Owl Labs, the company behind the innovative 'any-room' 360-degree meeting room camera system, has announced the new Meeting Owl 5 Pro for pre-order with features designed to reduce cable and device clutter.
It looks like the Meeting Owl might be looking to find a home in the middle of more meeting rooms, with key features including 4K UHD video, the ability to deliver content directly to a display via HDMI passthrough, and cable-reducing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) experience.
Like previous Meeting Owls, the core concept is that the device used the central camera at the top of the device, which also combines a dual speaker system and eight directional microphones. The AI uses these to pinpoint the current speaker, and one of several different styles of image is sent to other remote meeting participants, whether a view of the whole room, or crops of just the speaking or most recent speakers.
The Meeting Owl can "see" and detect individuals approximately 10ft (3m) in any direction, but for larger meeting rooms, it can now also be paired with another device using a single secure Ethernet cable. The camera has 64 megapixels, but the pickup radius is also determined by the range of the microphone array, which is 18ft / 5.5 meters.
"The Meeting Owl 5 Pro represents a significant leap forward in our mission to create truly equitable hybrid meetings for all companies, with a focus on Enterprise," said Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs.
A new integrated port design in the bottom of the device includes HDMI, USB-C, and Ethernet ports. Owl Labs partners with Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP), which provides platform security. This is all powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250.
The Meeting Owl 5 Pro is available for pre-order now for $2,599 / £2,399 with shipping expected in Q1, and details are available from Owl Labs, but the earlier Meeting Owl 3, perhaps better suited to huddle meetings, is still on sale and can be connected directly to a laptop for less than half that price.
Check out our guides to the best conference room cameras, and to the best 4K webcams
