SMBs invested in Microsoft Teams and looking to improve their employees’ meeting room experience will find the Epos Expand Vision 5 Bundle a worthy contender. This well-specified room bar solution can swap between Android-powered Microsoft Teams Rooms and bring your own device (BYOD) modes in seconds, while the Expand Control touchscreen tablet provides easy meeting management.

The Vision 5 video bar provides a solid foundation with its combination of a Sony 4K UHD camera and wide 110° horizontal field of view (FoV), dual speakers and quad beamforming MEMS microphones. It employs digital pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) functions for automated framing and speaker tracking, while noise reduction is handled by its integral Epos AI feature.

An embedded 8-core Qualcomm 800-series Snapdragon CPU plus 4GB of memory look after the certified Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android app. Also certified for Teams Rooms, the Expand Control tablet sports a large 10.1in colour LCD touchscreen and uses its embedded 6-core ARM CPU and 4GB of memory to run the Android OS.

Setup is a smooth process, but you should first decide whether you want to run your Epos kit as a locally managed system or add it to the free Epos Manager on-premises or cloud service. Larger businesses will prefer Epos Manager as it provides company-wide status views of all their registered Epos devices, along with central management, firmware updates and extensive device and room usage analytics.

The Expand Control tablet requires a network connection with a power over Ethernet (PoE) source. From its onscreen wizard, we used the unique code it generated to assign it to our Microsoft 365 account, where it appeared in our Teams admin interface as a touch console.

After networking the Vision 5 over Ethernet or Wi-Fi 5, you follow the same registration process. Once it appears as a new Teams Rooms on Android device, you pair it with the tablet using the 6-digit code it presents on the camera’s screen. Our Teams admin console showed both devices as online and confirmed that the touch console was paired, after which the tablet shifted all Teams meeting controls from the camera’s screen to its own display.

We had no problems creating and joining Teams meetings using the tablet’s touchscreen, and remote participants thought that the camera’s video quality was excellent. The image is sharply focused and we noted that Epos has improved its backlight compensation feature.

Tracking worked well, with the camera taking no more than a couple of seconds to locate the active speaker and smoothly follow them as they moved around the meeting room. The twin speakers were found wanting in the bass department, but voices are clear and we found a volume level of 80% was enough to fill our 24m² meeting room.

During the pairing process all camera controls are ported over to the tablet. The intelligent framing feature can be enabled or disabled, and in manual mode the camera places a video view over its Teams interface so you can use a combination of 4x digital zoom and mechanical pan/tilt to move it to the required position.

A smart feature is the video bar’s ability to swap effortlessly between Teams and USB host modes. The process is automatic as the Vision 5 swapped to host mode when it sensed a USB connection and returned to Teams automatically when we removed the cable.

The Expand Vision 5 Bundle is a great choice for SMBs seeking an affordable Microsoft Teams Rooms solution with seamless BYOD support. Video and audio quality is good, speaker tracking is smooth and the Control tablet makes meeting room management a breeze.

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Biamp recently made a splash in the video bar market with its stunningly good Parlé VBC 2500, but its main focus has always been the professional audio-visual (AV) space. It has a solution for every room size, with the MRB-M-X400-T kit on review providing all the audio components for a medium-sized meeting room with up to 11 participants.

The Biamp kit comprises a TesiraFORTÉ X 400 digital signal processor (DSP) unit, a Tesira AMP-450BP speaker amplifier, a Parlé TTM-X beam tracking table microphone with expansion box, two Desono C-IC6 ceiling speakers and plenty of plenum-rated Cat5e cabling to connect it all together. Biamp has its own range of VC cameras and supplied us with the Vidi 250, which has a 120° field of view (FoV) and digital pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) functions.

A full room installation will need to be done by professional fitters, but we had a basic configuration created in the lab in an hour. A handy feature is that power only needs to be supplied to the DSP unit as its four gigabit ports deliver 30W PoE+ services over Cat5e cables to all other components. The low–profile speakers will fit in most drop ceiling spaces and their 130° coverage is designed to accommodate low ceilings. The AMP-450BP amplifier unit can be concealed in the ceiling using the speaker’s “backpack” brackets, and it has four RJ-45 ports so you can add two more speakers.

