Lifesize Icon and Lifesize Cloud Rocks!
Updated September 13, 2019

Lifesize Icon and Lifesize Cloud Rocks!

Michael Gunderson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Lifesize Video Conferencing

We purchased Lifesize primarily to connect with area high schools to offer dual credit courses to high school students. It has allowed us to send classes from our main college campus using a reliable, more intuitive video conferencing system than our previous systems.

Our campus faculty, business institute, and other departments are looking forward to using the system in addition to dual credit teaching.
  • Easy to use
  • Low cost
  • Easy to manage accounts
  • Knowledgeable and reliable sales and customer service at Lifesize
  • Access to Lifesize Community, which connects other Lifesize users/clients, and gives users the ability to request features directly with the support and development teams.
  • Technical support that is second to NONE!
  • More screen layout options
  • Ability to customize screen layouts
  • ability to store ip based systems as favorites.
  • Customizable recording interface--ability to change and arrange PIPs as desired
  • Students have opportunities to learn without physically coming to our campus.
  • We have saved money bringing in guest lecturers to classes without paying travel expenses.
  • We used this recently for a mandatory orientation meeting with area high school instructors who teach dual credit for our institution.
  • All of the participants, and sites of participants were able to connect eeasily and without issue.
The integration of our Icon 400, paired with a medium sized LG display was simple and straight forward. With our previous conferencing systems, it took an entire day just to set up the system, or it needed to have an integrator involved. In a day, I had the hardware mounted and the Lifesize Icon 400 installed, tested and running!
With the infrequent and sporadic use of our system, we could not justify the extra cost of the Polycom. The ease of use for students calling into a virtual meeting room was easy, intuitive and connected flawlessly. In our institution, our needs vary from semester to semester, and we needed a flexible solution which could be used anywhere and not be hardware and room dependent like our old Polycom unit was.
I would recommend Lifesize to any education institution, and corporate markets. It is well suited for large markets as well as affordable enough to be used by small users and companies to expand their business. The simplicity and versatility of the system allows virtually anyone with a camera enabled device to attend any video conference.

Lifesize Video Conferencing Feature Ratings

High quality audio
9
High quality video
9
Low bandwidth requirements
10
Mobile support
Not Rated
Desktop sharing
10
Whiteboards
Not Rated
Calendar integration
10
Meeting initiation
10
Integrates with social media
Not Rated
Record meetings / events
10
Live chat
10
Audience polling
Not Rated
Q&A
10
User authentication
Not Rated
Participant roles & permissions
10
Confidential attendee list
Not Rated

Using Lifesize Video Conferencing

4 - Our college is using Lifesize as the primary delivery of dual credit distance education classes with area high schools. Even our most technophobic instructors are using the software client and the hardware with ease.

One of our faculty members is using the Lifesize PC desktop client to have virtual office hours for summer classes. This allows the faculty member, and students, to not have to come in to campus to talk together.

Our academic technology department is using the desktop client to do quick recordings for on-line courses. The ease of use and great flexibility makes using this product a joy!
  • Distance Learning - Dual Credit to area High School Students
  • Virtual office hours
  • Training and communicating with outside vendors
  • Simple, fast Lecture Capture
  • Letting area high schools to leverage our cloud account to be able to teach subjects to other high schools when enrollment at those schools doe snot have enough interest in certain classes.
  • When this system grows, I can see us using it as a tool to communicate in person to off-campus employees.
We not only renewed our annual cloud license, we upgraded it. As an institution, we saw a need to further integrate Lifesize into our campus culture. We plan on using our service to bring in guest lecturers, have virtual office hours for on-line students, continuing our distance learning and dual credit teaching, and much more. The more Lifesize is integrated into our organization, the ideas on how to use it keep expanding.
  • Lecture capturing was something we ran into by mistake, but the cloud client on the PC over at academic technology is being used to capture lectures that need to be done quickly and easily.
  • We hadn't planned on using the system for virtual office hours, but this summer, it has been a smashing success.
5 - Academic Technology Resources
Audio/Visual and IT Services
Faculty
Administration
Anyone who needs to use it!

