200-300$ Conference speakerphones have worse microphone quality than a built-in laptop mic
Hi everyone,
We're currently looking for a good conference room speakerphone with a built-in microphone for small meetings, but we've run into a pretty unexpected issue.
The speakerphone should be suitable for meetings with 5-10 participants, where the maximum distance from the microphone is around 3 meters (10 ft).
So far, we've tested:
• Poly Sync 40+
• Jabra Speak2 55 MS
In both cases, the microphone quality was noticeably worse than the built-in microphone on a Dell Latitude 5430. This was true both when speaking close to the device and from a greater distance in the room.
We've tried pretty much everything we could think of:
• Connected via USB-A, USB-C, and Bluetooth
• Updated firmware and drivers from the manufacturers' websites
• Adjusted various Windows microphone settings and audio enhancements
• Tested multiple connection methods and configurations
Unfortunately, none of these changes improved the microphone quality.
Has anyone else experienced something similar with conference speakerphones? Is this just a limitation of these models, or could we be missing something?
We're looking for recommendations for a conference speakerphone in the $200–300 range, but we're also open to more expensive options if they provide significantly better microphone quality and can reliably pick up voices in meetings of this size.
Any suggestions or experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!