Taking a Closer Look at Neat & Crestron Conferencing Platforms

Elevate your collaboration experience with Neat and Crestron, two providers of market leading conferencing solutions. To help you choose the ideal solution for your business’s conferencing needs, we’ve broken down the similarities and differences, and provided our recommendations so that you can make an informed decision.

Neat Conferencing Solutions

Neat stands as a prominent provider of cutting-edge video conferencing solutions that enrich the remote collaboration experience. Their array of products caters to both Zoom and Microsoft Teams users running Android, seamlessly integrating with these widely-used platforms. Among Neat’s noteworthy offerings is the Neat Bar, an elegantly designed sound bar equipped with 5 microphones and a camera boasting a wide 120-degree horizontal field of view.

Another notable product, the Neat Pad, is a user-friendly touchscreen device that allows users to control meeting room displays and facilitate collaborative experiences. Neat’s boundary feature enables users to define virtual meeting spaces, effectively eliminating any distractions from outside this, and ensuring focused discussions. Furthermore, Neat Audio Processing guarantees crystal-clear voices during meetings, avoiding any overlapping dialogue.

Neat is simple to use and compatible with third-party business and collaboration apps like Miro, which allows for easy collaboration and seamless integration. In the back end, Neat offers real-time room analytics so that businesses can optimise their collaboration environments for the highest quality meeting possible.

Crestron Conferencing Solutions

Crestron is at the forefront of intelligent video solutions, offering dynamic and inclusive hybrid collaboration experiences. Their primary focus is on creating an immersive and stress-free environment for both in-room and remote participants.

Crestron offers a modular approach to video conferencing solutions with a wide range of in-house video and audio peripherals and the ability to pair approved third-party devices to enable the best solution for any space. This allows users to change and adapt the technology to support the changing needs as spaces evolve; without the need to retire otherwise useful equipment simply by changing or upgrading the necessary components. This flexibility is driven by Crestron’s Windows-based platform, offering more advanced control and more responsive control surfaces.

To enhance flexibility and convenience, Crestron offers Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) conferencing solutions, allowing users to effortlessly connect their personal devices to the collaboration ecosystem. We’ve covered the transformative effects of Creston in digital workplaces.

Similarities Between Neat and Crestron

There are some clear similarities between these two conferencing platforms. Most notable is their focus on collaboration which in turn enhances the immersive feel of the meeting experience. This is a common focus point we have noticed over the past years as hybrid and remote working has risen in popularity. Conferencing technology has taken great strides since then to level the playing field between remote workers calling in and workers in the physical meeting space. Both Neat and Crestron also offer seamless integration with popular platforms and devices, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, making their solutions accessible to a wide range of users.

So which one should I choose?

What sets Neat apart is its focus on symmetry, and the ability to ensure equal visibility for all meeting participants, whether they are sitting, standing, or moving around the room. Remote attendees can engage more naturally, thanks to Neat Symmetry’s focus on the speaker and capturing facial expressions, fostering free-flowing conversation. If your business has adopted a more hybrid working approach over the past years and a mix of your staff and clients conduct remote meetings, Neat is a highly sophisticated option. Its intuitive audio and video controls, along with its capabilities for external collaborative tools means that it eliminates the clunky process commonly associated with hybrid meetings.

On the other hand, Crestron’s intelligent insights into the health of your conferencing network and its easy-to-use dashboard means that it’s capable of providing detailed data and analytics on the functionality of your meeting room experience. Crestron’s high-level dashboard system also allows for quick resolution of any issues that arise, so that you can maintain consistency during conference calls. If you are a larger organisation juggling many physical conference spaces, we’d recommend Crestron for its consistent network health and agile data analysis, ensuring a reliable experience for your staff, clients and shareholders. Furthermore, Crestron’s modular approach enables uniformity of experience across all spaces, not just those that fit the mould of a fixed form solution.

Both options are market leaders in workplace technology and Engagis is proud to recommend both Crestron and Neat conferencing solutions  to our clients. These brands align with our mission of creating better outcomes for workplaces. If you’d like to learn more about how you can implement more high-end technology solutions like Crestron or Neat, get in touch with us today for a recommendation, or take a more detailed look at the services we offer.