Kandao Meeting Pro review: A highly versatile camera ideal for most meeting scenarios

Kandao may not have a high profile in the UK video conferencing (VC) arena, but its Meeting Pro camera looks set to change this perception. Sporting dual 4K fisheye lenses, this portable camera provides a 360° panoramic field of view (FoV), employs eight microphones for speaker tracking and offers a choice of five presentation views.

Even better, its embedded Android 10 OS means it can function as a fully independent conferencing system, with network and internet access provided by its 10/100 Ethernet port and built-in Wi-Fi 5. You can also connect it directly to a host PC over its USB port and use any UVC-compliant conferencing app.

Using standalone mode, we connected network and HDMI cables, waited 30 seconds for the Android OS to load and received a smart user interface on our HD monitor. You can use the Bluetooth remote handset to navigate the menus, but we found it easier to connect a USB dongle to the camera and use a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The App Store page presents icons for installing VC apps and Kandao offers 12 options, including Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, Zoom, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, Google Meet and Skype. The camera's 64GB of RAM allows you to load as many as you want, and in most cases, you just click on their icon to install them.

Adding the Skype and Teams apps requires more work as these are downloaded from the Google Play store. The camera must first be registered and requires you to log in to your Google account and enter the unique 19-digit Google Services Framework ID it generates. The lack of documentation doesn't help, but registration is a one-time process and we could then install the Teams and Skype apps.

Each installed app is assigned a home page quick-launch icon, and we had no problems using the Teams, Skype and Zoom apps to set up meetings and accept invitations from other users. Our meeting participants found the camera's top 1080p resolution produced a clean, sharp image with a good colour balance and, if required, you can use the handset to reduce quality to 720p.

A handset button is provided for swapping between the five display modes during meetings, or you can use the mode button on the camera. These comprise a horizontally split screen with two 180° views, an upper panoramic view with two active participants below, another with four active participants, a patrol mode that combines the active speaker with a slow pan of the entire room and a presentation mode that shows the active speaker.

Auto-tracking impresses: the camera took a couple of seconds to zoom in on the active speaker and had no difficulty following them as they moved around the meeting room. The mic array has a good range of up to 5.5 metres and the downward-firing 5W speaker was loud enough to cover our 24m2 meeting room, although the lack of decent bass makes it quite shrill at the highest volume settings.

The latest firmware adds AirPlay and Miracast screen mirroring. Using an iPad on the same network, we presented its screen to the camera's monitor using the iOS Control Centre menu. Point a web browser at the camera's IP address from a PC and you can mirror its entire screen or selected content to the camera's monitor just as easily.

In host mode, the camera worked fine with the Teams and Skype apps on our Windows PC. You don't need to do anything as the camera swaps to host mode when it senses a USB connection and returns to standalone mode when the cable is removed.

The embedded Android OS makes the Kandao Meeting Pro a highly versatile camera that's ideal for a wide range of meeting scenarios. Improved documentation would ease installation, but it delivers good image quality and fast speaker tracking while its range of views ensures everyone gets in the picture.

Kandao Meeting Pro Specifications