I spend a lot of my working hours on conference calls, and admittedly, am usually multitasking until I hear my name being called. So I was excited to try this product out. Prior to receiving the H1E, I had been using a Microsoft Teams speaker–a small loudspeaker and mic combo with an easily accessible mute button and volume controls that had some features integrated with Teams. The H1E has a slightly larger footprint on my desk, but offers so much more!The design of the unit itself is slick. I love the large dial for volume, the slider for noise cancellation, and large, easy to press buttons for mute and call functions. The earpiece is neatly contained in its own attached cradle that can be easily removed. And ports for everything all around. I'm not using the docking features, but I'm glad they're there, and the extra USB ports are great for easy access.Call quality on the H1E sounds amazing. Nice and clear voice, plenty of headroom to turn it up, and the mic picks up really well. It's a pleasure to use for its most basic functions. The earpiece was another matter though. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't get used to the over-the-ear style earbud, and I felt the volume it put out was lacking. Fortunately I can just detach the earpiece and store it and have an even slimmer desktop console, and it's nice that it was made in a way that not using the supplied earpiece is no problem.The software was easy to install, but was a little non-standard in that HiNotes runs as a browser app, and not a traditional native app. This has some pros and cons, the pros being that even on my locked-down corporate laptop that complains about anything I try and install, "installing" HiNotes on Chrome flew under the radar of the watchful IT eyes that control my machine. The cons being HiNotes uses Chrome as a conduit for all the native behavior on your machine, and sometimes was prone to becoming disconnected from the speaker.The note-taking and AI functionality with HiNotes was super impressive. Over a month, I captured several different meetings and the speech to text was accurate, the recordings were easy to review, and the AI did an amazing job of summarizing the meeting, and pulling out next-steps and action items. The free tier that comes with the H1E is generous, and gives you unlimited access to AI transcription, however some nice-to-have features such as identifying who is speaking, exporting notes, and automatically transcribing notes are gated behind a premium tier. If I was a power-user I'd have no qualms springing for the premium tier, but for my uses, the base tier is good enough.HiNotes has some good organization capabilities and allows you to tag notes (and suggests tags for you) and organize your notes in different tabs/folders. The UI could be a little more robust and flexible, and perhaps allow you to even take your own notes. Maybe these will be features released and improvements made over time.In summary, if you sit in a lot of meetings, and want to free yourself from the pressure to take complete notes–or even if you don't care so much about notes and want a great rich-sounding speaker and mic for online meetings, I have no hesitation to recommend the H1E, it's a great device with impressive AI smarts under the hood.

This has been the most impressive addition to my work desk in years. I was already using a small conference speaker regularly at my desk and, separately, a docking station to simplify the hookup of an external monitor, mouse, keyboard, ethernet, etc.Not only does this device consolidate all of that into a single sharp-looking desktop centerpiece, but it can automatically record, transcript, and use AI to analyze my phone calls and meetings? This is an absolute game changer. I used to be so focused on taking notes during some meetings that I wouldn't actually participate in the meeting as much as I wanted to. Now I don't worry as much if I missed a couple sentences due to a distraction or worry about what if I need to recall something from this meeting three or four days later, I can simply go back and re-listen to it OR, much faster, I can skim the transcription or AI summary.This thing is an excellent combination of multiple great technologies that HiDock has gotten to work really well together. The device works seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom. It's so awesome that it can be simultaneously paired via bluetooth to my phone and can record my cell phone calls as well.Now there are plenty of recordings I never end up needing or going back to and that's fine, I just feel so much relief knowing they are there for a while if I do need them.The company seems keen on responding to customer feedback. They recently added an integration with OneNote which makes me so happy since that is my main note-taking app of choice.I am impressed with the noise cancellation technology as I know that people could hear me clacking away on my keyboard before on my previous speaker, and I tested it with a friend and it really cuts it out if you need it to. The speaker clarity is very nice as well. Even suitable for some light music listening.The earpiece is just gravy for me, but I have used it to seamlessly step away from my desk to get a coffee refill downstairs without missing a beat in a live meeting. That is about the most I will use it for and it's great for that, switches seamlessly and doesn't interrupt anything.It seems like someone with a really busy life saw the opportunity to combine some technologies that were already really good individually and make something great, and I would say they have succeeded here for sure. I have already entered a pre-order for their new portable P1 product as well.

