₹106,599, birdai.com
Most of us are still in a hybrid work environment, and remote collaborations have increasingly become part of our lives. There is now more than one way to collaborate, but at the enterprise level, you need a reliable and fixed solution that can be deployed within a short span of time and that offers scalability in a conference room environment. Bird Hub is such a collaboration hub that is complete in itself and yet can be deployed with minimum hassles.
The Bird Hub can be attached to any display, even the ones with the slimmest bezels. I used it with a Sony Bravia TV on review. There are foam paddings on both sides to keep the mount from causing any damage to the bezel or screen. A flexible arm with a Velcro-type hook-and-loop fastener tape on the flat end shifts most of the weight to the back of the TV. The device has two cameras — one facing you and one facing the screen. The screen doesn’t require a touch interface since the touch detection and interactive functions are handled by an EyeRIS 3-D Dual-band Optical sensor. At the back of the device are the I/O ports and slots — HDMI, USB 3.0, Micro SD, DC In, LAN, and USB Type-C. The device offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The supplied Air Mouse allows you to control the device wirelessly and point and click. The mouse also houses an alphanumeric keyboard. An infrared pen is also supplied with the device. Installation support is provided, but if you choose to install the device yourself, once connected, the device straightaway takes you to the calibration screen. The Bird Hub has to be mounted at the exact centre of the screen and you get a position indicator on the screen. Calibration is as simple as tapping on the sequentially appearing dots with the pen. You may need to do manual calibration if the pen is not recognised on the launcher screen. The device also supports BYOD mode to connect with any laptop via a single USB-C cable.
The hub recognises faces automatically and the 4K UHD camera intelligently frames and zooms in to the presenter. The camera captures a wide area of the room with amazing clarity, which ensures that everyone is included in the frame. The far-field multi-microphone array offers noise cancellation. The system uses a four-microphone array that offers adaptive beamforming, full-duplex acoustic echo cancellation with barge-in support, de-reverberation, and automatic gain control. The mics are capable of capturing voice from a 5m radius and offer Voice Activity Detection and Direction of Arrival.
The Bird Hub uses an Android interface complete with a built-in collaborative whiteboard and PlayStore to download apps. The device uses a 3.2 GHz 64-bit Hexacore ARM processor along with 4GB RAM and 16 GB onboard storage. The storage can be expanded up to 128 GB. An AI NPU supports intelligent features. The hub offers multiple-screen–sharing with remote users and supports Airplay and Miracast. You can share the content wirelessly across up to four screens. The Bird Hub supports popular collaboration platforms including MS Teams, Skype, BlueJeans, Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Slack.
WE’RE IMPRESSED Works with any screen with HDMI input, clear visuals, hassle-free set-up, supports a wide range of platforms
WE’D IMPROVE Better documentation and troubleshooting guide
THE LAST WORD This collaboration hub makes every screen an intelligent interactive unit complete with a full suite of connectivity options.