Logitech SmartDock - Review 2022

In the conference room my reviews team uses for weekly meetings, there'south a laptop, a TV on the wall to display its screen, and a loftier-power webcam for communicating with remote team members. Simply when other groups use the room, they often disconnect the TV, the webcam, or both from the PC. Logitech's SmartDock solves this pesky problem, among others. This tamper-resistant dock has an embedded Microsoft Surface Pro iv tablet running a special version of Skype for Business, called Skype Room System, that makes controlling conference calls and presentations a sure-fire. Information technology's a adept option if you don't need a full-blown (and more expensive) collaboration-and-conferencing display with touch-screen whiteboard capabilities, such as the Microsoft Surface Hub.

Packages and Pricing

You don't buy the SmartDock in a store, but rather through systems integrators such as CDW, Synnex, and Tech Information. (Yous tin can find many more distributors on Logitech's website.) Developed in collaboration with Microsoft, it'southward offered in several packages. The Base package ($1,999 at diverse online retailers), for companies that already have a conferencing webcam, includes just the Logitech SmartDock and a Surface Pro 4 loaded with Skype Room Arrangement (equally well equally with a full re-create of Windows 10 Enterprise). The Modest Meeting Rooms package ($2,399), which is the setup I used for this review, adds a ConferenceCam Connect. The Mid-Size Meeting Rooms package ($2,998) substitutes that webcam with a more than-powerful Logitech Group conferencing webcam and audio system. Finally, the Big Meeting Rooms package ($3,399) adds two extension sound units to accommodate larger briefing room tables. The dock solitary lists for $599, but I at the fourth dimension of writing, I could only find it in the $750 range.

Hardware

The SmartDock is a round, swiveling dock that holds a Cadre i5–based Surface Pro 4 at a comfortable 45-caste angle. The glossy black unit measures 9.iv past 13.two by eight.2 inches (HWD). It'south also fairly heavy, at a piffling over 6 pounds, and that's a plus: You don't want a stand up that's easily tipped over or purloined from your conference room. In general, the device has a simple, bonny, and businesslike appearance.

Logitech SmartDock

I cardinal to understanding the SmartDock is the mode it extends the Surface Pro'south interfaces. The tablet itself only offers 2 connectors (one USB 3.0, one Mini DisplayPort) for peripherals. The tablet'due south Surface Connect port (which normally connects to the power cable) lets the SmartDock extend I/O to include two HDMI ports supporting upward to 1080p60, one HDMI input supporting content sharing up to 1,920 past 1,200 at 60 frames per second (fps), a Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) port, three USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and a Kensington security slot.

SmartDock Connections

Taking the Surface Pro out of the dock is possible, but doing so involves removing most a dozen screws. Chiefly, at that place's no admission to the bodily ports on the dock—instead, Logitech provides cables for everything. That saves you from the headache of other conference room visitors unplugging things, which tin delay your subsequent meetings while you plug in devices once again. As mentioned earlier, I know most this from immediate experience: I tin can't tell you lot how many times I've shown up for our weekly coming together and everything has been disconnected from the freestanding laptop nosotros use.

Setup

The package I received didn't include assembly instructions, but those are readily available online at Logitech's support site. The necessary star-headed Torx screwdriver is included to aid to install the Surface Pro into the dock, which you do by removing four screws that secure the bottom of the base. Doing and then reveals no fewer than eight ports: three HDMI (two out, i in), the 3 USB 3.ane Blazon-A, Ethernet, and power.

Once I took off the covers, plugged in all the cables, and powered up the Surface Pro 4, the software setup launched. The four-footstep process starts by asking y'all to concord to the license terms. Second, you sign in to your Skype for Business account and enter any Substitution server or boosted domains.

Side by side yous can enable two feature settings: hiding meeting names (which can be disquisitional for meetings almost bounty and the like) and automatically sharing the Surface's screen to any plugged-in brandish. Finally, you lot're asked to attach the Surface to the dock; plugging in the dock did the flim-flam, since the Surface was already embedded. A notification told me that the Surface wasn't connected to the Internet. Yous can only connect via Ethernet, which seems a limitation, albeit one based on security and reliability. It could, notwithstanding, be a deal billow if your conference room isn't wired with Ethernet, though that's not likely to be the example for most businesses.