There’s no need to worry about sound configuration, as Biamp’s Launch process does it all for you. Press the Launch button on the DSP unit and the system measures the meeting room’s acoustics by emitting a series of eerie sounds that reminded us of the 1956 Forbidden Planet sci-fi movie.

The DSP analyses the audio feedback, configures all the components to your environment and presents a Launch report card in its local web interface. The bottom line is that you may need help fitting the kit but you won’t need an audio expert to fine-tune it.

For the full audio/visual meeting experience the simplest solution is to connect the DSP’s USB port to a room PC with a Full HD monitor where the mic and speakers appear as speakerphone devices. Add the Vidi 250 camera to the host as a separate USB device and it will use its integral auto-framing functions.

The camera reacts quickly with delays of no more than three seconds as it tracked speakers moving around our meeting room. Video quality is great, with the camera presenting a sharply focused image and efficient backlight compensation.

The microphone’s beam tracking technology uses four 90° zones to track voices and allow speakers to roam freely but still be heard clearly. In practice, this works extremely well, and the speakers also receive our accolades for their exceptional sound quality, natural-sounding voices and warm bass.

Another scenario is to connect the kit to a UC compute device, and for this Biamp provided Lenovo’s ThinkSmart Core+Control product. Just plug in the DSP and camera to its USB ports, add an external monitor, connect the Control tablet and you’re ready to go.

It runs Windows 10 IoT and we used its setup wizard to select Teams operations (Skype for Business is also supported). After logging into our Microsoft 365 account it appeared as a Teams Rooms on Windows device and we could use the tablet to swiftly schedule and join meetings.

The Biamp MRB-M-X400-T is a great choice for businesses that want to transform their meeting room into a professional conferencing space. All the components are surprisingly easy to deploy, Biamp’s Launch feature provides slick automated room configuration and the Vidi camera delivers great video quality.

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Zyxel has been steadily building up an extensive range of 5G NR mobile routers, and the FWA510 is one of its most versatile yet. This desktop unit takes everything we liked in Zyxel’s NR5101 and claims a doubling in Wi-Fi 6 performance, adds essential 2.5GbE multi-gigabit network ports and teams up its four embedded omnidirectional antennas with an option to add four TS9 external aerials for improved reception.

The FWA510 is slightly larger than the NR5101, and the status LEDs have been moved from the front of the unit to the sloping upper surface. These will prove useful as they alert you if an SMS message has been received, use a multicolored LED to show cellular signal strength and provide visual cues for internet connectivity and wireless status.

The rear interface panel has also been redesigned and now has a faster USB-A port for sharing storage devices. The second multi-gig port can function as a LAN or WAN interface and, if you choose the latter, it takes precedence over the cellular connection, which drops back to standby mode for automatic failover services.

The FWA510 is easy to install, with its local web interface provides a wizard to get you up and running. Our unit was supplied with a Vodafone 5G SIM snuggling in the 3FF slot in the base, which provided instant cellular internet access.

The web interface presents a dashboard showing the status of local and internet connections, cellular status and details of wireless networks. A default SSID is provided for both radios and, although it uses the weaker WPA2 encryption, you can easily swap to the more secure WPA3.

Four SSIDs are supported, with three guest wireless networks already configured. These can be modified to suit, with the Guest WiFi tickbox enabling L2 isolation so users on these SSIDs only get internet access.

General network security is good. An integral firewall offers three protection levels that you choose using a slider bar, and you can add custom firewall rules that comprise protocols and port numbers, plus access control list (ACL) entries to control connections for source and destination IP addresses and services.

So far, so good, but we came across an issue with the router’s wireless services. Zyxel claims it delivers up to 2,400Mbits/sec on the 5GHz radio (hence the AX3600 rating), but to achieve this it must support the high-speed 160MHz channels.

At present, the web console’s wireless settings for the 5GHz radio offer a 20/40/80MHz option, so our test clients could only connect at 1.2Gbits/sec. Consequently, copies of a 25GB test file between a Windows 11 Pro workstation equipped with a TP-Link Archer TXE75E Wi-Fi 6/6E adapter and a server on our 10GbE LAN maxed out at 108MB/sec at close range, dropping to 86MB/sec with the router ten meters away in the next room – only marginally faster than the AX1800-rated NR5101.

