Lenovo & Jabra launch ThinkSmart Bar 180 for smart collaboration

Lenovo has announced a strategic partnership with Jabra to launch the new ThinkSmart Bar 180 Solution and provide Windows Autopilot support for the ThinkSmart portfolio.

The ThinkSmart Bar 180 is a bar for small to medium-sized meeting spaces. This integrated room system, a joint venture between Lenovo and Jabra, combines an AI-enabled video bar with the Lenovo ThinkSmart Core and Controller to form a comprehensive, intelligent room system. The ThinkSmart Bar 180 utilises AI-enhanced video and audio streams to facilitate a more fluid, inclusive and sophisticated collaboration experience. In addition, Lenovo announced its full support for Windows Autopilot across its Lenovo ThinkSmart collaboration devices portfolio.

Significantly, the compact ThinkSmart Bar 180 features a unique three-camera system, providing a 180-degree field of view, which is distinctive among front room solutions. This system can provide full room coverage in panoramic 4K resolution through seamless real-time video stitching, thus a more natural visual experience for remote meeting attendees. In combination with its advanced audio capabilities and onboard intelligence, it offers three configurable video modes – Intelligent Zoom, Virtual Director and Dynamic Composition.

According to Lenovo, Intelligent Zoom auto-frames all individuals anywhere in the 180-degree view and adjusts as people enter, leave or move around the room. The Virtual Director mode focuses on the current speaker and switches focus as conversations flow, while Dynamic Composition offers further context to events in the room both audibly and visually, by detecting people and prioritising recent speakers.

The ThinkSmart Bar 180 also boasts smart microphones capable of identifying up to ten voices in a room, helpful for live transcription applications. Its dual-stream whiteboard facilitates collaboration by presenting both whiteboard content and in-room participants simultaneously, eliminating the need for a dedicated content camera.

This innovative video bar system integrates seamlessly with the Lenovo ThinkSmart Core and Controller devices, engineered for small and medium-sized meeting areas, and encouraging teamwork. Running on Windows 10 IOT Enterprise, the ThinkSmart Core is equipped with 11th generation Intel Core vPro processors which are designed for long-lasting performance and providing hardware-based security through Lenovo ThinkShield.

"The meeting and collaboration experience of today's corporate world needs constant evolution," stated Yves Dupuis, SVP of Global Sales operations at Jabra. "We are thrilled to further unite Jabra's unique capabilities with Lenovo's innovative solutions to equip offices with tools to foster inclusive and interactive meetings for everyone."

In addition, the ThinkSmart portfolio of collaboration devices from Lenovo are now backed by Windows Autopilot, a collection of technologies aimed at expediting the set up and pre-configuration of new devices for productive use. "With the addition of the ThinkSmart Bar 180 to our portfolio, and the support of Windows Autopilot for Lenovo's smart collaboration devices, customers now have even more options to intelligently design, build, and configure meeting spaces at scale across their global office footprint," expressed Shannon MacKay, General Manager of Worldwide Smart Collaboration Business, Lenovo.

The ThinkSmart Bar 180 will be available worldwide in select markets from the first quarter of 2024.