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Tired of having your phone up to your ear or being constrained by earbuds? And what about when there are more people who want to be on the call? Goodness knows the built in "speakerphone" capability of most cellphones is pretty miserable at best. Which is why the Beyerdynamic Phonum Wireless Bluetooth Speaker and speakerphone device is so fantastic. With its excellent sound, sophisticated microphone array and solid build quality, it's a good addition to any office or conference room.
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checks out the Beyerdynamic Phonum and finds it a really useful device. Not only that, but it's a pretty decent speaker for music or podcasts too!
Check it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2FHAaN5
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0:00
Is this the last wireless phone speaker you'll ever buy
0:03
Let's check it out. Dave Taylor here, and you know, your smartphone now can be a speaker phone
0:18
So you can be on the phone, put it on the table, put it on the couch, lay it on your stomach, and be on the phone
0:24
But if you want to do more than have the other person think you're far, far away, or even
0:29
if you want to have it work with multiple people, it's not really that great in experience
0:34
particularly for the people on the other end. Enter this. This is the biodynamic phonem
0:42
It's a wireless Bluetooth speaker designed specifically for voice. It's pretty cool. So
0:48
let me go ahead and turn it on. There's actually a power switch on the side, along with its USBC
0:54
charging plug. And as you can hear, it just told me my battery level. It's handy. It's handy
0:59
and now it's connected to my phone. Now here's the thing. It's actually a Bluetooth speaker
1:05
So I can use it simply to play music, for example. Let's find something that I can play
1:12
Well, let's see. We'll just play a couple seconds of this. And it is a perfectly serviceable speaker
1:21
The audio quality is actually really quite impressive. Maybe you can move forward in the song a bit
1:30
Sounds like the same point. So you can hear it's really a full, rich sound
1:38
pretty much what you'd expect from Bayer Dynamic. And it's doing that using a whole lot of really smart technology
1:46
Now, what they talk about is that this is a downfire speaker. You can see it's a pretty unique design
1:52
So the speaker's pointing down, and then it comes out in all directions
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So this means, of course, you can put it in the center of your conference table, and everyone's going to hear really good quality from the other end of the phone
2:04
But much of the question is what are the people who are calling in here from this
2:10
And the answer is it's pretty remarkably good. It's really decent sound as a microphone
2:16
Now, let's see. It features Bluetooth 4 and USBC You can connect either way So you can connect via USBC to your computer if you want But of course the vast majority of people will be using Bluetooth And they use what they call a Gecko voice tracking system
2:34
And I guess Gecko is a particular chip set that they're using
2:38
But it has three modes. It has fixed or cardioid mode. It has follow or bean forming mode
2:47
And then it also has 360 or omnidirectional mode. Now, by default, it's in beam forming mode or follow mode, and that means that if I talk from this side, then these microphones will turn on
3:00
There's an array of microphones on this device. But instead of me talking about it, I'm going to go ahead and call my own voicemail
3:07
How's that for exciting? But it will give you a sense of how this all works. Oops, that is not, in fact, with the right number
3:15
Let's not call some strange person. Let's rethink that phrase. Let's call my number
3:25
And so now we're going to hear on the speaker, and I can also use volume control
3:31
so I can turn it up. And you can see along here
3:36
the dial actually has all these different buttons and features, and it's all tap sensitive, so super easy to work with
3:43
And then as I go, I can go through different voice modes
3:47
trying desperately to actually complete this call. Meanwhile, if I tap on this, I can actually switch between the modes
3:55
You should be able to see how the lines change on each setting
4:00
So if I do this, it actually is figuring out where my voice is
4:05
and that's the microphone that's enabled. And if I move around, that will actually be different
4:11
And then I can do this, which gives me basically omnidirectional, or yes, all directions
4:17
And then this is the default. So pretty straightforward. And now it's actually calling in
4:26
And let's make this a little louder so you can hear. Please go ahead and leave a message and I'll respond as quickly as I can
4:32
