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This review first appeared in points 340 PC Pro.
The acquisition of HP of poly in August 2022 gives a strong appearance in the hybrid working market with access to a good range of VC products. Poly retains its name for now, and the studio R30 on review is aimed at providing SMB an affordable all-in-one solution for small conference locations.
At first glance, the R30 Poly P15 video looks similar to the bar, but its chassis is slightly larger, the Central 4K UHD camera has a very high diagonal 120 ° field of view (Fov) and its digital zoom grows from 4x to 5x. Internal, things remain the same: it has an 8W internal speaker, while a triple-microphone beamforming array speaker provides tracking and automatic framing.
The studio R30 employs the noisy and acoustic fence technologies of R30 Poly to identify and remove annoying background noise such as the keyboard heavy hitters. This moves one step further as the new directai feature of poly ensures that any meeting participant is left with the presenter trekking by providing automatic group, people and speaker frameing.
The rear-mounted port includes an external PSU connector and a USB Type-C port for host connections, including the kit a generous five-meter cable. Two USB Type-A Port R30 allow to act as a USB hub, but unlike the mechanical privacy shutter of P15 on its lens, R30 gets only a cheap rubber cap.
Establishment is Swift. We added R30 to a Windows 10 pc and loaded the camera and audio device drivers in a few seconds. You want to add poly lens desktop apps of Poly as it manually offers a firmware upgrade tool with local access to adjust audio and video function and select a framing mode.
By using the app to link with our lens cloud account, we can manage the R30 from a distance, change its settings from the portal and use the inventory service to see its physical space. Use the app to connect the R30 to the wireless network and it will link with a remote poly provisioning server to push custom settings.
During the meetings, we found that poly tracking and framing features worked very well, shrinking the current speaker with the camera, when they stop talking and move easily for other speakers. In the presenter mode, R30 easily monitored us as we went around our meeting room, while we talked, with a shift of about two to three seconds.
The speaker saves a clean soundscape and in our 24 meters2 In the room we found that a volume level of 75% was enough to cover all areas. Integral MIC also affected, the remote meeting participants said that they could clearly hear us at a distance of three meters.
In comparison to the lab’s studio P15, we found that the broad Fov of R30 clearly provides more horizontal coverage. It was not suffering from a slightly soft focus of P15 and presented a sharp, cleaner picture with a more natural color balance, while its backlight compensation fought better with bright sunlight.
The digital pan, tilt and zoom function of the camera can be manually controlled by the lens app, but only when auto-tracking is disabled. Although currently in a preview test phase, you can also choose a conversation mode to display two speakers in a partition screen, while people framing show all participants using up to six divided screens.
Poly’s Studio R30 SMBS provides an affordable and easy-to-use 4K videoconferencing solution. The quality of video and audio is very good and its clever people-trekking and framing features add all important professional touch to your meetings.
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