Logitech Unified Communications Kit Review

I’d like to take the opportunity to thank both Logitech & Brands2Life (@bransd2life) who’ve sent me a treasure trove of Logitech Unified Comms Kit to Review, coincidentally, as I’m about to do another Lync deployment! Thanks guys.

I said I’d review the items which include the rather expensive Logitech Mono H820e headset, the C930e Webcam & the Mono H650e USB headset.

So firstly, let’s get our eyeballs around the kit shall we?

The high end H820e wireless with docking station and desktop charging on the right.

The first thing I noticed when picking up either headset, is the build quality of Logitech’s stuff over recent years. Look, I’ve tested & used almost every type of UC kit, from Polycom, Yealink, Mitel, and Logitech was never intending on competing in the UC kit space initially from what I gather.

Their low end consumer headsets for gamers and the like, were fine, but were for the mass market. I’d always been dubious of using Logitech stuff for business. Their keyboards & mice have always been superb, still a little cheap feeling, but good. So my surprise was met in equal measure of my joy when I picked these headsets up. They felt heavy (but not overly so) and extremely well thought out & well made (still made in China though, no bad thing, I guess!)

Nice touches include decent padding on the headbands & ear pieces, non-invasive mic booms and little touches such as in line controls for volume & mute, and decent carry pouches for these indeed, expensive bits of kit. It clearly raises their general ‘feel’ of professional grade and suits a business user, they’ve definitely got the first impression right!

I was very excited to try them, and see if there’s any noticeable difference between a cheap Maplin’s style 9.99 headset, or these £100+ ones. I mean, they can’t be that good, can they?

I’ve recorded sound samples using each one, not the most scientific study granted, which you can watch on the YouTube video below, which incudes an entire review of these bits of equipment but generally, there’s a huge difference in sound quality on both headsets. Especially in comparison with a cheap headset or hands free kit ear piece which I see a lot of people use.

Bass is rich & deep, and there’s clearly noise cancelling technology in place as they are able to detail the tiniest of sounds. We’re clearly in another ballpark here. Not once, using them for 2 hour conference calls did quality ever drop, and nor did (which is a pet peeve of mine) sound quality degrade when playing around with the USB cable (on the wired H650e headset)

The usability of the H820e is superb. The charging unit and docking station is assuredly heavy, meaning you can quickly grab on and off the headset. I love the flexible rubber hose-style mic booms on both these products, and even a nice touch is the LED indicator on the back of the boom, to show your in a call. Now, what I did find disappointing is this LED indicator blushes red, only. Considering this is Lync certified equipment, why on earth they’ve not chosen to use multi-colour LEDs as an inbuilt presence indicator I don’t know. This would of been a really great feature. A bit like the UC Light Overall though, its a great bit of kit. Not sure about the cost, you’d struggle to fit out a medium sized team at this price, even if it does look cool how everyone’s ear glows terminator-red when on call!

The camera is superb, picture quality is next level HD, with a very nice heavy mount which clamped to a variety of surfaces and monitors I tried it with. Nice touch to have the built in Mic too. Software install is easy, with Windows 7 and above detecting the appropriate driver automatically. It’s not the best looker in my opinion, and if I do have to have something fixed to my monitor, staring me in the face every day, I’d like it to look nicer, but there’s no doubt it works well. See some stills taken with it below.