Excellence from a distance

Nothing invites the tech gremlins in quite like a live demo, video meeting, or conference call.

Telecommuting tools can support things like cross-region communication with the benefit of face-to-face encounters (the ability to see who is speaking and what the person is presenting, and taking in visual cues, like gestures and body language) without the hefty travel costs or time lost.

It’s the next best thing to being there in person — but only if the tech is doing what it should be doing. Early iterations of videoconferencing setups have earned a reputation for being fiddly and unreliable.

Logitech thinks it has the answer. It has developed several video-conferencing devices, ranging from modular packages for large rooms to one-and-done (my word, not the company’s) devices.

The Meetup falls into the latter category, incorporating camera, speaker and microphone in one, and is best used for smaller rooms. The built-in microphones are optimised for up to 4m (you can expand this with a separate expansion microphone).

The Meetup has a small footprint, taking up just 40cm, and can be mounted above or below a display, or positioned on the cabinetry already in place in your meeting room. The video quality is excellent, with a 4K

ultra-high-definition sensor, so you can pan, tilt, and zoom without compromising clarity.

The camera has an extra wide field of view but doesn’t give that “fish eye” look that distorts proportions and faces. This clarity and absence of distortion means you can zoom in on writing on a whiteboard, for instance.

Logitech has also done its homework on two further fronts, showing that it has given some thought to how people want to