Working from home has become the norm rather than the exception as a consequence of the pandemic. However, best-effort hardware has hampered quality of experience (QoS) and, as workers migrate to hybrid modes of working, there’s a need to professionalise video equipment to help ensure users have high-quality lighting and sound and the ability to represent the brands they work for in a consistent and appealing way.
“In 2020 good enough solutions were acceptable,” says Neil Fluester, Product Director at Poly.
“In 2021, they’re not because if we’re going to work from home and in hybrid ways for the longer term, we need to be able to permanently deliver the quality in the meeting space to the personal user”
That is a significant change from the traditional approach of remote workers using their laptop camera or buying one from whatever source they can find and then having a complicated set-up at home. To achieve a level of quality, users have deployed lighting such as ring lights and done their best to configure cameras and their workspaces. However, to provide a professional experience, further steps are needed.
“Last March we decided to pivot and ramp-up and bolster our products in the personal space,” explains Fluester. “We started to look at what was in the market for the personal user and what they would need to be able to flex between home offices and new workspaces. The traditional office has changed and technology needs to reflect that.”
In the absence of traditional face-to-face contact, video has become an important communications tool and Poly’s approach has been to define the camera as a business tool and address the key requirements of home workers. It has developed three new products in its Poly Studio P Series, the Poly Studio P5 webcam, Poly Studio P15 personal video bar, and Poly Studio P21 personal meeting display which offer enhanced video functionality.
The Poly Studio P5 webcam is designed to level up home workers to professional standards and comes either as a standalone or bundled in a box with other devices such as headsets or the latest Poly Sync 20 speakerphone. Poly’s strategy is not to sell just the products but to offer support and software to help both the users and the IT departments manage devices and also to enable workers with easy set ups and advice about effective lighting, for example. Therefore, the entire Poly Studio P Series comes with access to Poly Lens device management service through the new Poly Lens Desktop App and Poly+, an exclusive IT device management service based on subscription.
Poly Studio P5
The Poly Studio P5 webcam itself has a much larger sensor than in typical laptop cameras which aids quality in low natural light situations. The product also features a directional microphone and a single USB connector plus a built-in privacy shutter, which is increasingly important as users work from their homes, where cluttering has become a challenge on aesthetics.
“The camera is not just a piece of hardware,” says Fluester. “It’s the package that’s important that comprises simplified connectivity and install, plus bundled packages that can be simply mailed out to workers. As an enabler of a remote workforce, you could ship out 50, 100 or 1,000 bundles, for example, all of which give users a single app to ensure effective set-up. It’s one box, one solution.”
The Zoom and Microsoft Teams certified Poly Studio P15 personal video bar incorporates the P5’s camera and provides an even higher level of quality and is available as a standalone device for private rooms, featuring a 4k camera and high-quality audio, enabled by an acoustic fence and noise blocking technology, which Fluester demonstrates by rustling bubblewrap while talking with complete clarity to the listener. This product is aimed at the connected executive or for those working on large projects.
Poly Studio P15
Finally, the Poly Studio P21 personal meeting display is a secondary device that combines the camera functionality and the amazing Poly audio with a 21’’ display along with other high-quality features like the embedded dynamic lighting in an all-in-one device. USB connectivity frees Poly Studio P21 to work with any video app that runs on a PC or Mac.
Poly Studio 21
All three products are supported by Poly Lens and subscription-based Poly+ management software which enables IT teams to run diagnostics on the network, PC and all the data is sent back to the management cloud to enable excellent experiences.
To learn more about the P-series range, visit Poly.
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