The world has changed and our ways of working seem to be here to stay. Everyone has adapted to online meetings and it seems there are some that think the experience can be unsatisfying most of the time. There are some things we can do to minimise distractions during online meetings.
Having a good quality headset goes a long way to make online meetings more bearable. And Poly put a lot of their experience and know how into a new series of headsets, the Poly Voyager Focus 2 to help solve this problem.
The Poly Voyager Focus 2 is a small and light (185 g) wireless headset. The Poly Voyager Focus 2 UC comes with a Bluetooth adapter BT700 to connect to your PC. It can also connect directly to a phone for use on voice calls and other messaging apps.
The headset can pair with up to eight devices and be connected to two devices at the same time. This means I was able to listen to music from my laptop while still being able to answer voice calls on my phone.
Being wireless it also gives you a bit of freedom to move around during online meetings, with a range of up to 50 m between your PC (with the BT700 adapter) and the headset.
Poly added an active noise cancellation feature to the Poly Voyager Focus 2. It uses four microphones to capture background noise and cancel it. This feature can be set to off, low and high. It definitely works as advertised and you are in for some quiet times when active noise cancellation is turned on.
It has a dynamic EQ optimised for PC wideband voice telephony up to 7 kHz or for multimedia 20 Hz to 20 kHz, giving you crystal clear sound in both online meetings and music playback. The noise cancelling microphone boom also ensures people on the other side of your call don’t get to hear the background office noise.
The microphone is very smart. You can position the headset without checking sides. You then rotate the microphone down into place and the headset will automatically identify LEFT/RIGHT based on which direction you moved the microphone. If you rotate it up the call will be muted automatically.
The Poly Voyager Focus 2 has smart sensors that will automatically answer calls when you put the headset on and mute the call when taking it off. If you are listening to music then the sensors will pause and resume the music as needed.
The headsets have touch controls so you can simply answer/end calls and change volume up or down by touching the cups. It also has a LED online indicator that will show colleagues when you are on a call. The BT700 has a LED as well that changes to red when you go mute by removing the headset or moving the microphone
Installing the Poly Lens Desktop app will give you a few more settings to configure the Poly Voyager Focus 2 to your liking. It is also how you check for firmware upgrades.
The 560 mAh battery can be charged through USB, or in my case a charge stand that can be bought separately. A full battery can give you up to 19 hours of talk time. Turn on the noise cancellation feature and you can have up to 16 hours of talk time before you need to recharge it.
While testing it I got used to having it on the charge stand while not in use so I never ran into an empty battery.
The small cups are very comfortable and the material is soft and comfortable, without causing your ears to get hot after extended use.
If your job put you in a position where conference calls are something you have to go through during your normal work, I suggest you take a serious look at these headsets.
