Nuance PowerMic 4 Microphone for Dragon 16, 9 Foot Cord

I was using the PowerMic 3 and was having horrible luck with word recognition. No idea why and the best my IT team could conclude was that I’m a soft talker when I dictate. Whatever it may have been, it seems to have been resolved with the PowerMic 4, which has a mic not only on the front, but also the back, which I really like as I tend to hold it sideways/perpendicular to my mouth and the duel mic setup has no issue with this. Over all I like the PowerMic 4 over the PowerMic 3 for quite a few reasons. Hard buttons you can clean is a big plus. Much slimmer profile that I find much easier to find a comfortable grip on it, although, GRIP is an issue until you figure out what works for you, purely due to the fact that the hard plastic is fairly slick, much more so than the kind of plastic used on the PowerMic 3 which also has a hard shell but grips to your skin much better. That being said, the 3 is a fat curvey monster that always felt odd to me when holding it. Having the extra couple buttons to program on the 4 surprisingly really hasn’t been helpful for me personally, but could likely be a big advantage for some. I don’t care for where the buttons are placed either, with the A-D at the bottom which is very difficult to contort your hand to reach them, at least in the manner that I grip my mic. Also, I agree with one of the other reviewers, in that moving the check to the top where it’s a bit of a reach was not a good move, as I too personally use it to sign off every chart and it was much better placed on the PowerMic 3 and even the PowerMic 2 (from that reviewers pictures anyway, as I have never used that version personally).I have had some minor difficulties with the mic on a couple occasions telling me that it was already logged into another session, asked me if it wanted the mic to be redirected to the current session, and then just goes in a circle with the same question and unsuccessfully pairing until it stalls the program all together… if that happens do this (and your welcome… it took me and my IT team over 1.5 hours of trying various things before finally getting it back online): assuming windows users: search for/go to control panel, then hardware and sound, then under sound select ‘manage audio devices’, go to recording tab at the top, then disable the PowerMic4 (or better yet disable every option)… this disconnects it from whatever ghost connection it thinks it has to another session… now re enable the PowerMic 4 and make sure it’s also your default device (for peace of mind I deactivated everything else so it can’t switch around, which it has before). Tada!!! Back up and running!Hope someone finds this helpful :)

Bought this for my husband for Christmas at his request. He says it works great and saves him a ton of time with his charting

Dragon recognizes this as a microphone but there is no menu to customize the buttons and the default settings do not allow me to use the buttons in any way. Even the big red 'record' button is dysfunctional, so I am still manually turning mic on and off on the PC and using this as a $350 microphone just as I would with a $20 one, with zero extra functionality. If I google powermic instructions it says there is a 'powermic tab' under 'options.' My options window does not have this tab, this tab does not exist for me anywhere.I have Windows 11 and I just upgraded to dragon 16 thinking that would fix it, but no powermic tab. I feel scammed. I am waiting to hear back from customer service but so far nothing.update 6/13/2023:I upgraded from Dragon 15 in order to use the Powermic4 and Powermic4 functioned as a basic $20 microphone but there was nothing in the software to customize Powermic4 or use its buttons or use in any way other than as a basic microphone. I spent 2 days on phone and email exchanges with tech support who gave me variations of unplug and plug in again and did not address the issue.I feel scammed.Not my first issue with Nuance/Dragon. When I ordered Dragon 15 they never gave me a link to download it and I ended up returning it on their website and using Amazon which was quick and easy. It's as if they do not staff their home software department with adequate staff, but they are happy to sell overpriced items developed elsewhere. I keep returning to Nuance/Dragon because their Medical dictation is fabulous at my work and google dictation is underwhelming, but I have my eye out for any competitors for the future. I ended up returning the Powermic and the Dragon 16 upgrade. Amazon was quick processing the refunds.

If you use dragon naturally speaking, and you don’t want to wear a headset, this is probably the right microphone for you. The alternatives are very similar and a bit mod expensive. It’s very good.

Works well with Dragon software

I tried using a cheaper one that I bought on Amazon. A lot of the controls didn’t work with it. These work fantastic! I have four of them that I use for medical dragon. They are all great. When I first started using it, I was plugged it into a laptop and carrying the laptop around. That caused the connections to fail. But if you just have a desktop computer or can plug it into a Terminal and not lug it around all day they,re fantastic.

I highly recommend investing in a dragon for your medical documentation. It takes hours off of the daily grind. It works well if you have an accent because it your voice can adapt to most accents. Microphone quality Is excellent. Great value for the money.

I was nervous reading the review that said this microphone was not compatible with the most updated version of Dragon, but my old Dragon Mic 3 was having a lot of issues (buttons sticking, randomly would stop being recognized by my computer), so I took a chance on the 4. So far so good. My computer and current Dragon Medical One setup recognized the mic right away, and I’ve had no issues at all so far. What a relief! I really like the new design - I don’t think these buttons will stick the way the old ones did. I will update if any problems arise, but for now I’m happy!