The FWA510 can be cloud-managed from Zyxel’s Nebula Control Center (NCC), and we added it to our account by scanning its QR code from an iPad running the Nebula iOS app. A status widget can be added to the NCC site dashboard, and selecting it provides more hardware details along with views of WAN and cellular status, 24-hour traffic graphs and information about wired and wireless clients.

Unlike Zyxel’s fully compliant Nebula wireless APs, the FWA510 doesn’t broadcast the cloud SSIDs as these must be configured from its own web interface. Upgrade to an NCC Pro Pack license and the remote configurator tool can load this directly from the NCC portal and will also increase traffic monitoring to 30 days.

Zyxel’s FWA510 and its 5G NR support will appeal to home workers in rural areas and remote offices that demand always-on internet access. It’s easy to use and can be cloud-monitored but, unless a firmware upgrade materializes, its Wi-Fi 6 services are no faster than the NR5101 it’s replacing.

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Best known for its excellent security appliances and endpoint protection services, Sophos makes its first foray into Wi-Fi 6E territory with the AP6 420E access point. It teams up the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and Wi-Fi 6E 6GHz bands, supports 5GHz and 6GHz high-speed 160MHz channels and can be standalone or cloud managed.

The AP6 420E presents six spatial streams – two each for 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz, with claimed top speeds for each radio of 600Mbits/sec, 2,400Mbits/sec and 2,400Mbits/sec respectively. For a tri-band AP it’s pleasingly compact and yet manages to squeeze in two omnidirectional aerials for each radio and a 2.5GbE multi-gig network port that requires a PoE+ power source.

Small businesses that only want one AP will find it easy to deploy as it defaults to standalone operations. Security is tight: its browser interface insists you change the admin password and gets you started with a preconfigured SSID that presents all three radios and applies a unique key using the AP’s serial number.

There’s a lot to play with here: you can create up to eight SSIDs for each radio and select WPA2 or the mandatory WPA3 encryption for Wi-Fi 6E networks. All radios support opportunistic wireless encryption (OWE), which allows you to present a safe open public network that encrypts all endpoint traffic but doesn’t require authentication.

Other features include client isolation, walled gardens and captive portals with custom landing pages, URL redirects and authentication using AP-generated daily, weekly or monthly passwords, vouchers, and Facebook and Google logins. Traffic shaping is extensive as different upload and download limits can be applied to each radio, selected SSIDs or their associated clients. The AP also supports SNMP v1/2/3 monitoring and can run packet capture sessions and save their output as Pcap files.

Sophos delivered good results in our real-world performance tests where we used a Dell Windows 11 Pro workstation with a TP-Link Archer TXE75E Wi-Fi 6/6E PCI-E adapter. With the 160MHz channels enabled on the 6GHz radio, large file copies between the workstation and a Windows server on our 10GbE LAN averaged 210MB/sec at close range, dropping to 183MB/sec with the AP moved ten meters away and into an adjoining room.

The cloud management option will appeal to businesses invested in Sophos as all APs and wireless networks are managed from the same Sophos Central web portal. Onboarding isn’t as smart as other wireless vendors that provide mobile apps and QR code scanning, as you enter the AP’s serial number or bulk-provision up to 30 at a time using a CSV file.

The Sophos Central portal has been refreshed, with all the main menu options moved to the top for easier access. Selecting the wireless page presents a dashboard with status charts for all APs, alerts and the number of connected devices. The usage insights chart shows traffic categories for all clients, but this isn’t currently supported for any AP6 model – and neither are rogue AP detection and roaming assist for sticky clients.

All other features present in standalone mode are available from the portal, however, so you can create the same number of SSIDs on all radios each with their own security settings. For easier fleet management, the portal also allows you to create different sites with associated maps and floor plans, with each assigned a set of APs.

The AP6 420E is comparatively expensive and a number of features for AP6 devices are yet to be implemented in the Sophos Central portal. That said, it delivers good overall performance and is a natural choice for businesses that already rely on Sophos for their network security.

