In today’s hybrid-work environments, individuals work from a variety of spaces, and in nearly every workspace, noise and poor sound quality can negatively affect collaboration and productivity. A recent Equipping Your Employees for Hybrid Work study found that 85% of work-from-home users struggle with audio issues, whether it’s from background noise from other participants or poor sound quality through computer speakers. The same study found that hybrid workforces aren’t properly equipped with modern collaboration tools, such as quality headsets.

“Zone Wireless 2 is Logitech’s top-of-the-line headset for skilled professionals who need technology with a high degree of control, precision and innovation,” says Prakash Arunkundrum, chief operating officer at Logitech. “We built Zone Wireless 2 with advanced technology for uncompromising performance at a lower carbon footprint.”

Zone Wireless 2 Features

Per a statement, the headset notably allows the user to suppress ambient noise from the other person’s side of the call, even if that person is not wearing a noise-canceling headset. The Advanced Call Clarity feature, activated through Logi Tune, uses AI to separate the other caller’s voice from their background. Noise-canceling mics suppress distracting sounds and near conversations through advanced beamforming technology that captures the user’s voice, thus creating a two-way noise suppression system.

Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC)

Hybrid active noise cancellation (ANC) blocks out ambient noise around employee workspaces such as keyboard clicks, nearby talkers and HVAC noises; and transparency mode, which helps users stay aware of their surroundings while wearing the headset, the company states. Upon setup on Logi Tune, users can use the Personal EQ feature to customize the headset to fit their individual hearing range through a self-administered hearing test.

Bluetooth and Smart Enumeration

As professionals transition through different scenarios in their workday, they can stay connected with multipoint Bluetooth and smart enumeration. According to the company, the patent-pending feature solves the problem users often experience when they leave their computer, lose connection, then return to a setup that appears to be audio-connected but isn’t. Smart enumeration is the result of communication among headset, USB-C receiver and the operating system to intelligently switch between headset and computer audio without the user having to manually toggle among audio sources or remove a dongle, says Logitech.

Battery Life

To power up professional busy work schedules, Zone Wireless 2 provides up to 40 hours of battery life, with talk time and listening time varying based on whether ANC is on or off. A quick five-minute charge provides up to one hour of talk time, says Logitech.

The headset include breathable earcups, available in graphite, off-white and rose colorways to suit professionals’ personality and style. While enjoying immersive sound, style, and comfort, professionals can tap or swipe on the ear cup to control media and volume using smart touch controls or enable on-ear detection in Logi Tune to automatically play or pause media when wearing or removing the headset.

IT Management

According to Logitech, IT teams can deploy Zone Wireless 2 to their workforce — the headset is certified for Microsoft Teams with a microphone for open office, Zoom, Google Meet, Google Voice, and Fast Pair. Integration with Sync, Logitech’s device management platform, provides a secure and scalable approach to remotely manage Logitech devices. Sync allows IT admins to update firmware and troubleshoot Zone Wireless 2, whether the headset is used remotely or in the office, from a single, cloud-based interface.

Zone Wireless 2 Sustainability Features

Sustainability is core to every design decision from the moment raw materials are sourced to the end-of-life of Logitech’s products, says Logitech. Zone Wireless 2 is designed to give users the ability to extend the life of their device by including interchangeable earpads and a replaceable battery, keeping more headsets on heads and extending the life of the headset.

According to the company, the plastic parts in Zone Wireless 2 include 20% certified post-consumer recycled plastic to give a second life to end-of-life plastic from old consumer electronics, and the aluminum in Zone Wireless 2’s decoration ring and temple extension are made by a process that uses renewable energy instead of traditional fossil-fuel energy.

The paper packaging of Zone Wireless 2 comes from FSCTM-certified forests and other controlled sources. Logitech says it is committed to creating a climate positive world by actively working to reduce our carbon impact. Zone Wireless 2 is certified carbon neutral. The carbon impact of the product and packaging has been reduced to zero due to Logitech’s investment in carbon offsetting and removal projects.

Zone Wireless 2 Pricing & Availability

Per a statement, the Zone Wireless 2 is available globally on logitech.com and through authorized resellers. The suggested price for the headset is $299 USD. To purchase through retail channels, Zone 950 is available in the U.S. and Canada (graphite only).

Another version of this article originally appeared on our sister-site Commercial Integrator on October 16, 2023. It has since been updated for My TechDecisions’ audience.

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According to VentureBeat, which posted a lengthy interview with Serge Lachapelle, G Suite director of product management, the feature leverages supervised learning and an AI model on a labeled data set.

The feature is rolling out gradually, so G Suite customers may not get noise cancellation until later this month. Web platforms will get it first, followed by Android and iOS later.

The feature is similar to one Microsoft has already previewed for Teams. Zoom, WebEx and other videoconferencing platforms also offer noise reduction or cancellation features.

However, Google Meet’s is designed to be similar to speech recognition, which separates what is speech and what is not, Per Lapachelle. The noise cancellation feature trains a cloud-based machine learning model to understand the difference between noise and speech.

At first, the team used thousands of its own meetings to train the model. “We’d say, ‘OK everyone, just so you know we’re recording this, and we’re going to submit it to start training the model.’” The company also relied on audio from YouTube videos “wherever there’s a lot of people talking. So either groups in the same room or back and forth.”

“The algorithm was trained using a mixed data set featuring noise and clean speech,” Lachapelle said. Other Google employees, including from the Google Brain team and the Google Research team, also contributed, though not with audio from their meetings. “The algorithm was not trained on internal recordings, but instead employees submitted feedback extensively about their experiences, which allowed the team to optimize. It is important to say that this project stands on the shoulders of giants. Speech recognition and enhancement has been heavily invested in at Google over the years, and much of this work has been reused.”

Nevertheless, a lot of manual validation was still required. “I’ve seen everything from engineers coming to work with maracas, guitars, and accordions to just normal YouTubers doing livestreaming and testing it out on that. The range has been pretty broad.”

According to Lachapelle, the noise cancellation feature works well on a slamming door, barking dogs and background noise from a user’s family.

In the article, Lachapelle explains that the company is taking a conservative approach at first so the technology doesn’t go overboard and muffle things that shouldn’t be muffled.

“Sometimes it’s good for you to hear that I’m taking a deep breath, or those more natural noises. So this is going to be a project that’s going to go on for many years as we tune it to become better and better and better.”

You can see how it works in a video posted by VentureBeat in which Lachapelle demonstrates a few examples of the noise cancellation feature in action. He rustles a nut bag, clicks a pen, snaps a ruler and dings a glass.

The feature will be on by default, and users that want noise to come through will have to disable it.

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