One of our trusted partners when building meeting room AV systems is Yealink. A longtime provider of IP phone systems, Yealink has branched out a lot more in recent years to meeting room systems. However, upon looking at them from the outside, the product lines seem a bit confusing: Yealink makes a lot of products that look the same or similar, but function quite differently. Today, we’re taking a deep dive into Yealink’s video conferencing products, what sets them apart from each other, and the best ways to use them.

High Level: The A Series vs the VC Series

In terms of room systems, there are two main product designations that Yealink uses: the “A Series” and the “VC Series”. “A Series” products are all-in-one devices that use an operating system based on Android. The VC Series, on the other hand, are either Windows-based or USB peripheral devices, designed to work together for a full room system. Unlike the A Series, most of the VC Series products are split into components, which allows for more installation flexibility but with more system complexity.

A10 vs A20 vs A30

The main products in the A Series are the MeetingBars—the A10, A20 and A30. These devices feature an all-in-one design with a camera, microphone, and video conferencing software on one device. While all of these devices work the same when it comes to joining video calls or meetings, there are some distinct differences between them

The A10 is designed for personal use or for small huddle and meeting rooms. Coming in at approximately half the size of the A20 and 30, the A10 has smaller speakers as well as a lower resolution camera, which gives it a 4x zoom. The camera system does not have all of the same framing features as its larger siblings, but it still features Auto Framing, Speaker Tracking, and Multi-Focus Framing (known around here as Brady Bunch mode).

The A20 steps up the resolution of the camera to 20 megapixels, which allows for a maximum 8x digital zoom. The A20 also features a louder, more powerful speaker as well as a 6 meter pickup range for audio. This makes it great for medium sized meeting rooms, for 6 to 12 meeting participants. In addition to the framing modes on the A10, the A20 also features picture-in-picture mode, which means you can have the main speaker featured as well as a wide view of the room in the corner of the screen.

The flagship MeetingBar, the A30, adds a dual camera system with a wide angle lens as well as a 10x zoom camera. This allows for much higher resolution capture across a boardroom table, and makes it great for meeting rooms that seat more than 12 people.

A24: The Albatross

One of these things is not like the other: that thing is the Yealink A24. Called the DeskVision, the A24 is a personal video conferencing device, designed for executive offices and hotdesking. The A24 is a fully all-in-one system, with a 24 inch touchscreen display, popup camera, noise cancelling microphone, and easy call controls on physical buttons on the device.

For spaces where more than 1 person is joining a call, like a huddle room, the A24 is not the tool for the job: the camera only has automatic framing, not speaker tracking or other framing modes. However, for hybrid offices, the A24 can be used as a hot-desking station, using either Zoom or Microsoft Teams’ desk reservation systems.

The VC Series

Yealink’s Windows-based meeting room systems all have a “VC” designation in their model number—however, these are split into the MVC series (M for Microsoft) and ZVC (Z for Zoom). These systems are functionally the same, just with different software preloaded on the included Mini PC.

Unlike the A Series all-in-one bars, the MVC and ZVC systems are all made up of individual components, like the UVC86 camera. While this makes installation more difficult, it allows for a lot more flexibility in installation, including the ability to use multiple camera angles. Yealink has also partnered with Microsoft on the MVC S90 system, which uses Microsoft’s Copilot AI to split the video into individual feeds, giving each meeting participant their own video window and improving meeting equity.

 What about the UVC Series? Products with the UVC designation are USB peripherals. They don’t work as a meeting room system on their own, but when paired with a Mini PC or other compute device, they can form a very powerful meeting room system. In rooms where multiple cameras, speakers or microphones are needed, Yealink’s AVHub signal processor handles the inputs from multiple sources and transmits them to the computer as a standard USB signal.

Deciding Which System is Right For You

There are a few factors to consider when choosing which meeting room system to use. The biggest factor to consider is your meeting room size (or how far your participants will be from the camera and microphone). The A20 and A30 both feature a 6 meter pickup range, which can handle most medium to large meeting rooms but may struggle with large executive boardrooms. (Yealink does also offer wireless microphones for rooms that occasionally need the extra pickup range).  For those larger rooms, you may want more flexible camera positioning, which is where the MVC and ZVC systems can really shine.

Room layout and use is another factor to consider. For rooms that are always in a standard boardroom configuration a fixed video bar installation may work best, but for rooms with flexible layouts and movable tables the flexibility of a PTZ camera may be preferred. These rooms may also have different microphone systems, like gooseneck or podium microphones. When paired with an external signal processor, these systems work much more reliably on a Windows based system. Yealink has also established partnerships with several audio manufacturers like Shure and Biamp to ensure their MVC and ZVC systems work well with other audio devices.

In Conclusion

Whether you’re looking for an all-in-one solution or something more customizable, Yealink’s Microsoft Teams Room and Zoom Rooms solutions can provide an easy to use meeting experience. However, for more challenging spaces that require a bit of customization, working with an AV integrator can help ensure that your meeting experience is as flawless as possible.

Need help setting up your hybrid conferencing space? Our team of experts can build a solution that works for you.