Once you log in - it's a great tool for video conferencing
August 17, 2018

Once you log in - it's a great tool for video conferencing

Zee Gimon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Vidyo

We use it for video conferencing purposes for education. To be honest, my personal experience with Vidyo wasn't as great as I would've liked it to be because I have faced several problems with it. If not for them, Vidyo is good because it offers "rooms" which people can join (for our case, it was the students from all over the world) and we can all see the teacher's screen and him/her as well and, like with Skype, Zoom, and Google Hangouts, it highlights the one who is speaking by bringing their video (or avatar) to the front.

Pros

  • I didn't have to sign up, I just need to log into the "room" I was supposed to, so unlike Skype or other instruments, I didn't need to spend time and create my own account.
  • To be honest, the largest online class I've attended had 10 people in it (besides the teacher), but it was a good quality connection.
  • I enjoyed the ability to ask questions or clarifications in the chat (without having to turn on my microphone, so that the teacher could answer the question when he/she finished the thought).

Cons

  • Google Chrome hates Vidyo (it feels like that, anyway). There is a special plug-in that you have to install, but the Vidyo website doesn't always catch the fact that you've installed the plug-in and keeps asking... or just ignores you (while you're running around in panic because you're missing the lecture).
  • Safari works fine most of the time, but I had a couple of times when I would login to the session I was supposed to attend... no one would be in the "room"... so I'd get suspicious and re-login to the very same session... and TA DA, the lecture has been going on without me (because I signed in too early, before the teacher did - that was my guess).
  • It did help us reach the objective of education - after a while, everyone had a chance to connect and the quality of video/audio once you're in is great. It's just getting there that isn't up to par (but hopefully would be changed in next versions).
Skype and Google Hangouts both need personal accounts in the app before you can connect to the video chat. Zoom, so far, was the most convenient of all because it worked great and quick. I haven't been the one to choose the apps, so I haven't had the chance to weigh in, but I think Zoom had better user experience than Vidyo (at least for me).
Once you're in the "room" you're supposed to be in, everything works great and I really enjoy Vidyo. But the signing in process might kill all the upcoming joy because it just feels very... tricky, to say the least. As I have mentioned in the drawbacks, Google Chrome didn't work for me at all, so I was forced to switch to Safari (when I was on my home computer) and I think I have used Mozilla Firefox when I was on my work computer. But still, considering I always use Chrome for everything, this was frustrating (especially when you don't have time to fiddle with these things).

Enghouse Vidyo Feature Ratings

High quality audio
9
High quality video
9
Low bandwidth requirements
Not Rated
Mobile support
8
Desktop sharing
10
Whiteboards
10
Calendar integration
9
Meeting initiation
9
Integrates with social media
Not Rated
Record meetings / events
Not Rated
Slideshows
9
Live chat
10
Audience polling
10
Q&A
10
User authentication
9
Participant roles & permissions
Not Rated
Confidential attendee list
Not Rated

Evaluating Vidyo and Competitors

Yes - We have tried using Skype but it wasn't very convenient because of the quality of sound and video. Also, not everyone had / wanted to create an account, so it was not really working out for our purposes. After a while, we also used Zoom and Google Hangouts. Zoom was the best out of the four.
  • Product Features
  • Third-party Reviews
Mainly, it was the fact that we needed to give access to the video conference without having to sign up. We did educational online classes and so the hassle of creating ONE MORE account among myriad others was not something we wanted to do. So we went with Vidyo because it seemed to be the most efficient product.
We'd probably go with Zoom now that we've tried Vidyo. The onboarding is much easier with Zoom and besides, it's cheaper. However, I wasn't in the team who made the final decision so I am not sure what other options were considered in the selection process.

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