The Insta360 is better known for its 360-degree handled cameras and is now looking to enter your home or work office with Wave, a speaker phone with an AI-twist.
The Insta360 wave is basically a professional quality speakerphone, such as those you may find in a company contagion room, complete with a 3D row of eight microphones and the option of picking up Hi-Fi 48kHz audio from 16 meters away. Adaptive radiation formation, active acoustic cancellation and automatic reinforcement control are also included to help deliver natural sound without disturbing sound tips.
A touch screen interface allows for rapid control over microphones and volume, and the adaptive radiation formation lets users cut from five pickup patterns, such as Insta360 details such as:
- Omni: 360-degree pickup for group discussions.
- Cardioid: Focused Front recording for online meetings and podcasts.
- Supercardioid: Suppresses ambient clothing even more, perfect for busy offices.
- Figure 8: Catcher in front and back, ideal for two-person interviews.
- Stereo: Wide, natural sound for creative recordings such as ASMR or Music.
But then AI is added to operate the noise reduction features to cut out more than 300 different types of background sounds, according to Insta360, such as keyboard taps and street noise. And “AI-Derverberation” is used to remove cave or remove tones from the desired sound and deliver crispy, real-to-life sound in its place.
Part of the ‘secret sauce’ to the wave is the opportunity to pair it with the Insta360-link 2 Webcam, which effectively creates a full audio-and-video setup that does not require professional installation or a lot of people hanging over a laptop’s webcam.
Sounds smart
What stood out to me are the smart tools that the wave has. It can use AI to transcribe in 99 languages, identify speakers and feel their voices, set up workplace-specific glossaries and meet summaries and tap into Chatgpt and Google Gemini to deliver AI-Chat and Q&A features.
The wrinkle here is that many of these features have to be paid as part of the Pro plan to make the most of them; This costs $ 99.99 annually or $ 17.99 a month in the US.
While meetings can be the target use of the wave, I could also see that it was used as a strong and smart podcasting tool for personal recordings with more people. Given how there seems to be an endless amount of podcasts, with more and more people or organizations entering space, Techradar included, the wave could be a great podcasting tool.
It’s for sale today with prices starting at $ 299.99 / £ 279 / AU $ 519.99. And my colleagues over at Techradar Pro will soon get a review of the wave.
