The Meeting Owl Pro – Product Review
It’s been a long 18 months of virtual meetings, comedy backgrounds, and constant checking that we can all see each other’s screen, but as we start to head back into the office, and embrace the home/office hybrid working lifestyle, new products are launching that can help us, The Meeting OWL Pro is a device that bridges the communication gap between those in the office and those working remotely.
What is it?
The Meeting Owl and Meeting Owl Pro is a plug-and-play speaker, mic & 360-camera device that can be placed in the middle of a desk and link those working in an office with digital participants on Zoom, Teams, Hangouts and indeed most virtual meeting platforms we find ourselves using today.
Why use it?
Quite simply, multiple people, with laptops, in the same room on a video meeting can be a painful experience. Whether it’s resorting to crowding round a single laptop or using the sound mixing skills of an Ibithan DJ to mute and unmute speakers, I think we can all agree, there must be a better way.
So for those of us that are not considering purchasing a full videoconferencing suite, the Meeting Owl Pro offers an easy to use alternative.
Using in house AI technology the 360* camera automatically focuses on speakers in the room as well as providing a crisp video that is more than comparable with most built-in laptop cameras.
Audio is markedly better than standard laptops and with eight built-in smart microphones, will handle itself well in large meeting rooms with a range up to 18 feet.
How did we find using it?
It literally was plug and play, connecting via USB-A to a laptop and with a tweak on our Teams settings to use the OWL Camera and Speakers we were away. Audio quality sounded good, and anyone that grew up with audio conferencing units in the middle of a table will feel at home.
The main difference comes when making virtual eye contact with the audience, the natural inclination has always been to look at the laptop screen, we quickly adapted to angling our laptops to peer above the screen and towards the camera and normal experience was resumed.
There’s a downloadable app that adds an extra layer of control for meetings with access to features such as virtual whiteboards and adjust preferences for the smart zoom camera, but mostly we found it all just worked.
Tech specs and costs at a glance
 |  |
Meeting Owl £799 | Meeting Owl Pro £999 |
CAMERA 360° camera in 720p | CAMERA 2X sharper 360° camera in 1080p |
MIC 12-foot radius audio pickup, best for huddle and smaller rooms | MIC 18-foot radius audio pickup great for medium and large rooms. |
SPEAKER Single 360° speaker | SPEAKER 2X louder room sound via 360° tri-speaker |
| INTELLIGENCE Owl Intelligence System™ with autofocus | INTELLIGENCE Owl Intelligence System™ with autofocus and Smart Zooming functionality |
PROCESSING Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 410 processor | PROCESSING Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 605 processor |
Our Verdict
If crowding around a laptop for your video meetings isn’t for you, the Meeting Owl Pro is good solution for the office and any hybrid meeting environment. It’s unfussy about conference platform, and works well. The video quality was good, and the AI driven camera focus takes a couple of seconds but worked well.
Unit tested was the Meeting Owl Pro.
We do not receive payment for our reviews.
To find out more visit Owl Labs
