Home Forums Philips SpeechMike Air with DNS Review

Possibly The Next Handheld Wireless Microphone King of the Hill

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.

Thanks Tom.
I appreciate giving us a heads-up about new technology. Most of us don't have the time or energy to keep up with this stuff. I checked out the website, official review and online owner's manual. I'm wondering specifically how the buttons could be programmed to navigate around Amazing Charts. Also, I have PC's on my desk and in each exam room and wonder what the logistics of using the SpeechMike Air might look like, ie. AirBridges on each PC? Also, with a 30 foot range, could it screw up an adjoining exam room's PC, assuming I forget to close the DNS mic./user (of course that never happens... eh-hem)
Again, thanks. You are providing me a service with your posts. Always informative and very professional.
Dave

Dave,

Thanks for the complement.

The 33 foot range will typically be cut in half when you move from one examination room to another because of the dividing wall but the only safe approach would be to turn the NaturallySpeaking microphone off before leaving each room.

I haven't worked with Amazing Charts in about 3 or 4 years but the last time I saw it, I noted, what I consider to be, a single design flaw. Amazing Charts is ideally suited for touch screen usage and mouse clicking but not ideally suited to macro implementation such as third-party command applications like KnowBrainer 2008 or hardware that utilizes Hotkeys such as the Nuance PowerMic II or the Philips SpeechMike line. What would make Amazing Charts perfect would be if the developers were to add hotkeys to every menu item; like Microsoft Office. Once you have hotkeys in place, you can simply assign hotkey shortcuts to the SpeechMike buttons. However, with the exception of the F1 - F3 buttons, most popular NaturallySpeaking features are natively available in the SpeechMike and don't require Hotkeys. Features like ‘Press to Talk’, ‘Microphone on/off’, ‘Play from Cursor’, ‘Playback Toggle’, ‘New Word’, ‘Train Word’, ‘Move Cursor Backward’, ‘Move Cursor Forward and ‘Show Correction Dialog Box’ are all available.

Note that we haven't seen a recent version of Amazing Charts and for all we know, hotkeys may have been implemented in the last few years and if so, you'll have additional options.

I use DNS and old speechmike with A.C. I need to view the screens to make it work, but it does. I have a moderate number of macros to help, but not everything can be done in A.C. yet with navigation by voice, also, much of the structure changed in ver 5 requiring macro tweaking.