So this is what it sounds like. And the person at the other end, I'm now leaving a voicemail message
4:37
but the person or people at the other end are going to say, you sound really good
4:41
Are you holding your phone up to your ear? It that much of a difference from being like on speakerphone on your regular device So I going to hang up I can do that from the phonem There we go Easy enough and it should automatically switch back to my music If not I can always press play again
5:00
Now, let me say this though, is don't buy this because it's a speaker because in fact it's tuned for
5:08
voice. So the downfire speaker system is 60 to 12,000 hertz. So you're normally
5:17
A normal speaker is going to be like 20 to 20,000 hertz. So this really cuts off a lot of the high end and it's not huge on the base side, but it's not designed to be
5:28
This is really a voice speaker and it's designed for voice. So like I said, the interface is super easy if we go counter, I guess we'll go clockwise
5:38
So there's Bluetooth, volume up, then there's mute. And then if we're on a phone call, there would be connect the call, hang up the
5:47
call and then volume down and then you have the three different modes for the
5:52
microphone and that's it and then on the side you simply have somewhere here you
5:57
go you have a USB for charging and on off and so if I want to turn it off power
6:03
off easy the whole thing is reasonably light it's like a pound or so and you can
6:10
see its size it's pretty big hockey puck but certainly quite portable and it comes
6:15
with a really nice, thick, heavy-duty carrying case. And the carrying case is kind of fun
6:20
because it has a secret compartment. So you open it up and you say
6:24
oh, look, it's designed, it's a little hard to see because it's black on black, but it's basically designed for this speaker
6:31
until you pop the top off and you find that hidden inside
6:36
is a USBC charging cable. So that's pretty handy. It's obviously nice to have it be completely self-contained
6:44
But even if you don't do this, This is a biodynamic product
6:47
This is pretty darn bulletproof. This is a well-made product. It has a great feel to it
6:54
I'm confident that I could just throw this in my backpack and it could come out at the other end of a long international trip
7:01
and be in perfect shape. So this is not some flimsy little piece of plastic
7:06
Really, really well-made. Of course, putting it in the travel case is going to make it last longer
7:11
but you don have to do that if you don want to and you can certainly just leave this on your desk Even if you work at home just leave this on your kitchen table And when you get a call coming in just put it onto here And boom people are going to think you sound great
7:26
And you're going to be able to walk around. You're going to be able to do other stuff while you're on this speaker call
7:31
without having to carry your phone or do this whole thing, which you see people do
7:36
It's a little tedious. Which leads to the question, what's battery life on this
7:41
And battery life is 12 hours on a full charge. That is not bad
7:45
That's 12 hours of being on a phone call. So if you want to have it off and sitting there, it can be sitting for weeks or months
7:51
And then when you finally turn it on, it will tell you the battery charge. So you will know before you hit a crisis because it was at 1%
7:58
But more importantly, it will actually chug along and work for you for long phone calls with clients
8:06
with compatriots in your business, or with family. Maybe this is what you want to give to grandma so that when she sits on the couch and she can just talk to this and she's going to sound a whole lot better
8:18
It's a huge win. So, only thing left to talk about on this and I really like it
8:24
The only thing left to talk about is the price. Now, before we get to the price, I'm going to ask you, yes, you, to go ahead and subscribe to my channel
8:32
Really appreciate when you do that. Cool. Now, this is the Biodynamic Phonem wireless Bluetooth
8:39
speaker and it is $299 at Amazon.com. So that price puts it up there as professional office equipment
8:47
This is not something you buy for fun or for your kid in the dorm room, although this
8:51
work great in the dorms. But it is absolutely worth the money
8:56
If you're fed up with being on phone calls where you're using your phone as a speaker
9:01
phone, it really doesn't work very well. And the people at the other end haven't said anything, but they don't appreciate it and
9:08
they don't enjoy it. and they often don't even understand what you're saying. So this is a very worthwhile upgrade
9:14
Definitely worth checking out. And with that, I'm going to get back to my phone call
9:18
which means I'll catch you in my next video
#Consumer Electronics
#Audio Equipment
#Teleconferencing