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Workstation technology is the pinnacle of desktop PC power, and this month we’re testing a computer that showcases some of the latest high-performance components. Not only is the Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada our first look at AMD’s latest Ryzen Threadripper, back after a hiatus, but also Nvidia’s Ada generation graphics, and it boasts a bevy of PCI-E 5 NVMe storage as well.

First, that processor. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X is top of the resurgent range, offering 64 cores running at a base 3.2GHz but with a boost up to 5.1GHz. Scan has chosen Corsair H150i Elite Capellix RGB liquid cooling to eke the most out of this processor. The 360mm version has been installed on the front of the chassis, with three 120mm fans providing plenty of heat dissipation.

With the Ryzen Threadripper supporting quad-channel memory, Scan naturally populates all four DIMM sockets of the Asus Pro WS TRX50 Sage WiFi motherboard. These are 32GB 4,800MHz Samsung ECC Registered DDR5 modules, for a total of 128GB. You would need to replace all of them if you wanted more memory up to the motherboard’s 1TB maximum, but 128GB should be enough for the lifetime of this system.

No expense spared

Another top-level component is the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada graphics, which uses Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture, a 4nm design that takes professional GPU performance to the next level and is used in the incredibly potent GeForce RTX 4090 consumer graphics card. The RTX 6000 Ada packs 18,176 CUDA cores, a considerable upgrade on the 10,752 cores of the A6000 it replaces. Both cards have 48GB of GDDR6 memory, but the Ada’s memory is faster (2,500MHz versus 2,000MHz) so bandwidth has increased from 768GB/sec to 960GB/sec. The GPU clock is also up to 2,505MHz on boost, compared to 1,800MHz, so this is a seriously fast 3D graphics accelerator.

Scan has spared no expense when it comes to storage, either. The boot drive is a single 2TB Corsair MP700 NVMe M.2 device. This takes advantage of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series’ support for PCI-E 5. Running CrystalDiskMark 8, it delivered 11,492MB/sec reading and 11,773MB/sec writing, which are phenomenal levels of throughput. As if this wasn’t enough, there’s an 8TB array consisting of four more of the same drive in a RAID0 configuration, installed in a Hyper M.2 X16 expansion card that sits in one of the motherboard’s x16 PCI-E 5 slots. This array delivered mind-blowing 34,186MB/sec reading and 42,176MB/sec writing. That’s not a misprint – you’re getting 30 to 40GB/sec throughput. This will make editing even 8K video relatively painless, for example.

Touch of style

This plethora of potent components has been housed in a sizeable Fractal Design North chassis. The slats down the front make this look more like a stylish freestanding radiator than a PC, and it’s packed with features. There are two mounts for 2.5in drives, and two more for 3.5in or 2.5in units. None are used as all of Scan’s storage is NVMe-based. The power supply is a 1,000W Corsair RM1000X 80 Plus Gold unit, which should be well within its comfort zone despite the power-hungry core components. Even under full load, this isn’t a noisy computer.

The Asus motherboard offers both 10GbE and 2.5GbE LAN on the backplane, plus a built-in Wi-Fi 7 2x2 radio that can operate at up to 2.8Gbits/sec. There are three PCI-E 5 slots, but the two x16 ones are taken by the graphics and RAID storage array adapter, while the third operates in x8 mode. There’s also an x16 PCI-E 4 slot with a second that operates in x4 mode. The board contains three M.2 storage slots, with two operating at PCI-E 5 x4 speed (one taken by the boot drive), plus a third with PCI-E 4 x4 performance. The motherboard also has hardware and software support for Asus IPMI remote management expansion cards. However, there are only two 20Gbits/sec USB-C ports – one on the backplane and one on the top of the chassis at the front. The rest are Type-A ports of lesser speeds.

Blasted with speed

We were expecting top performance from the new Threadripper, but we weren’t quite ready for just how fast this system is. An overall score in the PC Pro benchmarks of 954 is way ahead of anything we’ve tested before. Most of this is provided by the incredible 1,224 in the multitasking test, which is no surprise with 64 cores available. But the video result of 892 is phenomenal as well. Only the image editing score of 267 has been beaten before. This is a mostly single-threaded test, and there are CPUs with faster boost core frequencies.