Evaluating Lifesize Video Conferencing and Competitors

Yes - Polycom - Unit was standard definition and outdated
I would not change a thing. We found the right solution to our need with Lifesize.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
  • Third-party Reviews
Ease of use for the remote user was the single most important thing we considered. We needed to have multiple, non-technical, people at the remote site to log into the system and start it up for each class. We have never had an issue with remote users calling inot our service, never!

Lifesize Video Conferencing Implementation

Lifesize Video Conferencing Training

  • Online training
  • Self-taught
There was a very knowledgeable person each and every time I trained with them. I believe after 30-45 minutes of admin training, I had all that I needed. End user training is a breeze for our staff. In a matter of 15 minutes, we can train internally. It is that easy to use!
We implement this system with many faculty and staff members throughout each semester. It is very easy for us to train those folks. One of the best things about this product is the ease of use.

Configuring Lifesize Video Conferencing

Our Lifesize product worked after about 10 minutes of setup. With other video conferencing devices, it used to take me half a day.

There are customizations with Lifesize camera codecs, but not a lot is needed. Simple, and easy to use doesn't need much configuring.

We installed our Lifesize unit on a portable cart, so it is flexible to go anywhere on our campus. We also use the system with web-cameras attached to our integrated classroom PCs.

We did develop a sheet of requirements for area high schools with best practices on their end. Those were: Hard wired internet connection, PC specifications form the Lifesize website, and a hard wired connection of the computer to the display device.


No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - the product does not support adding custom code
We set up a Gmail calendar to work with the scheduling of the device. Calendar integration was flawless and easy to set up. We bought decent quality web cameras that had good video and great microphones to use in rooms where we needed a one-off meeting to another site. Better microphones enabled better audio quality. Don't skimp on the quality when using web-cameras--you get what you pay for!

Lifesize Video Conferencing Support

Even though I do not have a large presence with Lifesize, I still get amazing support from their customer service, tech support and account managers. I have never had a question go unanswered!

Lately our account has been relatively dormant, and the sales and support team reached out and asked if there was anything they could do on their end to help us use the product more. Knowing that someone is monitoring, and cares, about our account is fantastic!

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
No - The standard support Lifesize offers to their users is tremendous. We have had very few issues, and most were our fault! Even when it was our issue, the support team was courteous, friendly and patient with us and went above and beyond to help us. Great job Lifesize, your support is stupendous!
We had an issue with a connection to a third party site. After my support call, they continued to try to connect with the third party system, and eventually found that the firewall at the third party was rejecting our IP address. Once we found that out, the IT folks at the location added our IP and we were able to connect..It was nice not having to stay on the phone for 30-60 minutes while the technicians determined the issue.

Using Lifesize Video Conferencing

As stated previously in other sections of this review, our needs vary from meeting to meeting. Each and every time we have needed to connect with people at remote locations, the system just worked.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Making calls is very easy.
  • Dialing other sites is as easy as typing in the code of the other unit
  • Ability to keep a local address book as well as add favorite sites is great
Yes - We have had students, guest lecturers, higher learning executives, high school teachers and many more call into a virtual meeting room with zero technical support from our staff. That is the best thing. The system is fast to install, easy to navigate and makes the end user experience a breeze. This makes my day!

Lifesize Video Conferencing Reliability

We have license that is low on users, because we don't need to have everyone who calls us added to our account. We have never needed to scale up our user base, nor ha the hardware, but I know that we can add hardware and users very easily when needed.
I have never had an issue using the product. In fact, when our system goes off line due to something on our end, I receive an alert that the system has went off line.
We have never had a performance issue with this product!

Relationship with Lifesize

We bought our system and renewals through another third party (our campus integrators). We do not buy from Lifesize directly. That said, the Lifesize sales team did most of the work leading up to the sale. they answered all of our questions, set us up with a demo account, shipped us an evaluation unit. All of those steps ultimately swayed our decision to choose Lifesize.
Vendor has always exceeded my expectations, and is always there for me if I have questions. A truly good company who appreciates and act upon user feedback and ideas. I wish there were more companies like this!

Upgrading Lifesize Video Conferencing

Yes - Updates are frequent and included with the subscription. Our codec, mobile and desktop apps automatically update each release. Very easy to update and fast in doing so.