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Hi: I am working on next year’s budget and would like to have my main three conference rooms well-equipped. The sizes vary from the bigger ones (30 people, 20, and 10). I’m not sure what’s new on the market these days, but we need videoconferencing (Zoom & Msteams), good sound quality, I guess a projector on the 30 and 20 people rooms, and a TV on the 10 people room

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Can you guys recommend something?

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please? :smile:

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@El-Gabo What is the purpose of each room?

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Requirements and purpose are key, standardizing as best as you can is also helpful but as each room might have a different purpose, you can only do so much. We wanted to make our conferences rooms as user friendly as possible meaning users should be able to get setup on their own and that didn’t turn out as well as we had hoped (something always goes wrong and instructions provided were never followed correctly). We also wanted a really clean and organized setup and so all wires were hidden. Ultimately it got to the point where I would tell users to just let someone from my department know ahead of time and we would make sure we were there 10-15 minutes before their meetings to make sure everything worked. Even then, they would try to setup on their own so we would get called in 20 minutes into their meeting and so it would be that awkard few minutes of barging into the middle of a meeting while everyone starred at you while you tried to get things working.

We tried everything from all in one soundbars, wireless casting devices, nucs (we use big flatscreens) and laptops. Ultimately the simpler the setup the better.

Whats worked best for us so far is:
A laptop assigned for that room that a user can checkout and cast or connect to the TV (we have ports built into the table that the laptops can connect to and we have a wireless mouse for the laptop). The speakers on our flatscreens are really good, so we have been testing this recently
Wireless Conference Camera

Only issue is that most users that use that room dont actually like having the camera on but it was plug and play. The two all in one soundbar/camera/microphone systems we tried, were just too much of a headache .

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Hi.
Are you asking for more of a product recommendations?
I know you mentioned videoconferencing and projectors, but as @jameswalker20 and @norriii said “What is the purpose of each room?” and “Ultimately the simpler the setup the better.”, respectively.

Skeletal needs would be camera/webcam, microphone/conference phone/speaker, and projector/tv.
Factor in how tech savvy are the users that will frequently use conference rooms. This will help you decide if you want the set up to be plug-n-play or be fancy and make most things wireless. Again, the simpler the setup the better. Wireless stuff will be a headache because upper management just want things to work without any hitch.

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Id say Cisco roomkit or roomkit plus. The big MX series look cool but they lack ethernet ports for peripherals so need mini switches and the displays go bad before the hardware does it seems. Cheaper and more repairable just get roomkit and a few TVs and wall mounts.

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These are pretty Neat if you want to budget in, we use them for Zoom and Teams, audio and video is good: Neat Bar - Neat
Or, this one, 360 degree video: Meeting Owl 3 - 360 Degree, 1080p HD Video Conference Camera

For TVs there are 85" ones or get two for each room.

Not sure about projectors nowadays but Epson is a good brand.

Can probably squeeze in wireless HDMI similar to this for less cables: https://www.nyrius.com/wireless-hdmi-video-transmitter-receiver-ws55

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The following OEMs offer great solutions: Logitech, Yealink, Neat, HP Poly and Crestron. I would highly recommend standardizing in one OEM. Here’s a meeting room configurator that can help you choose some options: https://mrc.unifiedcommunications.com/
Logitech and Yealink are popular options since both offer solutions for each of your rooms. Also, a dual display setup is often recommended as you can share content on one screen and remote participants on the other. Happy to answer additional questions!

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I have used these for large conference rooms in the past, I haven’t done one in a couple of years so there may be better gear available. I like this one as you can add more mic’s and it’s easy to train users.

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I can 2nd this one, the Meeting Owl does a good job

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I would warn against Meeting Owls.

Our users don’t like that you have to be facing the center of the table to look like you’re talking to the person(s) on the other end of the call. Our screen is at the front of the room, so you’re not facing the camera.

On the technical side of things:
The noise-cancelling does not work well in our setup. I’m not sure if that is something weird with our conference room/users or if it is the meeting owl itself. Typically, we notice issues with certain people talking or if someone were to make “too much” noise like (noisily?) laying their phone down on the conference table. There are times that audio goes real quiet and slowly comes back. This got bad enough that we bought a 360 degree microphone (Cherry brand) to go away from using the Owl’s built-in mic(s).

I don’t personally care for the camera on it either. It gets an A for cool factor for the 360 degree view and the view splitting based on who is talking, but the actual video quality isn’t great.

On customer service:
They did a great job for us! We were having some issues with the original Meeting Owl Pro that we bought, it was a continuous reboot type of issue. It turned out to be software related and they decided to go ahead and replace the device with their latest model at the time (Meeting Owl 3) even though our original device was out of warranty.

Lastly, Owl Labs did have some very serious security holes in their products that appear to have been patched in 2022. Hopefully, this means that they have moved on to better security testing of their gear and are now designing their products with security in mind.