Polycom SoundStation

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However, the Polycom Soundstation 200 is just that.

What does it look like?
Well, it is a dark grey tripod shaped device which is about the size of a vinyl Album. To one of the 3 sides, it has the controls and buttons for dialing and the overall control of the phone. On each one of its 3 feet is a microphone, carefully concealed behind the plastic cover. Dominating the centre of the phone is a large dome speaker ...
.../> Well, it comes with loads of features and gadgets.
Lets talk about them.
Firstly are the 3 microphones. Carefully placed at 120 degree angles to each other to give a full 360 degree coverage. This allows people to partake and be heard in a meeting from any position around the phone. The unidirectional phones lack this facility and people sound distant. This phone is great for large groups.
Secondly are the 3 lights on the ... more

If you work in an international office, you will know that conference calls and part of everyday life. Not an afternoon passes without the shrill voice of someone booming through out conference phone.
However, they are not the easiest things to conduct or concentrate on and end up more like a fussy moon landing conversation. I always want to say “Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed” at the end of the call.
It is therefore Ironic that the solution to our dodgy conference calls comes in the shape of an alien spacecraft and more at home in Star Trek than our conference room.

However, the Polycom Soundstation 200 is just that.

What does it look like?
Well, it is a dark grey tripod shaped device which is about the size of a vinyl Album. To one of the 3 sides, it has the controls and buttons for dialing and the overall control of the phone. On each one of its 3 feet is a microphone, carefully concealed behind the plastic cover. Dominating the centre of the phone is a large dome speaker that relays the conversation being recieved.

Features.
Well, it comes with loads of features and gadgets.
Lets talk about them.
Firstly are the 3 microphones. Carefully placed at 120 degree angles to each other to give a full 360 degree coverage. This allows people to partake and be heard in a meeting from any position around the phone. The unidirectional phones lack this facility and people sound distant. This phone is great for large groups.
Secondly are the 3 lights on the top of the phone. No, they are not landing lights for the spacecraft but in fact “secrecy lights”.
They represent one of the most important features on the phone. The secrecy button. When deep in conversation, you may need to make decisions in private. This phone has a rubberised cut out button. When pressed, the people on the other end of the call cannot hear what is being spoken. The lights on top are the indicator. When the 3 lights are Red, the phone is in secrecy mode. No one can hear your conversation. When the button is deactivated, the lights turn Green and the person you are in conversation with can hear again. It is very handy. It prevents some situations that could prove very nasty!
The Phone has full control over Volume so you can reduce the shrill voices! This again is a rubberised button on the control panel.
One thing it does lack is a LCD screen. When dialling exceptionally long international numbers, it is easy to make a mistake. With a screen you can see when you have pressed the wrong button. With this phone you cant see a mistake until you connect or not connect to a caller.
However, the next model up, The Soundstation Premier, has this function included.

Performance.
It is absolutely brilliant. The sound quality and clarity is superb. With conference phones, this is normally a quality that gets forgotten. Not with this phone. The large speaker radiates the sound perfectly.
You can also speak and be spoken to at once so you don’t miss vital words and sentences when someone is trying to interrupt. This is perfected by using “full duplex” technology.
How this works is that the speaker and microphones operate separately and pass the information (sound in this case) on separate channels.
This allows you to hear and be heard at the sale time. Sometimes this can cause a never ending loop of sound with your microphone picking up the sound form the speaker. However, these are position well enough to prevent this.
Phones that only allow one way sound (speaking or hearing) are called half duplex.
They also suffer from “clipping”. This is when the phone is selecting whether it is sending or receiving. This means vital words are sometimes missed from sentences.
With the “always On” performance of the Soundstation Microphones, this problem is eliminated.

Pricing.
It is very expensive to buy. To buy one of these, it is going to cost you £370 minimum. This is a good price for this phone compared to most places and you can buy it from Global Direct for this price (www.globaldirect.co.uk). For an additional £220 you can also purchase external microphones if you feel the built in ones are not good enough.

Overall.
An expensive buy but unrivalled quality for a company that will conference a lot. We use it daily and it gets an awful lot of use. It still performs as good as new. One of these days I expect to see it hovering around in the conference room with little green men hanging out of it!
 

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