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Speakerphones: ANKER PowerConf S500 vs. EMEET OfficeCore M3 -- DEMO & REVIEW
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Jun 22, 2024
So you want a speakerphone to have with you at home, in the office, even on the road. Your goal: For you to sound better and, of course, for everyone else on the Zoom call, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, or FaceTime call to also sound better. But which one? Tech expert Dave Taylor compares two top contenders, the ANKER PowerConf S500 and the EMEET OfficeCore M3 to find out which is a better option. Including live demos to learn which has better noise reduction too... Check them out on Amazon: EMEET OfficeCore M3: https://amzn.to/3M1HiXe ANKER PowerConf S500: https://amzn.to/42a8nNe Visit Dave's Q&A Web site at: https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ #emeet #anker #speakerphone #officecore #powerconf #bluetooth #zoom #teams #meet #askdavetaylor
View Video Transcript
0:00
Anchor versus Emeet speaker phones
0:02
Which one's a better choice for you? Let's check them out. Dave Taylor here, and I'm checking out two different speaker phones
0:15
First one is the Emeat Office Core M3. And the second one is the Anchor PowerConf S500
0:24
They're both really slick devices. They're in about the same price range
0:29
They have similar functionality and specs, but I really wanted to test them both out
0:34
to find out which one I would prefer if I was going to buy one. So let's start with some specs and information on each one
0:41
and we'll start with the e-meat unit. Now, the e-meat is differentiated by its design
0:46
It's a nice, circular sort of hockey puck design, and it has physical buttons on the front
0:52
and you can see them in this close-up, and there's a bunch of ports and buttons and controls
0:57
on the side, too. One of the things that makes it really cool is on the bottom, there is a hidden dongle
1:05
So this thing will connect with your device via Bluetooth or USBC cable, but you can also just plug in that dongle and you're ready to rock and roll pretty quickly
1:15
So they both also feature AI noise reduction, and we're going to test that
1:20
I'm going to give you demos of these. But the e-meet uses what's known as voice AI, and it has four microphones
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it's full duplex full duplex means you can talk while someone else is talking generally not really
1:34
great for clear communications but it's a really common thing to happen during phone calls has a
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five watt speaker it's zoom certified it has an 18 hour battery and you can daisy chain two of these
1:46
together if you have a big long conference room you can do that pretty easily with their custom
1:50
cable and have it up for 20 people USBC and Bluetooth 5.0 and
1:58
and the dongle for connectivity. And it has an E-Meet Link app
2:03
which you'll want to get on your Mac or PC that will let you do things like update firmware
2:08
and do various custom settings. In terms of dimensions, this is 5.3 inches
2:14
By 5.3 inches, it's round. By 1.4 inches tall and it's 13.8 ounces
2:21
So that is the E-Meet Office Core M3. Now, let's look at the other one
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Oh, and I suppose I should also that it comes with a nice carrying case
2:31
They both have their carrying cases, and in fact, they could be from the same factory
2:35
but this one has a little holder, and in the holder, it includes, if I can pull it out
2:40
it includes a USBC to USBA charging cable and a quick reference document, which is handy
2:49
So that's all very useful. Now, let's jump over to the anchor
2:53
because the anchor is a little different design. So it has four buttons on the front, but when you power it on, then what will happen is that the front surface is actually a touch surface
3:08
So now we have four more buttons, and that's how you manage basic functionality
3:13
And it should pair with my phone soon enough. And so this is the anchor PowerConf S500 Bluetooth speaker
3:25
And its AI noise reduction is called voice radar. And it also has four microphones
3:32
And it's also full duplex. And both of them are Zoom certified to work with Zoom
3:37
This one's also Google Meet certified. It has a 10 watt speaker So it ostensibly louder than this one And you can wirelessly pair two of these Again if you have that big conference table setup you can do this but there no cable needed
3:52
Pretty handy. USBC and Bluetooth 5.0 and on the bottom, surprise, a dongle. So, you know, the functionality
4:02
similarity here between the two is really pretty high. 16 hours of battery life. And this one has the
4:09
anchor work app, which you can get for. for your iPhone or your Android or your Mac or your PC
4:16
And its dimensions are 5 inches by 5 inches by 2 inches
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and it's a smidge heavier at 15 ounces. It also features a soft case
4:25
