Buzz
Despite Google offering various online chatting options, the classic Hangouts app remains a popular choice for virtual meetings. While business clients relying on Google services might have transitioned to Hangouts Meet and Hangout Chat, the traditional Hangouts version continues to serve remote workers, online students, and anyone without a G Suite subscription.
Optimizing for High-Quality Calls in Google Hangouts
All you need to initiate a text chat or a video call on Hangouts is a Google email account. This seemingly creates almost no barriers to entry. However, your usage experience becomes much better if you know how to set up for high-quality calls in Google Hangouts, especially when dealing with an unstable network connection. Here's what you need to do.
How to achieve high-quality calls with a slow Internet connection?
Remember that using video consumes more bandwidth than text chatting, so if you have a slower Internet connection, you'll want to lower some settings to save valuable bandwidth through the following steps:
Step 1: Hover over the call window until the call controls start appearing at the top.
Step 2: Click on the gear icon or choose Settings.
Step 3: In the new window, click on the Bandwidth tab.
Step 4: Depending on your camera and Internet settings, you'll want to choose a lower resolution for both Outgoing video (your video feed that Hangouts is recording) and Incoming video (the video feed from other participants in a call. Opting for higher bandwidth like selecting HD quality over SD quality will provide clearer images, but with a slow Internet connection, you may experience frame drops, video distortion, or even audio glitches.
While opting for a lower video resolution may make your image less clear, it helps maintain smooth audio. This way, if you have an unstable or slow network connection, participants in your video conference can still hear your voice, even if your video feed is slightly pixelated.
Hangouts Meet is a preferred video calling app for many, and during usage, you may encounter various errors. Check out the article on fixing Hangouts Meet issues available here.
