Maxhub UC M40

Maxhub's clever little panoramic camera delivers the big picture for video meetings at a great price

- DAVE MITCHELL

PRICE £595 exc VAT from polar.uk.com

Small offices and mobile workers that want a videoconferencing (VC) solution that puts everyone in shot will love Maxhub's UC M40. This slim metal baton sports a 5-megapixel 4K camera with four lenses arranged around the top to deliver a full 360-degree panoramic field of view (FOV).

Measuring 68mm on each side and only 182mm tall, the UC M40 is one of the smallest panoramic cameras we've seen, and its 450g weight makes it highly portable. This compactness doesn't come at the cost of features, either, as the UC M40 is very well endowed.

Inside is an array of four omnidirectional mics used for active speaker tracking. You can see these in action as the upper surface has a circular blue indicator that shows where it has detected a voice.

There's much more to this camera than an all-round view, however.

In Standalone mode its smart image manipulation offers a choice of seven different visual presentations. You don't need to load any software, and you can swap between each view using the mode button located below the front lens.