and it also features a charging cable and instructions and such. So those are our two competitors here
4:33
And so what I want to do is I want to do a couple of demos. The first one is I'm just going to have it play music
4:39
We'll see what that sounds like. And then I'm going to turn them on and use them and you're going to hear what they hear because I'm going to record the audio and I'm going to have it be just in my quiet environment
4:51
And then I have the background noise you would have in a bar and I'm going to use that as a way to test their AI noise reduction system
5:03
It gets pretty annoying. So it's really hard to do a conference call in a bar or
5:10
or in a really noisy environment, but that's also a very realistic setting
5:14
So, let's start with the E-Meat. And so, give me a second to set things up
5:19
and I'll come right back with those demos. We're ready with the E-Meet demo
5:24
So here's the unit and it's paired to my phone. So let's start with some music
5:32
And it's listenable. There's not a lot of bass here, but if you are like in a hotel room or something
5:40
Hang on. It's kind of annoying techno, but if you're in a hotel room and you just want to have some music in the background or you want to use it while you're watching TV on your laptop or something, then this is entirely functional. It's not really an audio file-level audio reproduction, but it's functional, and that's enough for most environments. Of course, with voice, it's tuned for voice, so it's going to sound really good because voice tends to be a lot of that mid-range, so you don't need a lot of base because that's generally how people's
6:10
voices work. So now I'm going to switch over and I'm going to go into my voice recording app and then
6:18
while I'm recording it's the audio source from this. So now you're hearing the voice pickup from the
6:27
e-meat. And one of the things to notice is that there's a directional light on the outer ring. The ring lights up to
6:34
give you different cues. For example, if I mute it, It's really easy to see it's muted
6:43
I didn't bother talking while it's muted because no big surprise. You're not going to hear me
6:48
So let me move this a little further away from this noise source
6:53
So now we're going to turn on that bar noise and I'm going to continue to talk as if I was
7:00
just in this bar and I needed to do a conference call real quick and I really wanted to use
7:05
the eating. So what you're hearing now is it's noise reduction capabilities
7:10
And I'll let you decide for yourself, is it doing a good job
7:16
We're back to not having that noisy bar. And honestly, it's gonna sound better
7:20
but you've got that full demo. So now let me switch and do all the same things
7:26
with the anchor and we can hear the difference in what that sounds like We have the anchor set up now So let start with a music demo and I going to just use that same techno track
7:38
And I'm going to tell you the truth, it sounds better. It has much more of a full frequency response
7:49
but how often you're going to be using it as a music speaker versus a speaker phone
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is something that's up for debate. But let me pause that. and now let's go back to that voice recording and again I'm going to start the recording
8:03
so now you're hearing my voice through the anchor and let's do the mute so we can see the
8:12
different what happens is the entire lower portion goes red I don't know why I'm talking
8:22
while I'm muted it doesn't really work that way so that's the voice system and you're
8:27
hearing my voice through this device. Now let's turn on that background noise. And now I'm talking
8:35
through all the noise at the bar. Sorry boss. This is the only environment I can find where there's
8:41
Wi-Fi and it's not great noise reduction or is it. You're listening. What do you think? Now
8:47
we're back to it being quiet again. So now you've heard the voice noise reduction system on both
8:56
in a realistic environment and you're still hearing my voice as recorded by the anchor
9:02
So what you're seeing on this is that it's responding to my voice
9:07
but there's no directionality to it like there is on the e-meat
9:11
Is that a big deal? I don't know. Now, let me jump back on camera
9:15
We can talk about conclusions in which one wins this competition. So just a moment
9:20
Maybe it's not fair for me to be simulating a noisy bar because I don't know that you'd use one of these in that environment
9:26
But you could also be at a trade show. You could be in a client front foyer
9:32
There's a lot of environments where you might have it be noisy. You might be in a hotel room with your kids watching TV
9:37
and you're still having to talk to the boss. So those are important situations to be aware of
9:44
And to my hearing, I thought that the e-meat did a significantly better job
9:49
of getting rid of that background bar noise. It did slightly clip my voice
9:54
but otherwise it was much easier to understand what I was saying
9:58
And it was much easier for me to say noise in the background. I don't know what you're talking about