If you want a true demonstration of how incredible this system is, however, look no further than the Maxon Cinebench R23 multithreaded result of 107,189. Putting this in perspective, the fastest 64-core Threadripper Pro 5995WX workstation we’ve tested – the Armari Magnetar MC64TP – only managed 76,330. The single-threaded result of 1,728 shows the improvement, too, as the Magnetar managed 1,492, although CPUs with lower cores and higher frequencies such as the Ryzen 7000 series or recent Intel Core chips do better in this test.

Further underlining these abilities, the Blender Gooseberry render took only 94.6 seconds using the CPU, the first time we’ve seen a processor complete this frame processing task in less than two minutes. On GPU (using CUDA) it took 69.2 seconds, much less time than any other professional card we’ve tested. The LuxMark 3.1 score of 26,426 is similarly high, showing just how much GPU compute power the Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada has on offer.

Tour de force

This GPU power translates into incredible 3D modelling capabilities. The standout result in SPECviewperf 2020 is an astonishing 1,235 with the snx-04 viewport, almost twice the fastest scores we’ve seen before. The catia-06 result of 208 is also impressive, as is 604 in solidworks-07, showing that CAD and product design capabilities are unparalleled, although the creo-03 score of 76 is surprisingly mediocre. For 3D animation, 295 in 3dsmax-07 and 807 in maya-06 tell their own story.

The Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada is a tour de force. Its 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper blows everything that went before out of the water with multithreaded tasks, and it’s no slouch with single threads, either. The Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada graphics also dominate for viewport acceleration or GPU rendering, and storage throughput is unparalleled. Of course, this workstation is expensive, but you certainly get what you pay for: the best possible workstation performance on the market.

For a few years, it seemed like the regular AMD Ryzen Threadripper was history. After the Pro version arrived, there was no non-Pro 5000 series. But now the vanilla Threadripper is back with the 7000 generation. It’s based on the same Zen 4 core as the Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 series CPUs, manufactured using variants of TSMC’s 5nm fabrication process, but sits between the two in features and price.

Where the Ryzen 7000 series tops out at 16 cores, the Ryzen Threadripper 7000 series offers 24-, 32- and 64-core iterations. The Pro goes from 12 to 96 cores. Further differentiation comes with memory configuration. All three 7000 series ranges support DDR5 memory at up to 5,200MHz, but where the basic Ryzen has a dual-channel controller, the Threadripper’s controller is quad-channel and the Pro’s is eight-channel.

All three ranges now offer PCI Express 5, but the number of lanes available is another point of difference. The basic Ryzen has 28 PCI-E 5 lanes, but the Threadripper has 48, plus 24 PCI-E 4 lanes, and the Pro has 128 PCI-E 5 lanes. The greater number of lanes will mean that faster storage devices such as NVMe M.2 drives can be attached, faster networking devices can be used, and more graphics cards can be installed.

Since we last had non-Pro Threadrippers, AMD’s Zen core technology has moved on apace. Both the previous 3000 series and new 7000 series top out at 64 cores, but the 3000 version (3990X) had a base clock of 2.9GHz with 4.3GHz boost, whereas the 7980X as found in this month’s Scan system has a base clock of 3.2GHz with 5.1GHz boost. This will offer significantly better performance with software that favors fewer, faster cores and with applications that can use as many cores as possible. With AMD’s Precision Boost 2, you’ll get as many cores as your cooling and motherboard power delivery can handle to run at maximum frequency, although some will be flagged as the most capable after manufacturer testing. Putting this further in perspective, the 32-core AMD Threadripper 2990WX only had a base clock of 3GHz and a boost of 4.2GHz, so the 7980X is a huge leap forward.

As such, this Zen 4-based Threadripper represents another significant update for AMD. Intel has been posing a challenge to the Ryzen 7000 series with its 13th generation Raptor Lake chips, but its Sapphire Rapids Xeon workstation processors have only arrived recently and max out at 56 cores and a 4.8GHz boost frequency. The Threadripper undercuts it in price while the Threadripper Pro now goes up to 96 cores.

With the return of the non-Pro Ryzen Threadripper, there’s a more affordable route once again if you want more than 16 cores in your workstation for the best possible multithreaded performance.

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