AVerMedia has an impressive history of making quality cameras for both business and content creation. One of their latest, the PA511D, better known as the AVerMedia Mingle Bar, is a camera built for video conferencing. It’s a complete system of camera, microphone and speaker, with connectivity solutions for whatever your setup needs.
In the box, you’ll get the AVerMedia Mingle Bar, the quick start guide, a USB-C cable and a 12V power adapter. The Mingle Bar comes in at just under a foot wide. The camera sports a Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor and can get up to 4K/30fps and 1080/60fps when connected to a USB 3.0 port (make sure you are using the correct cable and port for the job). It offers a 4x digital zoom and as wide as a 124-degree field of view, which is incredibly wide for any webcam. It also has a privacy shutter for the lens, that looks a little bit like an eyelid.
On the back, you have connections for HDMI, USB-A, USB-C, ethernet, an aux port for an external microphone and the power connector. It also has two Kensington security slots to secure the camera in place to keep it from being stolen, which, after testing it out, I get it. On either side of the camera, you have the audio portion of the AVerMedia Mingle Bar, including dual omnidirectional microphones that can be picked up from up to 4 metres away and 5-watt speakers.
“The AVerMedia Mingle Bar also comes complete with 5W speakers, so this can be an all-in-one solution…”
The AVerMedia Mingle Bar interfaces with the company’s software, AVerMedia Connect. On the software, you can preview the camera and make a number of adjustments, including a pretty deep colour adjustment menu with filters and all of the other usual settings, like brightness, hue, saturation and so on. They have great exposure settings, allowing for auto exposure, face exposure, manual exposure (complete with additional gain) and a High Dynamic Range (HDR) Setting.
In an environment with mixed lighting, I wouldn’t recommend the HDR setting but would suggest manual exposure to get things just right. Also in the settings is an anti-flicker setting with 50 and 60Hz options, the ability to flip the image vertically or horizontally and an AI noise reduction setting.
The audio on the AVerMedia Mingle Bar is interesting when compared to other webcams for web conferencing. The dual omnidirectional microphones work to pick up sound from the people speaking, no matter where they are in the room and also for specific noise cancellation, including acoustic echo cancellation for the clearest possible sound.
The AVerMedia Mingle Bar also comes complete with 5W speakers, so this can be an all-in-one solution, not needing to look at the camera but listening from the computer or laptop. Its full duplex technology allows people speaking from both ends to overlap each other when speaking without interrupting the signal going one way or another.
“The camera on the AVerMedia Mingle Bar is typical of their recent offerings in that they are of higher quality than most any other webcam on the market.”
The overall audio quality is fine. For someone just sitting at a desk, it’s going to be better than the mic and speakers on your laptop, but you aren’t going to get what you are paying for. The AVerMedia Mingle Bar is meant to be a conference room device to really harness the device’s full potential.
The camera on the AVerMedia Mingle Bar is typical of their recent offerings in that they are of higher quality than most any other webcam on the market. If you chop the microphone/speaker ends off of the Mingle Bar and look just at the camera, it looks sort of similar to AVerMedia’s PW510, a camera that I cannot find any evidence was ever even released.
The large sensor gives a great picture quality, and guess what? It has smart cam features. Using gesture controls, you can activate auto framing, so if you happen to be the only person in the conference room, you aren’t going to be a small part of the overall image you are sending out. It will frame you up beautifully. Should another person join you, the camera will make sure they are included in the shot, too, automatically.
The AVerMedia Mingle Bar will run you $599.99 USD. It is a great price for a business video conferencing device. The video quality is also a step above most other business solutions, be it for regular conferences or presentations. But do not make the mistake of picking this up as a content creator, thinking you are getting AVerMedia’s next generation of webcam. It is too big for your setup, and the audio features that factor into the overall cost are not useful for you. Now, if they do release a “camera only” version of this at a price point of about $200 cheaper, they may have a serious contender on their hands.
