Owl Labs Meeting Owl 3 Review

Owl Labs Meeting Owl 3 Review

Optics & Room Coverage 8.5/10

A 360° fisheye camera outputs 1080p HD, with a panoramic strip across the top of the frame and up to three close-ups below. The video pickup radius is about 3 m.

Faces look clear within that radius, which suits a table for six to eight. Beyond it, detail drops quickly, and anyone seated past it looks soft and grainy.

The resolution is now behind newer 4K Owls and most video bars. For a small, well-lit room it is still enough for typical 720p or 1080p meeting streams.

The field of view is a full 360°, which is the whole point of the design. Everyone around the table appears face-on rather than in profile.

That inclusiveness is what remote attendees notice. They can see reactions from people on both sides of the table, not just whoever faces the screen.

The trade-off is placement. The Owl must sit in the middle of the table and about 1 m from the display, and room for laptops and coffee cups gets tighter.

• View 360°
• Room Size Small (video radius 3 m)
• Pan/Tilt No mechanical PTZ
• Res. 1080p

AI Speaker Tracking & Framing 8.7/10

There is no optical zoom. The Owl Intelligence System crops into the 360° image digitally to frame whoever is speaking.

In practice the camera switches to the speaker in about a second and holds that shot while they talk. It can show up to three people at once in the lower part of the frame.

You can pin a person or lock the camera to an area in the app, which helps when someone presents from a fixed spot.

• Tracking Yes
• Gallery Panoramic strip plus up to…

Room Audio Pickup & Output 10.0/10

The Meeting Owl 3 uses 8 omnidirectional beamforming mics, 5.5 m pickup.

Full-duplex audio is listed, so both ends can talk without the usual half-duplex clipping. It is specified for Small (video radius 3 m). When I commission a bar, I walk the table first and check whether the built-in array can cover the seats you actually have.

• Duplex Yes

OS Platform & Ecosystem 9.5/10

The Owl is certified for Microsoft Teams and works with Zoom, Google Meet, Webex and virtually any platform that accepts a USB camera and mic.

The Meeting Owl app and the Nest portal handle updates, settings and fleet management. Pairing a second Owl or an Owl Bar extends coverage for larger rooms.

If your rooms are larger than about 5 m across, look at a front-of-room video bar such as the Jabra PanaCast 50 instead, or pair two Owls.

• Mgmt Yes (Nest portal)

Deployment & I/O 6.6/10

A USB-C cable connects the Owl to the host laptop or room PC, and an external power supply plugs into the wall. Setup takes a few minutes with the Meeting Owl app.

In the box you get a 2 m USB-C cable and a 3.8 m power cord. Tripod and ceiling mounting are options for rooms without a centre table.

Eight omnidirectional beamforming microphones cover an 18 ft (5.5 m) radius, and three speakers play remote voices at up to 83 dB SPL.

• Mounting Table centre
• HDMI No HDMI output to a display
• PoE No

Full Specifications

Product Details