The News: Poly recently announced its USB-based Poly Studio R30 Video Bar targeted at small office spaces or huddle rooms with three to five participants that are typically wider than deep settings. Read the full Press Release from Poly here.

Poly Raises the Bar with its new Poly Studio R30 Video Bar Targeted at Small Meeting Spaces

Analyst Take: The Poly Studio R30 is a new mid-range addition to the USB-based video bar segment which includes the Poly Studio P15 (lower-end) and the Poly Studio USB (higher-end). The Poly Studio R30 is targeted at huddle rooms or spaces with three to five participants compared to the Poly Studio P15 targeting one to two users and the Poly Studio USB targeting medium spaces which are slightly larger.

The Poly Studio R30 is priced at $799 and can be mounted on the wall or clamped to a personal computer. The product has a 120-degree field of view and a microphone pick-up of 15 feet. The Poly Studio R30 also comes with Poly DirectorAI which incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning for framing and tracking users and automatic transitions. This means DirectorAI will provide more equitable meetings for users by giving them their individual space in the meeting.

Prior-Pandemic

Prior to the pandemic, organizations were moving into new buildings or upgrading their existing campuses with new amenities to attract younger generations that wanted more open spaces, coupled with more environmentally conscious designs. Although smaller meeting spaces have always been around in corporate campuses, they gained greater attention when firms were upgrading their campuses, which meant there was less privacy due to the open office environment. To alleviate some of the disruptions in the open office environment, organizations redesigned the smaller meeting spaces so that employees could have a similar experience to a bohemian coffeehouse, intended to provide a more relaxed atmosphere, but which also fostered more creativity. Fast forward, and when the pandemic struck a few years later with everyone quickly shifting to remove work, this turned corporate campuses into ghost towns significantly increasing technology categories such headsets, web cameras, collaboration gear, and notebooks, etc.

Post-Pandemic: Hybrid Work and Inclusivity

Now that pandemic has waned, many organizations are either embracing a full on return to the workplace and/or are asking employees to come back one to two days a week. That means there will be a mixture of distributed teams needing even richer collaboration experiences — whether at home or the corporate campus. Ultimately, the pandemic taught us that hybrid work is here to stay requiring leaders to ensure all employees whether they are remote or in the office have a safe and equitable experience. Thus, the endpoint devices at the desktop and huddle rooms need to make the experience much richer which is what the Poly Studio R30 video bar is offering.

Wrapping it up, the Poly Studio R30 is perfect fit for huddle rooms or spaces serving three to five occupants and need a solution that has better video, audio and intelligence providing a more equitable experience for everyone. I believe that we’ll be seeing more organizations embracing hybrid work and asking employees to come back to the office one to two days in the future, which will continue to drive robust growth of higher quality video bars at the desktop and huddle rooms in the future.

Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.