EMEET Meeting Capsule – Take Your Online Meetings to the Next Level

The EMEET Meeting Capsule is, without a doubt, one of the coolest work pieces of hardware I’ve ever had the opportunity to use.

This thing not only looks good and has great functionality, but it also has some pretty cool AI brains built into it as well.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one single-use solution for your boardroom, your conference room, or even just working from home, then the EMEET Meeting Capsule is an awesome choice for leveling up your boardroom meetings.

When I say all-in-one, it meant that you no longer need separate devices for the camera, audio output, and microphone. But, of course, you’d still need a computer to power the connection for the calls you’re doing, whether they’re via Google Meet, Zoom, or any of the conference software systems available.

The EMEET Meeting Capsule is a conference room webcam with 360 camera that allows viewers to see the entire room. It has a video resolution of 1080p.

It also features EMEET’s exclusive VoiceIA tech which enables the 8 mics to achieve noise reduction, echo cancellation, human voice strengthening and full duplex. Plus there are five different video modes to choose from.

Overall, a powerful web conferencing device.

The Specs

  • Camera:360° optional fisheye lens
  • Output Resolution:1080P HD Video
  • Microphone:8 omni-directional beamforming Smart Mics
  • Speaker:One built-in speaker for 360° coverage and clear in-room sound
  • Connection:Plug and play connection to host computer via USB-C
  • Compatibility:Works with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Slack, Webex, and many more

What’s in the Box?

  • EMEET Meeting Capsule
  • USB C-A Adapter
  • Safety Guide
  • USB C-C Cable, 3m
  • Power Supply Adapter
  • No. 7 batteries for remote control
  • User Manual
  • Remote control

Stuff I like

  • Won the Red Dot Design Award in 2022
  • Excellent build with high-quality feel
  • Easy to use
  • It has a 360-degree 1080p camera
  • It has an eight-microphone array
  • Does an excellent job of representing people’s voices
  • Four different active modes and one complete privacy mode
  • With indicative LED lights that tell you what’s happening with the unit
  • Comes with a remote control for a couple of extra features
  • Excellent sound quality
  • Doesn’t store any audio or video content

Stuff I like less

  • Picture quality on the 360-degree view is a little bit hit-and-miss in low-light conditions

First Impressions

When I first pulled the EMEET Meeting Capsule out of the box, I thought it looked amazing and I thought it was going do certain things that it didn’t.

I thought it was going to swivel on its base and do all sorts of gymnastics. But actually, it’s a static unit that stays still and uses some pretty intelligent AI in the camera to do all the heavy lifting.

This is actually probably what you’d want, especially in a conference room where you don’t want the camera taking all of the attention or making noises as it moves around.

Overall, it certainly looked like a great unit. It is quite weighty, which gives a really high-quality feel.

What’s in the Box?

In the box, you get everything that you’d need. You’ve got the camera and microphone unit itself, plus the remote control, user manual, and a power adapter.

It also includes a USB C to USB A cable, which is about three meters long. The USB A plug does pop off. So if you want to do a USB C to USB C, then it’s possible.

So, what features of the EMEET Meeting Capsule stand out? Well, it has a 360-degree 1080p camera. This means that the camera can take in the entire room, giving you a long, thin panorama view that shows everyone in the room. Plus the 1080p gives you good quality.

When using this, you’d want the room to be well-lit. You’d want to give it the best chance of representing the room well. If there are dark spots in your room, where no light reaches and that’s okay with you, that’s fine. But if you’re going to put someone in the dark spot, then just play around with it and see how it looks.

The EMEET Meeting Capsule has an eight-microphone array, wherein the microphones are positioned all around the lens of the camera itself.

There’s a 10-watt speaker built into it, which is capable of about 90 dB, but you’d never want to go that high because it will sound terrible. It’s tuned for vocals and doesn’t sound particularly musical but it does an excellent job of representing people’s voices that you’re speaking to over a call.

You can extend the camera with an additional speakerphone if you have a particularly long board table. In the rooms that I’ve tried it in, where I’ve been probably no more than 3 or 4 meters from the unit at the most, it sounded excellent.

But f you do have a much longer board table, then you might want to run a daisy chain cable down to an additional speakerphone. This one will work well with the EMEET M3 speakerphone option.

