The Cisco Room Series is a video conferencing solution that wakes up when users walk into a meeting room where it is installed and provides theater-quality voice and video, as well as content sharing from personal devices. For small to medium rooms with 6-8 people, there's Cisco Room 55, and for larger rooms of 7-14 people there's Cisco Room Kit (camera and codec in one device) and Cisco Kit Plus (separate codec plus and quad camera). Any of these systems can be run in the cloud or on-premises.
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Cisco Webex DX80 (discontinued)
Score 8.4 out of 10
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The Cisco Webex DX80 was a technology supporting HD video conferencing and digital whiteboarding. It is discontinued, and is superseded by capabilities found in Cisco Desk Pro.
Its a fantastic software and hardware. However from time to time as tech improves, these may require a facelift. Maybe a subscription based model could work better so that it can be used widely instead of purchasing it at a full price. It may not be easily customizable for smaller businesses. It is very useful for large scale organizations that are spread out and need live meetings with a better video support.
Cisco Webex DX80 is best for office conferences or training rooms. Also a good choice for educational purposes like classrooms, training rooms, and healthcare facilities. Not a good choice for auditoriums I say. There are other and better options available in the market for that.
Cisco Room kits, it's a video conferencing system, so it has the, compared to the old systems where you use a webcam in a conference room, we don't see the person, the participants in the room. So with the installation of this kind of devices, it has a speaker fracking. So you can see the person, it clearly captures the speaker, whoever. So let's say that are 15, 20, people are sitting in a room if someone is speaking among them. So this camera is actually focused that person, so we can see that person. And it just shifts from one person to other based on the speaker and the webcam. If you're going back in the old days, like a webcam, using a webcam, it just gives an overview of the room. If someone is speaking, you don't know who is speaking unless you know the voice. So this is much greater. And you have so many other features like digital signage, you can display signage on the, so there's a lot of other features out there. So those are cool features I would say.
Perhaps any downside I might see is not necessarily with this product, it's more interoperability with other products. And I think these are all roadmap items that are being addressed. For instance, when you're in a Cisco meeting, it's not as feature rich as it might be as if you joined from a computer. However, as I said, these seem to be roadmap items which are coming along soon. Things like integration with the text or chat rather in a meeting, and also whiteboard integration.
Lacking fancy features like background blurrying and MS Teams integration ( available on the desk pro device)
During setup the difference between registering the device as either s perdonal or room device wasn't clear untill I wasn't able to perform certain actions such as teansferring a meeting from mobile to dx80. I had to reset and re-register the device in room mode to get it to work as I expected.
By the time we are up for an upgrade, this particular series of products might not even been in the market. The typical product cycle for such products in the market are about 5 years. More importantly, the codec supported by such devices may also change by the time we are up for an upgrade. Even so, getting this system to a level of functionality we require was a frustrating ordeal that I do not look forward to during the next cycle.
With the recent updates to Microsoft Teams interoperability, commitments to enabling more features over WebRTC for better Zoom and Google Meet interoperability, and the enablement of USB Passthrough mode on select models there isn't really any situation where you can't use a Webex Room Kit. Paired with the Touch 10 control panel and the Webex App, the device is also incredibly easy to use.
In the workplace, Cisco Webex DX80 is ideal for group meetings. It's as simple as entering the room, dialing the destination number, and joining the video. It's simple and convenient. It offers an easy-to-use menu and user interface. My own opinion is that Cisco's usability is fantastic and I like it greatly. I encountered no issues.
Cisco has always stood out for the excellent support and documentation on its products, this is one of the reasons why they are so well positioned. The means by which you can create a case and the response times are very good. I especially like the support through the Webex teams.
I give top marks for Cisco Webex DX80 support. We have Cisco Smartnet and I can confirm that they are exceptional in answering and resolving doubts and problems with the device. On the phone, you are quickly answered and one of the Cisco experts solves your problem in your language.
Cisco has and is the only vendor currently doing native MTR integration within the video collaboration space. No other vendor stacks up against Cisco as you are getting all of the value that Cisco provides such as noise cancellation, cinematic meetings, cross view, intelligent framing. The other competitors don't stack up to Cisco from a reliability standpoint and a compatibility standpoint.
The Cisco Webex DX80 is a convenient app that can serve as both a video communications system and an additional display. Having the capacity to communicate via Webex is another significant advantage to have. As time goes on, I am invited to participate in more and more Webex meetings, which is a platform for cooperation that is rather effective.
Not sure about ROI because I get a lot of the, I suppose, investor's side of it all, but we have it integrated with just about everyone in the business as well as having devices everywhere. So to be able to just press a button and ring somebody, it's almost invaluable.
