Polycom RealPresence Group Series vs. Polycom Trio

While expensive, you can't compare the cost and time of people flying all over the globe to have in-person meetings when 95% of the time they can be done between a RealPresense.... even more so in today's post-pandemic world. You just get such a better video and audio experience than a Teams meeting. We were also able to connect our RealPresence to Teams so that you can join a meeting and choose whether to join it from your desk with Teams or from a conference room with a Real Presence. This solved 2 issues for us in that there's now a simple link on the Real Presence to join a meeting instead of making a direct phone call to another RP device, and for meetings with 1 or 2 people from a site, they can now join this meeting from their desk and free up the conference room for a large meeting.

Incentivized

The Polycom Trio is a great tool for huddle rooms that don't rely as much on a responsive screen. There are better room controllers out there, but if you just need a good speaker and microphone combo in the traditional conference phone style then the Polycom trio is a good option.

Incentivized

• Polycom are still a high-end videoconferencing manufacturer and it shows. The build quality is very high, with quality components provided. In the current environment where 'huddle-room' systems are taking over and are a mix of solutions from multiple manufacturers, you can tell the difference when you open the box and get dedicated hardware that is designed to work as a single package.
• The audio quality is very good. May sound like an odd thing to consider audio quality before video quality, but if the sound is poor, it doesn't matter how good the video is - you wont stay in the meeting.
• Great video from the dedicated cameras. The image quality is high and the camera is silent when it moves to presets.

Incentivized

• Lync/Skype Integration - The Trio can be used in an existing organization that regularly uses Skype for Business, it makes the user experience seamless.
• Phone Conferences - If you have the PBX Licenses installed, the phone can be used to dial out and receive phone calls inbound. Sound Clarity is very good.
• Video Conference - Fair video quality for using existing Skype for Business infrastructure.

Incentivized

• Install was a bit fast with a tech that was not the best, this lead to a round of support issues, fixes, and training.
• Much of the internal learning was on our own with trial and error, and the Outlook integration was not really 100% (abandoned that as users could not understand and remember the shortcomings when meetings changed. Moved to reservation-less.
• Stability was better after a major upgrade(only 1 year old) and a better Polycom tech.

Incentivized

• It was frustrating to not be able to share a user's desktop in a Skype for Business meeting using the People+Content.
• From a design perspective, I don't like how the USB port is on the side. Now that we're running in Skype USB optimized mode, we are unable to hide the USB that connects to the SmartDock.
• I wish that it had a secondary option in addition to POE to provide power to the unit. Running one powered usb cable from the Smartdock to the trio would be ideal.

Incentivized

We love the product and is totally integrated in our company.

Incentivized

The directory is slightly dated and unless you have a Skype for Business integration license, dialing users into a call is difficult. The Group Series Remote whilst minimalistic is actually more difficult to use than the previous HDX remote. Having to recharge the battery on the group series remote is both annoying and difficult as if you do not keep on top of it, you will be faced with a situation where the remote is not working and then have to try and find another one. Not ideal if you need to start a video call (assuming auto join has not been enabled in the admin portal).

Incentivized

A well known product that most users are familiar with and simple enough for new users to learn and understand.

Incentivized

I can't say I've needed support more than a handful of times. One was for trying to connect a Polycom Conference phone and a Real Presence together. After a few months, we came to the conclusion it wasn't possible, that was the only frustrating occurance with support. Any other time if we needed to RMA a device, it was very smooth.

Incentivized

I have never contacted support for this product.

Incentivized

Polycom Group Series was very good for what it used to do for its time, however newer technology that provides a more simpler method to configure, join and host video conference meetings has come in the form of Zoom and [Microsoft] Teams which is hard to go back from and therefore means the Polycom codecs of yesteryear are rapidly becoming phased out. The Polycom Trio is a more forward thinking technology which can be configured for the likes of Teams, Zoom and Zoom Phone and with the Poly Studio X range of codecs, this is ultimately the way forward.

Incentivized

Polycom Trio provides better conference call quality, picks up voice from corners of the room with additional mics for large room, better widescreen display, and it was mostly the user satisfaction which made us choose Polycom Trio.

• We have been able to increase productivity by spending less time navigating through a phone directory to call someone, and to find out if and when they are available.
• We can determine if someone is available through the notifications on the phone screen itself or use the instant messaging function, which are both linked to our Outlook calendars.
• We are able to more quickly connect our students to resources and other professionals on campus by being able to anticipate who is available to meet with them or speak with them over the phone, before even having to make a call.

Incentivized

• Since we were really looking for a device that could provide Skype for Business Online services (web conferencing/video/audio/local screen presenting) at a reasonable price point, I cannot say that this device meets all of our needs. The device has to be at least 99.99% reliable. This is about 60% there. Audio is definitely in the 99% range. Local screen presenting is probably around 75%. Video and web conferencing is about 70%. To comfortably deploy a device in the wild you really need to have 99% reliability. It has to work when its needed. I can understand an occasional hiccup, but one every other day is a too many. If you are replacing older SoundStations with an IP or Skype based audio solution, then this is it.

Incentivized