Different Modes

There are four different active modes and one complete privacy mode on this unit. You can switch between them by pressing a little button on the side of the unit or by using the remote control.

The four different modes that you get are collaboration mode, speech mode, classic mode, spotlight mode, and of course, the privacy mode called InPrivate.

Collaboration Mode

This mode includes a 360-degree view at the bottom of the room. As people are speaking, the AI will single them out, regardless of where they are in the room. They could be sitting at opposite sides of the table, and the collaboration mode on this unit is incredible at creating a unique frame and placing that person into the conference call.

You have to see it to believe it, so make sure that you watch the video above where I demonstrate how this works. The AI is just super.

In a room that we tried it with, we had three speakers in one room speaking to a person externally. As people in the room were speaking, each one of them was given an individual frame in the conference video view, which was dynamically added by the AI.

If one person stops speaking and participating in the conversation, then the AI would drop them out. If someone else just joined, then the AI would move to that person. So not only was it dynamically identifying where the voices were coming from, but it was also creating a really well-framed view of each of those people.

This is a really impressive and incredible feature of the EMEET Capsule. If you’re doing calls, even around a small round table with external parties, then the ability to zero in on people automatically as they talk is absolutely brilliant.

It takes a little while for it to zoom in on people. But once the AI has framed them, it holds them there for a while with the assumption that at some point they’ll talk again. If they stop talking, as I say, then they’ll drop out of the keyframes.

Speech Mode

This mode has a wide-angle top and a 360 panorama bottom. I should say that with both collaboration mode and speech mode, with the remote, you can hide the 360-degree view of the office of the room.

It does feel a little bit weird at first having this full 360 view at the bottom and the view of individual people on top, but you’d eventually get used to it.

Classic Mode

This mode is where the EMEET Meeting Capsul just operates as a wide-angle conference room camera. The AI is deactivated and the picture in classic mode is really good.

So if you don’t want to use AI on the unit, you can just have this on the table in front of everyone and you’d get a really nice view in a forward direction.

The classic mode doesn’t include a 360-degree view, but it really just gives you a wide-angle view. If you prefer this mode, it would be best to put the camera at the end of the conference table to ensure that you get everybody in.

Spotlight Mode

This mode is designed for when you’re having a conference call as an individual. It just gives a nice portrait framing, which just has you in the frame for the call.

This mode is nice if it’s just you in the call as it reduces the amount of extra space around you.

InPrivate Mode

This mode can be activated through a button on the base of the EMEET unit itself or by using the remote.

When you activate the InPrivate mode, both the camera and the microphone shut down. The camera itself faces down into the device so that it isn’t looking anywhere.

LED Lights

On the front of the EMEET Meeting Capsule, there are some indicative LED lights that tell you what’s happening with the unit.

You can adjust the volume and sensitivity using the remote and the five LED lights on the front of the unit will go up and down to indicate the level you’re at.

If you’re in mute mode or privacy mode, then all of the LEDs turn bright red to indicate that you’re in shutdown mode. When you’re in live mode, the LED lights also light up to indicate that you’re live.

These lights look nice and they’re tastefully done. They’re not too bright unlike similar devices from other brands wherein the LED lights are just too bright, which can become uncomfortable for the eyes. The LED lights on the EMEET Meeting Capsule are really well integrated into the unit.

Operating the EMEET Meeting Capsule

You may wonder if you need some software to operate the capsule itself. The answer is no. As soon as you plug it into your PC or Mac, it doesn’t need a driver. You just need to select the microphone, camera, and speaker as the choice for your video call.

If you have a dedicated computer in your conference room, the EMEET will normally remember this. If you’re using video conferencing software that lets you choose the settings for the call, then it would also let you select the EMEET for the mic, camera, and speaker.

To operate the EMEET Meeting Capsule, of course, you’d need a laptop or computer to plug the unit into so you can connect to the call. This makes the unit your microphone, camera, and speaker, but it doesn’t need an operating system to actually dial into your Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, or Teams calls.

Remote Control

The remote control is a key part of using the EMEET Meeting Capsule. You can operate the camera from the base unit, but the only buttons are for switching modes, going to privacy mode, and mute.

The remote has a couple of extra features which are quite handy.