Software

The embedded Surface Pro 4 is preloaded with Windows 10 Enterprise and the Skype for Rooms software. The latter requires Skype for Business, which, as I found when setting up the Surface Hub, is not exactly trivial to configure. It's a proficient idea to read Microsoft'southward support page on setting up Skype Room Systems to learn how to create a device account for the SmartDock. It requires running PowerShell scripts, just as setting up a Surface Hub does. Shops with in-house Information technology support (the intended audience for the product), however, should have no problem.

Skype for Rooms

There are other similarities to the Surface Hub. For example, you invite it to a coming together equally a resources, and its version of Windows isn't associated with an private user's account. The SmartDock doesn't, however, offer some of things in the Hub's custom version of Windows 10, such as the ability to forget the terminal meeting conducted and so that the next grouping in the room doesn't see its details. Like the Hub, it tin find motion in the room, waking upwards and going to sleep as people come and become.

When you first the device, you see a ruby-red bar beyond the top of the screen with a padlock icon, indicating that it's locked for its one part in life. Later on completing setup and connecting via Ethernet, I was able to sign in to my Skype for Business admin business relationship. I saw three big button choices on the screen: New Meeting, Present, and Invite this Room. (If you lot have PBX capability with your Skype for Business organization setup, you lot also run across a Dial Pad button, as shown.) With the New Meeting Push button, I was able to immediately offset a video call with a remote Skype user.

For meetings that have already been scheduled, yous join by simply pressing the tile on the screen with that meeting name. Any video participants will be tiled on the display you attach to the SmartDock, while the control interface will remain on the Surface Pro'due south brandish. The interface lets you share documents such as PowerPoint presentations with the group, and on-site meeting attendees can plug their laptops into the SmartDock'south HDMI cablevision to pass through their screens to the large screen.

All this is well and good for your in-business firm employees who are gear up with Skype for Business accounts, but, thankfully, calculation regular, non-Business concern Skype users is also easy. You tin can too punch in outside attendants via standard phone calls from the dock, as long equally you've signed up for PTSN capability in your Skype for Concern business relationship.

The SmartDock device is by default considered a Presenter, which means you can mute, make presenters, remove, or lock the video of other participants. That terminal one means that the designated participant's screen will be displayed full-screen for everyone else in the meeting.

Logitech SmartDock Interface

The "Invite this room" push simply pops up instructions on how to invite the SmartDock to a meeting in either Skype or your Office 365 Agenda. It's a snap: Just click on the Location box and you lot'll encounter Add Room as an option. Your SmartDock volition be a room pick (helpfully indicating if it's costless at the time of your coming together); click on that and you're good to go. Any scheduled meetings appear on the habitation screen at the time of the meeting. You tin rejoin a coming together that's withal current, and this calendar integration is a dainty option for recurring meetings that require remote folks to dial in.

The Present selection lets you plug in any video source, most likely a computer, using the included HDMI cable, and have its display mirrored on the large meeting room display too as on any remote participants' displays. Y'all can either practice this from the startup carte du jour, or if you lot're already in the heart of a meeting, by going to the Content tab and hitting the HDMI selection. You tin easily plow the presenter display on or off from the SmartDock.

There are a couple of missing capabilities I would like to encounter added to the interface. For case, there are no audio or video configuration options to prepare those devices from the SmartDock'due south principal interface. In testing, my Logitech ConferenceCam wasn't picking up the sound from a remote room participant, but I had no way to set information technology upward in the Skype Room System interface, every bit I could easily in regular Skype. Instead, I had to restart the Surface and log in to the admin account. Other things missing from the standard Skype client are the abilities to share document files or view a remote user's computer desktop. I'd also dear it if the SmartDock could control a presentation shared past a remote user, as the Surface Hub can.

A Smart Dock Indeed

The Logitech SmartDock offers an elegant and clever solution for groups that demand consistency and simplicity in their coming together rooms. I miss a few standard Skype capabilities like screen sharing, and one effect I see for some organizations is that the unit requires yous to utilize Skype for Business, and therefore Office for Business, either hosted as Office 365 or on a local Exchange server. But that shouldn't exist a problem for the larger corporations that are the target audience for the SmartDock.