Speaker 1: Hey, what's up? My name is Cameron Docherty and this is the Microsoft Modern USB-C Speaker. It's a super portable USB-C connected speaker phone that might be perfect if you're either on the road all the time or looking for a simple upgrade to your work-from-home setup. It comes in this nice, simple clamshell traveling case, which is perfect to toss in a bag and just give it the protection that it needs. The speaker phone itself is quite small dimensionally. It's got a nice kind of oval shape to it and you kind of notice right off the bat that there's no wires hanging out of it. Underneath this small cover, you'll see a USB-C cable, which you can pull out and unravel around. It's quite a nice little way to store it, especially if you're on the go, and it makes for a nice clean look either when it is away or when it is out. When it's out, you can see that it's a couple feet long. It's nothing too crazy, but generally I would think this is designed to be connected to a laptop on your desk or, at worst, maybe a desktop that's on the side or underneath your desk. In most cases, it should be fine, but if you've got a device that's really far away from where you want to store this, then make sure you keep that in mind. Looking at the top of the device, we can see a handful of buttons. First we have a Teams button, which is used to bring Teams up on your screen, whether it's closed or whether it's minimized or wherever it may be. The next one is an answer or hang up button. So if someone calls you on Teams, you can use that to answer it directly, and when you're done with your phone call, you can press that to leave the call. We see a volume up, volume down button, which is system-wide sound, so that'll allow you to change volume up and volume down of what you're listening to, whether that's on a conference call or whether that is just some audio that you're listening to. And then finally, a mute button. The mute button works really nicely. It does have both tactile click to it, as well as an audible sound letting you know that it has muted, and a red ring around it just to confirm whether you are in or are not in mute. And like so many of these speakerphones, it works as sort of a mechanical hardware mute, so you're not going to see your mute on Teams or whatever other service you're using. You're not going to see that flip on and off, but this is preventing it from a microphone level, preventing it from sending any inputs. So it works there, but you're just not going to see it on the system if that's what you're expecting. One additional trick is that if you are muted and you just want to say a quick, got it, or something like that, you can actually press and hold, say what you want to say, and when you release, you'll still be on mute. So a nice, small, very minor feature there. I know some things like Zoom will let you use spacebar or something like that to come off mute briefly, so that functions the same from this device, which I thought was a neat little touch. Now in terms of audio, there are two onboard microphones that are omnidirectional, so whether this is in a conference room setting or whether you are around the device at different orientations, it should be able to pick you up wherever you are sitting. In addition to that, the speakers on it are actually pretty darn good, so let's try a quick audio test and see how they sound. My impression of the sound is that it's pretty solid. It's got a good low end, which makes the people talking on the other end of a conference call sound very full and like it's a high-quality sort of sound. It's better than most sound you're going to get out of just a laptop, so that's why I think this is perfect for being a work-from-home warrior that's using your laptop's audio. This could be a perfect little upgrade to just give you a little bit of extra sound. Now the one thing I would say is they call this the USB-C speaker. I would call it the USB-C speaker phone, because the audio is not so good that it's worth investing the money if you wanted to use this just as a speaker. So if you were looking for just good quality sound to listen to music, listen to podcasts, whatever you may do, look elsewhere. But if you want something that has the speaker phone functionality, this is something that is a consideration. So now let's try the actual audio here in terms of a speaker phone from your voice perspective to see what that would sound like. Alright, so this is the audio coming from the Microsoft Modern Speaker. So you can hear that it's overall a pretty respectable microphone, but it definitely sounds like so many other conference phone devices. So when you're dealing with an omni-directional microphone, it's going to pick up the audio and it's going to do a decent job at that, but it's also not going to be great because it's constantly trying to pick up sound from all over the room. So just to demo that, I'm going to stand up real quick. And you can hear as I move about the room, I'll keep talking about the same volume. You probably can't see me in the frame at all, but if you were in a conference setting and you had multiple people in the room, or if you needed to move around at some point, you can be moving away from the device within a reasonable range and still have the audio work nicely. So overall, I think this is a pretty simple and solid product. It looks like the original price is around $100. I was able to get it for $75 and at the time of filming, it was available on Amazon for the same price. So at $75, I think this is a really compelling buy, especially when you compare it to some of the competitors from the folks like Jabra, Poly, which used to be Polycom, or Anker. I've used some devices from a couple of those. My highest level of experience is definitely with the Jabra devices, and this one comes in cheaper than the ones I've used and sounds just as good, if not better. So I think it's a really interesting one. I think if you're using Teams in particular, this has a lot of value because it's going to integrate perfectly. You know there's not going to be any problems. It's a Microsoft product dealing with Microsoft software. If you're somebody that uses other softwares, you might want to make sure you get something that has a bit more of guaranteed universal compatibility, but I don't think you're going to have any major problems with this if you were to use it with something other than Teams. You would just have this big button that really just goes unused. So overall, I think for $75, this is a really solid speakerphone, and it's really good for two people. You've got the people that are at home that are using their laptop speakers or using their laptop microphone, and just want to have a little bit of added hearing ability, a little better sound from their colleagues, and then want to be heard a little bit better because the microphone here will be a little bit better than what you're getting on your onboard device. So if you're that work-from-home person that wants a slight upgrade, it's perfect. The other one is a traveler. This is small enough that I could fit it in my pocket. This is easily going to fit into any bag or purse when you're on the go, and having the ability to have a small conference phone like this, either just for yourself if you pop into a conference room or an office to take a call, or if you are with a team setting where you can throw this down in the middle of the table for anybody there to be able to join a conversation, have a broader team call with people that are not on site, this can be a perfect device for just that. So let me know down in the comments what you guys think. Do you have a device like this that you've been using that you really like? Let me know because I'm curious what else is out there that I might not be familiar with. So while you're down there, remember that as always, the likes are free and the subs don't cost anything either. I will see you guys in the next one.