zoom all day - management, sales, support - feels every compromise in picture smoothness and audio delay. That desk wants a real PC running the call locally, with the session as its second tool, not its only one.
Anything that must install and run on the desk itself - design tools, local databases, software tied to a USB licence dongle, a vendor's odd utility that only works locally - breaks the thin client idea entirely. The box is locked down or too light by design. If even one such application is the desk's main job, the desk is a PC desk.
A thin client desk stops when its server or network stops. For most office work that is an acceptable, plannable risk - the server gets a UPS and a backup. But a counter that legally or commercially cannot stop - a dispatch desk, a critical billing point - needs a local fallback plan, and sometimes that plan is simply a standalone PC for that one seat.
Three or four monitors, 4K panels, video walls - display ambition outgrows the thin client classes quickly. Premium models stretch further, but past two ordinary monitors the honest tool is a small PC with a real graphics output set. Forcing a thin client here produces the flicker and lag stories that unfairly damn the whole concept.
Ask of every desk: can this desk's main application live on the server? If yes, buy the thin client with confidence. If no, no discount, bundle or promise changes the answer - that desk gets a PC, and the office still saves on every other seat.
The video shows the jobs these boxes ace - watch it, then map your own desks: session desks to thin clients, exceptions to PCs.
▶️ Watch Full VideoThe call runs inside the session with camera and mic redirected, and on standard class hardware it is usable for occasional calls. Desks that live on calls all day are happier with a normal PC - test your exact model and headset before deciding for a call-heavy seat.
Short clips are fine on wired LAN with the standard class. Full-screen HD video all day is more a server and network load question than a box question - a mini PC serving that desk locally is usually the better fit.
Not if the server is in your own office - the session runs on the local network, not the internet. Thin clients stop only when the server or the LAN stops, which is why the server belongs on a UPS.