eMeet M1 bluetooth conference speaker initial review
The eMeet M1 is a device that looks remarkably like an Amazon Echo Dot with seven microphones and visual indicators of which direction it’s picking up sound from. It also features a very interesting app that’s still in development for Android we’ll discuss a bit about.
eMeet M1 in use
In my testing I discovered it does a great job of filtering out background noise, although it doesn’t magically make a mumbler standing in front of an air conditioning unit sound clear. Yes, I tested.
It works well as a conference phone, but it does not particularly shine as a music device. It’s got the right acoustics to both pick up and play people talking, but switch over to anything else and you’re going to feel a little like there’s some audio processing that’s not quite working. I think it’s a DSP issue and potentially correctable with a firmware update as I ran some test tones through and it seems to have the range, there’s just something off.
Listening to Get Lucky I would say that it’s pulling the vocals out an enhancing them and treating the music as noise. Then again, I may be undercaffeinated at the moment. Reading through their documentation they’re using a built-in VoiceIA algorithm that claims to do noise suppression, echo cancellation, and vocal boosting, which I believe is the oddness I’m hearing trying to play me some Daft Punk.
That said, it works extremely well at picking up audio boasting six directional microphones (and one additional presumably omnidirectional,) capable of picking people up at 26 feet. I was able to test to about 11 feet from the unit and it sounded good enough to be understood without trouble, however anything over about 11 feet and my options are outdoors and fairly noisy (not a fair test.)
The eMeet M1 has a 5200mAh battery and can charge your phone at 1A in a pinch. While output is limited to 1A charging, input is 2A so charge times from dead are 3-4 hours max assuming you have a 2A charger. Talk time is not listed correctly on their specs page, but it appears 12 hours on Bluetooth, 20 hours plugged into a computer, 1 month standby time. Charger not included, although a MicroUSB cable is.
It comes with a carrying case that’s just enough for the eMeet M1 and cables and nothing extraneous. Overall it’s a pretty nice presentation.
eMeet M1 software
I’m not sure what’s the status of the iOS software, but the Android side is in beta at the moment and is a little buggy. You don’t need the software to use the phone as a conference phone out of the box, but it brings some interesting features to the table such as audio recording, transcriptions of meeting, and fairly quick text translations between multiple languages.
On my device the audio doesn’t seem to record when on a phone call. Knowing how call recording is a major pain for software like Boldbeast Call Recorder my guess is this is just something they’re going to have to work on to get working with everything. It’s most likely an Android thing which has at least 7 different methods required to record on an unrooted device.
It’s really not fair reviewing beta software badly, and there are a lot of features I expect they’re working on, so let’s leave it at the call recording, transcription are great ideas. I bet they work on most people’s phones, or will soon enough.
The real(ish) time translation to what people are saying on the phone seems useful, although it appears to be server-side translation so if you’re on a device that can’t call and cell data at the same time you’ll probably need to be connected to WiFi to enjoy that.
Does it work with…
Yes. It’s a standard Bluetooth mic/speaker. They probably all work with your product you’re about to ask about. The only thing you might have to do is tell Skype or whatever to use it over your laptop’s built in microphone.
Would Paul buy the eMeet M1?
Paul doesn’t make conference calls. That said, I am going to be using it so that my 4yo and 2yo can call the grandparents.
IT/Business Paul’s only concern is the software isn’t finalized, the audio transcription/translation processing looks like it is being done on a third party server which could lead to some serious privacy concerns (if you use that feature).
I only advise people to purchase what is complete and what we can test and assume that anything else is not part of the deal. As a speakerphone, this is great. As Android software, it needs work and is an incomplete product.
So yes, for the hardware I would say purchase it. Potential software features and potential concerns is too broad to bother going into.
You can get the eMeet M1 Wireless Conference Speaker at Amazon currently for $179.99.