One of them is the volume and mic sensitivity button. You can switch modes from the remote. You can also use the remote to zoom in and out, shut the camera off, shut the microphone off, or go into full privacy mode.

There’s also this one special button that allows you to remove the 360-degree view of the room. So if you’re in collaboration mode, which we discussed earlier, the 360-degree view drops off if you press this button.

When you turn off the 360-degree view, the AI only captures whoever is talking in the room. This can make it a little less confusing for people if they don’t like having that 360-degree view of the whole room.

Customizing the Settings

While you don’t need software to operate the EMEET Meeting Capsule, you can download software called EMEET Link which gives you a lot of control over the unit.

This will tell you what firmware model you’re on, and which video mode you’d want to be using. It also helps with anti-flicker.

Flicker is something that happens when light waves travel at different speeds essentially. For example, If you have a TV in the background that has those lines going up on the video, you can adjust the flicker rate of the camera from 50 hertz to 60 hertz to try and offset those lines or any flicker that you’re getting off a digital screen.

The software also lets you play with zoom. It also lets you adjust the sensitivity of the panoramic framing, as well as the balance, brightness, contrast, sharpness, and saturation. It lets you flip the image and adjust the initial position and angle of the camera.

The software takes what’s already an amazing piece of hardware and takes it to the next level by letting you fine-tune elements that you might not otherwise think to tune.

Even white balance is such an amazing thing to have in a camera like this where you can ensure that everybody looks a nice natural color. It also helps ensure the room doesn’t look orange, pink, or green, as sometimes conference rooms can be, especially if there are colored items that are reflecting off surfaces.

Sound Quality

One that impressed me a lot about the EMEET Meeting Capsule after the AI capabilities and tracking capabilities was the sound quality.

For the first time, on conference calls, the audio both ways sounded amazing. There was no stuttering and dropouts. It doesn’t have that two-voice problem where two people speak and one of them has to stop because the audio gets all stuttery or jittery, or just drops out a bit.

The flow between the person at the other end of the conference call and the people in the conference room felt like a natural conversation to me. That is one of the first times on a video conferencing solution that I’ve ever experienced such great duplex audio on a video conferencing solution.

Privacy

The EMEET Meeting Capsule itself doesn’t store any audio or video content. It doesn’t have any storage capacity.

It only acts as a slave to your computer to capture sound and pictures, and also output sound.

Firmware Updates

It’s quite cool that with the included software, future firmware updates will be available to the EMEET Capsule via the EMEET Link software. This provides some future-proofing opportunities with the unit.

What Video Conferencing Software will this Work With?

Any video conferencing software is compatible with the EMEET Meeting Capsule. That includes Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, GoTo Meeting, Webex, and many others.

As long as you can set the settings on your computer to show the EMEET Meeting Capsule as your audio and video choice for your hardware, then pretty much any piece of software will work naturally with it.

Who’s it Good For?

I think the EMEET Meeting Capsule is good for anyone. You can use it at home, although it’s a rather expensive device just to have at home.

It’s particularly good for boardrooms of anything that seats four people right up to 10 or maybe even up to 15 people. But any boardroom full of 15 people can feel crowded and may be difficult to manage.

In an average meeting of four to six people, the EMEET Meeting Capsule will absolutely shine. If you have multiple meeting rooms, then I would suggest buying one to try and see how it works for you.

Conclusion

After testing the EMEET Meeting Capsul, I think it has to be said that there’s a reason it won the Red Dot Design Award in 2022 and is also probably the capsule video conferencing solution to beat for the price.

The picture quality on the 360-degree view is a little bit hit-and-miss in low-light conditions, but its ability to pick up individual speakers and zero in on them, while providing clarity and a good picture is quite astonishing.

The audio isn’t particularly musical, but it’s perfect for voice. I wouldn’t be using this for smashing out Spotify tunes in the office regardless.

The five different video modes mean it’s infinitely flexible for whatever situation you’re in. The voice AI DSP reduces a lot of external noise, which also means that the duplex conversation between you and your video conference participants is clear and flows like a normal conversation.

If the 360-degree view freaks you out, you have the option to remove it. EMEET has really thought of everything with this capsule.

This is an excellent unit and will be a permanent fixture in the conference room.

Want to read the article, please refer to the link here.