10:03
Although really your boss is going to be like, yeah, I can still kind of hear that
10:07
Sorry. But there's a lot of different things to consider here. One of which is that the anchor definitely wins with the better sounding speaker
10:17
If you're also going to use this as a music speaker, I think this one actually sounds clearly better in that regard
10:23
but the e-meat has a longer battery, two to four hours longer on a charge
10:30
And in terms of app portability, again, we go back to the anchor
10:34
I really like that their apps available on your Android or iPhone
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Very convenient, right? Not every time you need to have a computer, even for Zoom, even for Google, you know
10:46
Hangouts, Google Meet, whatever they call it nowadays. And of course, both of these will work for any voice system
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So you could use these with FaceTime, you can use them with Skype, you can use them with Microsoft Teams
10:59
They're going to work fine because they're just audio devices with input and output
11:04
So really straightforward to work with. From a design perspective, I think the touchscreen's pretty cool, but I really like the full light-up ring on the e-meat
11:14
And I like the physical buttons So it just feels like there a little less to go wrong there And I think that pretty important And one other thing I point out is that the anchor is really slick
11:27
but it is missing one plug that Emeat added, which I think is really handy
11:33
is the Emeat has a headphone jack. So you could use it ostensibly with headphones or earbuds
11:40
So what the other person's saying, you hear quietly, but you're using this as a better microphone pickup
11:47
than maybe what's on your computer or on your phone or just to give you a little bit more flexibility
11:53
So that's another thing where I think the e-meat wins out. Size-wise, they're basically the same
12:00
In terms of daisy chaining two of them, then I think the anchor wins out on that
12:05
because you don't need to buy a special cable to do so
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like you do with the e-meat. But I wonder how many people actually use two
12:14
rather than having one in the middle of a conference room and having people just raise their voices
12:19
when it's really loud. So we do need to talk about the price
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and I do need to pick the winner and it's a significant difference in price
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even though they're very similar in functionality. But at this point, I'm going to pause for a moment
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and ask you to subscribe to my channel. Go ahead and click on that subscribe button
12:35
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12:39
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12:48
cool now let's start with this this is the anchor power conf S 500 speaker phone
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and it is two hundred and nineteen dollars and ninety nine cents at amazon.com
13:02
so two hundred and nineteen dollars keep that in mind this is the e-meat office core
13:08
m3 speaker phone and it's a hundred and ninety nine dollars and ninety nine cents
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at Amazon.com currently minus $40. They're running a promo which drops it down to $15999 at Amazon.com
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So we have a significant difference in price. So this is $15999 and this is $21999 on Amazon.com as I make this recording
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So the real winner here I think is absolutely the E-Meat because it's so much less expensive
13:43
It could do with a little better speaker in terms of playing music
13:48
but I don't know that you're going to use this as a music speaker. And if you did, honestly, for that savings of what, $70
13:55
you can buy a separate speaker tuned specifically for music. So I think that this wins in a lot of ways
14:02
There's some real features to the anchor that make it really cool, but their pricing is maybe a little bit too high by comparison
14:11
Even when there's not the discount, it's still $1.99 versus $2.19. It's still $20, right
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So worth considering. Both of these are really functional choices. Both of them have really a ton of experience making really good conference and speaker phones
14:27
Neither of them is going to be really a terrible choice for you. But for me, if I had to choose one that I'm going to be putting in my computer bag or my suitcase when I'm on the road and need to be able to be on big Zoom calls or something similar, I think I would edge out and have the e-mead
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M3. That's all I got. I'm going to go back to my techno. So I'll catch you in my next video
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