Your Favorite SpeechMike Goes Wireless
The Philips® SpeechMike Premium has been loosed from its archaic restraints. As you might guess from its name, the SpeechMike Premium Air is the wireless evolution of Philips’ flagship dictation microphone. It offers the best of what you’ve come to expect from the “Premium” product line—as well as some new features:
- ISM band wireless technology – a departure from Bluetooth®
- LiPo battery with up to 24 hours of dictation time
- Integrated docking station
- 2 micro USB cables
- Antimicrobial housing
Wireless Dictation at Its Finest
You’ll be pleasantly surprised at your ability to begin dictating immediately after pressing the record button—and at the 5 meters of free movement you have from the docking station. While you’re pacing the office, making notes day and night, you won’t have to stop to charge the microphone. With its new LiPo battery, the SpeechMike Premium Air gives you up to 24 hours of dictation time. In addition, it only requires about 3 hours to charge fully. What a huge boost from the previous 7-hour battery life of the SpeechMike Air!
Philips also consolidated the AirPort and AirBridge into one secure docking module—and one less thing to worry about when pairing the microphone. When you dock the SpeechMike Premium Air for 4 seconds, you’re connected to that dock. Not only is this a radically simpler procedure, but the docking station’s new mini USB ports provide better signal transfer and reliability.
As for speech recognition audio quality, the SpeechMike Premium Air includes a decoupled studio-grade mic with a built-in noise reduction filter, to help you achieve exceptional results. The SpeechMike also achieves CD-quality signal transmission with the assistance of lossless speech technology—which warns you when you get too far from the dock.
Compared to the Legacy SpeechMike Air?
The SpeechMike Premium Air has some exciting new changes, compared to the original SpeechMike Air, including:
- Support for Mac® OS X
- Mini USB ports replaced with micro USB ports
- AirBridge and AirPort combined
- LiPo battery
- Omnidirectional mic
- Removed headset input
- Removed separate charging port
- Removed battery access cover
- Extra trigger button (2 total)
What About Security?
Can someone steal your audio data or pair with your device? Probably not. You’ll be happy to find that the SpeechMike Premium Air transmits audio securely, over a high-quality, proprietary connection.
- Proprietary ISM wireless technology in 2.4 GHz band
- Multi-channel frequency hopping technology (with 8-FSK modulation)
- Connection is only between paired devices (1-dock-to-1-microphone, only achieved by physical connection to the cradle)
- Every single audio sample is transmitted differently
- CD-quality dictation (44 KHz, 16-bit sampling rate)
What Software Is Supported?
Naturally, the SpeechMike Premium Air can be used with the latest SpeechExec Pro v10 software. Whether you have a speech recognition workflow set up with the Dragon® SDK, or you’re using Philips’ cloud-based SpeechLive solution, you’ll be able to take off a step ahead of the competition.
This microphone is also compatible with:
- Nuance® Dragon Professional/Legal 12.5 and 13
- Nuance Dragon Individual/Group 14 and 15 (all editions)
- Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 and 3
- Mac® OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) and 10.12 (Sierra)
What’s in the Box?
- SMP4000 SpeechMike Premium Air wireless dictation microphone
- ACC4000 docking station
- Power supply with adapters for the US, UK, Europe, and Asia Pacific
- 2 micro USB cables
- Quick start guide
What Do We Think?
We fell in love with the SpeechMike Premium Air microphone. As soon as we saw the sleek body styling, we knew we were in for a great experience. Not only were our technicians able to plug-and-play using SpeechControl, but we enjoyed the high-quality performance we’ve come to expect from the SpeechMike Premium—all without cable restrictions!
We did have some minor concerns about not being able to replace the battery, but with lithium polymer, there’s no need to worry about NiMH (alkaline) replacement packs. For portability, we also noted that you need to take the cradle with you if you dictate on a laptop, since the connection between the cradle and the microphone is proprietary. Your SpeechMike Premium Air cannot be paired with anything other than another ACC4000 docking station.