Philips SpeechMike Air Review

[Tom Hamilton]

Philips asked us to test their latest SpeechMike (combination speech recognition microphones, soundcard and USB mouse) which we believe is Philips attempt to combat the only other wireless handheld microphone on the market, the Grundig Digta CordEx, while simultaneously taking on the new Nuance Dictaphone PowerMic II which, in our opinion, has recently taken over the top spot; formally held by the wired Philips SpeechMic Pro. We've been testing the SpeechMike Air for the last few weeks and the following is the short version of our Philips SpeechMike Air Review, which you can view in its entirety via the previous link.

We were definitely impressed by the Philips SpeechMike Air especially for medical use. Our 3 favorite features are:

1. 12 end-user programmable buttons (preprogrammed when purchased from KnowBrainer Inc.).

2. Doubling as a hands-free desktop microphone with a 24 inch range.

3. Includes an external headset microphone jack so that if you need to use the SpeechMike Air in a noisy environment, it is as simple as plugging in your favorite noise canceling headset microphone.

Like most innovative products, the SpeechMike Air is well implemented but somewhat more complicated than your average microphone and although you will probably soon find it available, at the same MAP price, all over the Internet, if you decide to take this microphone for a test drive, we ONLY recommend purchasing the SpeechMike Air, like the Dictaphone PowerMic II, from a Nuance-certified NaturallySpeaking solutions provider because NaturallySpeaking is heavily integrated into the SpeechMike Air. Nuance licensed speech recognition specialists can offer an extra layer of technical support because it's all tied together.

Like nearly everything we sell, we additionally include the following amenities:

1. Exclusive “KnowBrainer” soup to nuts hardcopy color pictorial step-by-step user guide.
2. Thickly padded neoprene zippered headset bag.
3. Besides the usual e-mail and telephone support, KnowBrainer additionally offers immediate answers through our Live Online Support.
4. Our favorite NaturallySpeaking preprogrammed hotkeys which you can optionally import if you just want to get up and running with the most popular NaturallySpeaking preconfigured commands. You will find a list of these commands in our previously mentioned extended review.