Look, I'm a simple guy. Give me a sturdy hammer and a reliable truck, and I'm happy. But my daughter, she's all about the tech. Laptops, phones, tablets – it's a digital jungle in her room. So, when she started complaining about the mess of cords and adapters for her school laptop, I figured it was time to step in.I stumbled across this H1E 8-in-1 USB-C docking station. Sounded like a mouthful of tech jargon to me, but it promised to clean things up. And, well, it did.First off, it's solid. Feels like a proper piece of kit, not some flimsy plastic thing that'll break the first time you look at it wrong. Plugged into her laptop, it turned one measly USB-C port into a whole command center. HDMI for her monitor, ethernet for a proper internet connection (she claims the Wi-Fi is "unbearable"), and a bunch of USB ports for her various gadgets.Now, the AI voice recorder, transcription, and summary stuff? That's where I'm a bit lost. She uses it for school lectures, says it saves her a ton of time. I just nod and pretend to understand. But hey, if it helps her with her homework, I'm all for it.The thing I like most is the simplicity. One cable goes into the laptop, and everything else plugs into the dock. No more tangled mess of cords all over her desk. It's tidy, it's efficient, and it keeps her happy.The only downside? It's a bit pricey. But considering it's basically turned her laptop into a full-fledged workstation, I guess it's worth it. And hey, it keeps her from asking me to fix her tangled cords, so that's a bonus in my book.

It works as expected, and the sound quality is great, in my opinion. I've been using it as my main speaker.The microphone seems to sound low on the other end unless I get very close to it.The build quality is great, and the recording capabilities work well.You can still use a different mic—I'm using my camera's built-in mic, which sounds very good. With that setup, everything works as I need.

It is not very often that a computer peripheral comes along that brings new functionality to computers. This is one of those that ended up surprising me on how useful it is. At its core, this is a high-quality USB dock using the latest technologies for USB3 and HDMI. The USBC cable that comes with this dock is also a high quality one with hi speed data transfer support. And the Ethernet on this dock is 2.5GbE which is rare but very welcome to find on a USB dock.But also on this USB dock is an aesthetically retro looking conference speaker and wireless earpiece attachment with touch controls. Switching from the speaker to earpiece is seamless and intuitive. The sound quality of the speaker is fairly good quality and works well as a mono output for everyday computer audio. It does have some bass to it as well, however it cuts out below 60hz when doing a bass test. The volume nob has a nice quality feel to it along with its push button function. The earpiece sound quality is also decent enough for conference calls and is more on the treble end of audio. The range from the station is quite good, I am able to walk across my house (70ft and through walls) without losing signal which is better than my gaming headset. It is lightweight and comfortable to wear over the ear without causing fatigue. The battery on this earpiece also lasts for a decent length of time, as I have been able to use it through 2+ hour meetings with no issues.On this dock is also a red slider for background noise reduction which is convenient and easy to use, although gimmicky for something that can be usually handled in software. In my experience I've found a sweet spot for it and have rarely needed to adjust it further. In my tests using Teams, I have configured this dock to automatically start recording so no additional actions are needed. If it is a meeting I want to transcribe, I can then head to the Hi-Notes web application and convert the meeting to text and create meeting summaries. The Hi-Notes web application has a few options on how to create these summaries using AI, including a handful of templates available on the free plan as well as two AI engines (ChatGPT and Claude). In my experience so far, Claude typically does a better job jotting down and summarizing the details. The quality of these summaries is like magic! This is really the most interesting and useful function of this product as it saves a tremendous amount of time and lets me focus on the conversations instead of missing details while writing down notes.So initially a skeptic of this kind of product, thinking it was a gimmick or fad, I am now sold on the idea of AI transcription services. It is also nice that along with this product the transcriptions are free, which is good enough for my purposes. There are some additional templates and services behind premium plans however that seem well suited for a company that invests into these kinds of products. For general meeting use however, this is a product I never thought I needed until I had a chance to try it out. Being that this is also a high-quality USB dock that comes with free transcription services, it is a great value.