Jabra Speak2 55 - Turn Your WFH Office Into a Conference Room

So you're all ready to fire up your Work From Home setup. You're a hybrid worker now. Your computer at home is just as good as the one in your office. You've got great internet and a nice camera for online meetings.

Only one thing you really miss.

Actual conversations.

And I don't mean meetings. Nothing ever got done in a meeting. It's those casual conversations in passing where the real ideas and information are exchanged. That's where you learn genuinely useful stuff and also where you can subtly push a few of your humble opinions and ideas into a few people's heads.

But how are you supposed to have that kind of a chat online? Maybe you'll have to head back into the office more often than you thought. Unless...

The new Jabra Speak2 range of portable speakerphones has been designed with exactly that purpose in mind. Jabra has recognised when a group of people talk, they don't necessarily queue up to do it one at a time in an orderly fashion.

In fact, expecially when it comes to creative, problem-solving situations, there's often a lot to be gained with an unfiltered flood of ideas coming from all directions. Ever tried doing that online? Good luck.

The Speak2 55 features Jabra's all-new "full duplex audio" engineering solution - the idea is to allow everyone to be heard, even when overlapping with each other. This means if your hybrid office is a mobile one, you can set up an impromptu meeting room wherever you go.

The Speak2 55's four beamforming mics do a fine job of picking up speech from any direction, making it a great solution for one of you or a whole group. 

Conversely, the noise cancelling tech is crazy-good. As an experiment, I used the Speak2 55 to record some voice tracks for a podcast the other night, using the speakerphone to monitor the music bed I was speaking over. When I played back what I recorded I couldn't believe how clean it was - no spill from the music track whatsoever. This means you'll never encounter that weird echo-back you often run into when using the built-in speakers and mics on many laptops. Nice work, Jabra.

Setup couldn't be much easier, the Speak2 55 is the dictionary definition of plug-and-play. In fact, the USB cable (which conveniently wraps around the lower half of the speakerphone when not in use) comes complete with it's own USB-C to USB-A adapter, so it'll slot in pretty much anywhere.

While I'm not usually a fan of LED lighting effects on accessories, in this case I have to concede the circular display around the edge of the speaker mesh is genuinely useful - not just letting you know when the Speak2 55 is on or off, but also showing volume and battery levels and other important info at a glance - like when you have the mic on mute. These touch controls are arranged clearly around the edge of the speaker - although not backlit so they are a little hard to make out in a dimly-lit room.

There is a companion app for both MacOS and Windows and while this is useful for firmware updates, I was able to use the Speak2 55 pretty much to its full capacity just by plugging it in.

It connects via bluetooth too - this means you can even use it with your phone - you don't even need to take a laptop with you. This seems like a business traveller's dream - especially given it comes in its own attractive, soft travel pouch and has a very generous 12-hour battery life.

If you're connected to your phone and your computer simultaneously, the computer will take priority when it comes to notifications and other audio but yes, you can stream your favourite playlist from your phone while you're putting the final touches on that PowerPoint presentation.

What I wasn't prepared for is how great the sound quality is from this speaker - just as a speaker. Often laptop speakers are pretty underpowered and can sound quite tinny. Alternatively, if you've set up your home office with a desktop - perhaps even a convenient, space-saving mini-PC, you probably don't have any speakers at all and you might be relying on headphones or earbuds to monitor any audio.

The Speak2 55 instantly solves this issue and it actually sounds really good - I'm not just talking about for online meetings, I mean for anything; streaming music, watching video - even gaming. I'm not suggesting this a viable replacement for a decent set of gaming speakers but if you don't already have a mic and speakers for your WFH setup, you can certainly save some cash by using this as an all-in-one solution.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Jabra Speak2 55.