Website:
zoom.us
It’s not
often that I am really, really impressed with a product. This is one of those times.
Ease of
Use
Zoom.us
required a small download from their website to get started. The only slightly
unfortunate thing is that the product requires a login using credentials from
either Facebook or Google, for reasons that I can only speculate about. This is
only necessary if you want to initiate a meeting. To join someone else’s
meeting you only need to be given an invitation via email (which is incredibly
easy for the host to provide), download, launch the application, type your name
and you are in the meeting.
Joining
via iPad is a matter of inputting the room id that is provided at the top of
the screen by the host via an obvious button called “Join Video Meeting”. It is
possible to initiate a meeting from the iPad, which some other products aren’t
able to do.
There
aren’t many bells and or whistles to complicate things. There’s no way to
change quality settings, but from what I found it’s not needed as I’ll go into
below.
Quality
of Product
The
video image quality was excellent. Even full screen on a 23” monitor, the image
from my iPad looked very good with just some pixelization but not enough to
notice unless you are looking for it. Video from the desktop on the iPad was
excellent as well. Latency between iPad and desktop was as close to non-existent
as I’ve seen in a software product. Audio to video sync was virtually spot on.
For this test, I pointed the camera at my online radio’s webpage (that I was
also streaming at the same time). The web page has a meter that lights up as
people speak in sync with the audio. I took my iPad into another room so I
could hear the radio and see the meter through it. Sync was incredibly close,
by far closer than any other product.
Screen/application
sharing was easy and fast. I shared a web page from the desktop and going from
page to page appeared very fast on the iPad. Sharing over the web and having to
wait for a PowerPoint slide (or whatever) to change while the presenter either
has to wait until you see it or just starts talking before you see the
information is a little painful to me. No problem with that here.
Zoom.us also handles fast motion very effectively (tested via the hand waving technique).
Zoom.us also handles fast motion very effectively (tested via the hand waving technique).
Picture of me goofing off. Note clean interface on both the desktop and iPad.
Pricing
Up to 15
participants in a meeting, free. A friend told me that Zoom.us is in beta, but
I didn’t see that officially. The TOS on their website though has a heading
labeled “CHARGES” so I assume it won’t be free forever, especially with
language like “Zoom may change prices at any time without prior notice,
including changing from a free service to a paid service…”. This is
disappointing for a cheapskate like me and I wonder what the end price will be
and conditions they will set. Hopefully, it will still be free for maybe three
or four participants and charge for more than that. Even the Skype model of
charging for multipoint would be acceptable for me so I can still use the free
model.
I would
highly recommend this product. When/if pricing is involved I reserve the right
change my mind.
Bryan
www.hellarddesign.com
Bryan
www.hellarddesign.com