Classroom

Review: Panasonic WX-ST700 Microphone Delivers Clean Audio in Any Classroom

The Panasonic wireless boundary microphone is designed for clear audio capture everywhere, from small classrooms to large lecture halls.

John Breeden II

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John Breeden II is an award-winning reviewer with more than 20 years of experience covering technology. Follow him on Twitter @TheLabGuys.

In today’s hybrid learning environment, it’s more important than ever to fully equip higher education classrooms for recording live lectures. Whether for students who are attending a live class remotely or recorded for later use, capturing exactly what is said with perfect clarity is critical.

That is what the Panasonic WX-ST700 DECT wireless boundary microphone is designed to accomplish. It’s a fully wireless device featuring an omnidirectional microphone optimized to capture voices and speech while minimizing background noise.

Panasonic Wireless Boundary Offers Simple Set Up and Pairing

Setting up the WX-ST700 is extremely easy. First, power it up by inserting two AA batteries. It accepts both normal or rechargeable batteries (if it’s loaded with rechargeable batteries, they will charge whenever a USB cable is plugged into the microphone).

Once it has power, the microphone will automatically pair wirelessly with any Panasonic 1.9-gigahertz digital wireless microphone receiver. This device will automatically assign the microphone to an unused channel, so no manual setup is needed, even with multiple microphones working in the same location. Because the microphone uses the 1920-megahertz frequency to transmit, it won’t interfere or overlap with any 802.11 wireless deployments in the same space.

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Microphone Enables Distraction-Free Sound Capture

The WX-ST700 is designed to capture sound in all directions, so it can be deployed pretty much anywhere that voices need to be recorded — no need to aim or position it in a certain way. In my tests, the microphone was able to capture sounds, especially human speech, with extreme accuracy within 30 feet of the base unit.

Furthermore, it was able to record people talking despite other distracting noises (such as a running fan, a ringing cellphone and even low music playing in the background) added to the test environment.

In addition to recording sound on its own, the WX-ST700 has a 3.5-millimeter audio jack, which allows other devices, such as smartphones or laptops, to provide input through an audio cable. That way, users can stream audio recordings captured on other devices through the microphone; those recordings are then transmitted wirelessly to the main Panasonic receiver, just like sounds captured using the microphone itself.

In continuous-recording mode, the microphone lasted for over 10 hours using rechargeable batteries, and needed just over an hour to fully charge back up after battery life was fully spent.

Higher education classrooms that require highly accurate audio recording should look no further than the Panasonic WX-ST700 DECT wireless boundary microphone. It works well, lasts a full day-plus on a single charge and is extremely easy to set up and use despite its advanced audio features.

Specifications

DEVICE TYPE: Wireless audio-capturing microphone
AUDIO FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 100 hertz to 15kHz
WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY: 1.9GHz
MICROPHONE CAPTURE PATTERN: Unidirectional
POWER SOURCE: Two AA batteries
DIMENSIONS: 3.46x5.3x1.7 inches
WEIGHT: 0.45 pound

Pair Your Panasonic Wireless Boundary Microphone with a Panasonic Camera

The Panasonic WX-ST700 DECT wireless boundary microphone can be used in conjunction with other Panasonic microphones to cover a large classroom, but it also works with a wide variety of Panasonic cameras.

One of the biggest strengths of the WX-ST700 — beyond its performance — is the ability to seamlessly network with other microphones to cover large spaces. But that capability is not confined to other audio devices; the microphone can also pair up with several models of Panasonic cameras.

We happened to have a few pan-tilt-zoom Panasonic cameras in the lab from previous reviews and integrated the new wireless boundary microphone with them. This was extremely easy to do, but did require the free PTZ Control Center software designed to link multiple Panasonic devices together.

Once paired, the wireless boundary microphone could be assigned as an audio source for the camera. That allows users to set up various triggers, such as a voice discovery mode that automatically activates the camera whenever an audio source is detected.

LEARN MORE: How universities scale hybrid environments with collaboration tools.

It also allows for advanced features such as audio tracking, which repositions the camera’s focus when talking is detected by another microphone — helpful for question-and-answer events where both the speaker and the person asking questions are recorded on video while their audio is captured.

Users can easily control up to nine cameras and microphones using the control center software. And the camera does not have to record every classroom presentation just because the microphone and camera are linked. It’s easy to use just the audio features of the system for day-to-day operations and save the camera for special occasions or guest lecturers. This will also greatly reduce the file size if presentations are saved for later use.

Integrating the superior audio recording features of the Panasonic WX-ST700 DECT wireless boundary microphone with the video capture capabilities of Panasonic’s advanced cameras adds yet another layer of flexibility and versatility to any classroom.