Logitech and Poly had expansion microphones for years. Jabra built a speaker into theirs. Was it worth the wait?

We were waiting so long for an extension microphone from Jabra. Anyone selling PanaCast into a medium or large room has run into the same wall: the built-in microphone array covers a normal huddle space beautifully, and then someone puts the same device in a longer room and the people at the far end start getting cut off or picked up thin. Other brands solved this years ago with a simple expansion mic you drop further down the table. Jabra didn’t have an answer to that for a long time, and then in February 2026, it finally did.

What actually shipped, and when?

On February 3, 2026, Jabra announced its expandable room solutions lineup: the PanaCast 55 VBS, a new Android-based room system built as an evolution of the PanaCast video bar portfolio, the PanaCast SpeakerMic, and a set of PanaCast Room Kits configurable with one, three, or five cameras for panoramic coverage. The whole system is supported by Microsoft’s Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP), the same Android-based security framework we unpacked in our Lenovo ThinkSmart piece, which Jabra describes as delivering reliable, secure Android-based performance across rooms. The stated goal was straightforward: make sure every participant can equally take part in the conversation, no matter where they sit in the room, in mid-size to large spaces rather than just a standard huddle room.

What does the SpeakerMic actually do?

The name matters more than it looks like it should. This is not an expansion microphone with a marketing name attached. It is a speaker and a microphone array built into one unit, four omnidirectional mics with built-in noise reduction on one side, a genuine speaker for room-filling audio output on the other, plus on-device volume and mute controls. It connects over standard Cat6 Ethernet cabling through an included RJ45-to-USB-C adapter, running up to 30 meters from the main unit, which is a wired connection rather than a wireless one, whatever some product listings imply.

What that combination actually does is turn the far end of a long table into a second, fully working audio point in the room, not just a pickup zone. Drop the SpeakerMic down at the far end of a room the PanaCast 55 VBS alone would struggle to cover, and the people sitting there aren’t just being heard better, they’re also hearing the call better, because the remote party’s voice is coming out of a speaker sitting right next to them instead of traveling the length of the room from the video bar. That’s the part that makes this a genuinely different device from a plain expansion mic: it extends both directions of the conversation, not just the microphone’s reach. The practical range effect is real too. A PanaCast 55 VBS that covers a room of roughly 6 by 6 meters on its own extends its effective audio pickup out to around 11 meters once the SpeakerMic is added, but the two-way audio is the part worth remembering, not just the number.

Why didn’t the PanaCast 50 VBS get this?

It didn’t, and Jabra’s own announcement doesn’t mention the PanaCast 50 VBS at all. The SpeakerMic is built and sold exclusively for the 55 VBS, with no confirmed path for it to work with the earlier model. My own read on this, and it’s my opinion rather than anything Jabra has stated outright, is that this was a platform readiness problem rather than a lack of vision. The 50 VBS launched as Jabra’s first real all-in-one Android room system, and expansion audio is the kind of feature that needs the right hardware and software foundation already in place before you can bolt it on. The 55 VBS was likely built with that expansion path in mind from the start, which is why it got the SpeakerMic and the earlier model didn’t.

Did competitors already have this?

The expansion category itself, yes, for years. Logitech has sold a Rally Mic Pod as a tabletop expansion microphone for its Rally Bar systems for a long time, and Poly has offered its own expansion microphone for the Poly Studio and Studio X lines well before Jabra had an equivalent answer. But both of those are exactly what they’re called: microphones. The Rally Mic Pod is a microphone-only device with no speaker built in, Logitech sells a separate Rally Speaker for room audio output. Poly’s expansion microphone is the same story, a three-mic array with a mute button and nothing that plays sound back. Neither one turns the far end of the table into a place people can actually hear the call from.

So the honest version of this story has two parts. Jabra was late to the category Logitech and Poly had already normalized, and it’s fair to hold that against them. But what Jabra actually shipped once it got there is not the same product its competitors have been selling. It’s a step further, and that’s worth being clear about rather than filing this under “Jabra finally caught up.”

Is this the start of Jabra chasing bigger rooms across the board?

It looks that way. Alongside the SpeakerMic, Jabra also announced Jabra Reach, a connectivity extender launching in October 2026 that carries single-cable USB-C video, audio, and screen sharing over HDBaseT up to 100 meters for BYOD setups, well beyond what a normal USB cable run could ever manage. Between the SpeakerMic solving audio range for the 55 VBS and Reach solving distance for BYOD rooms, Jabra is clearly building toward larger and more flexible spaces on both its Android room system side and its BYOD side at the same time.

Here’s where I’ll say something that isn’t confirmed anywhere, just my own prediction based on the pattern: the U30 already got HDMI bypass as a BYOD-focused, MDEP-aligned device, and if Jabra keeps building out BYOD hardware in that same direction, I’d expect a future U40 or U50 to eventually pick up some version of this same expansion audio thinking, even if it never carries the SpeakerMic branding itself. Take that as a guess about where the roadmap is heading, not as anything Jabra has said. If you’re sizing audio for a larger room right now and want a second opinion on which route fits, our consultation page is a good place to start, and the wider landscape is mapped in our meeting room hardware categories guide.

Sources

1. Jabra’s official announcement of the PanaCast 55 VBS, SpeakerMic, and Room Kits, February 2026
2. Jabra PanaCast SpeakerMic product page and specifications
3. First-look coverage of the Jabra Reach, PanaCast 55 VBS, and PanaCast SpeakerMic
4. Jabra PanaCast 55 VBS product page
5. Logitech Rally Mic Pod, an existing expansion microphone for Rally Bar systems
6. Poly’s existing expansion microphone for Poly Studio and Studio X systems