Same hardware. Same worker. A very different idea of what that worker is doing.
Frontline is a workflow engine: somebody authors the sequence, and voice navigates it. FieldPal assumes nobody can author every path, and listens to the technician instead.
Who this is for
Organisations already running head-mounted devices, or planning to. If you are looking at Frontline you have already accepted the argument for hands-free work, which puts you ahead of most of the market. This page is about what the worker does once the device is on.
What Frontline does well
TeamViewer has been in this category longer than almost anyone, with a real install base and genuine device partnerships. xPick is the strongest pick-by-vision product on the market and we don't compete with it. If your problem is warehouse picking, buy xPick. xMake and assembly guidance are similarly well matched to a rigid authored sequence, which is the right design when deviation is a defect.
Where FieldPal starts
From the opposite assumption. In field service and maintenance the job varies, the technician follows the evidence, and nobody can author every path in advance. So rather than leading the technician through a sequence, FieldPal listens to them describe the work and assembles the structured record from what was said.
Capture vs xInspect
If your inspections are fixed and repeatable, xInspect's authored sequence is a legitimate answer. If your technicians hit something the workflow didn't predict, they are back to a notebook.
| Capability | FieldPal Capture | Frontline xInspect |
|---|---|---|
| Head-mounted device support | Yes | Yes |
| Voice used to navigate a defined sequence | Not required | Yes |
| Record built from free, unscripted speech | Yes | No |
| Workflow authoring required before use | No | Yes |
| Handles jobs that weren't anticipated | Yes | No |
| Rigid step adherence and sign-off | Simpler | Extensive |
Find vs xAssist
In practice these are complements as much as alternatives. Find handles the questions already answered somewhere in your documentation. A remote expert call handles the rest. What Find changes is how often that call is needed.
| Capability | FieldPal Find | Frontline xAssist |
|---|---|---|
| Requires an available human expert | No | Yes |
| Requires video bandwidth | No | Yes |
| Answers grounded in your own documents | Yes | No |
| Live visual collaboration with a remote expert | No | Yes |
| Scales past the number of experts you employ | Yes | No |
The argument
Navigation isn’t conversation
Frontline is a workflow engine. Somebody authors a step sequence in the editor, and the worker is led through it. Voice is the navigation method: “next”, “select three”, read a value into a field. It is a hands-free replacement for tapping a screen.
That works beautifully when the path is known in advance.
What happens off the path
When it isn’t, the model breaks down. A technician who hits something the workflow didn’t predict has no move inside the product. They step out, pull out a notebook, and the digital trail stops exactly where the interesting part began.
FieldPal has no path to step off. The technician describes what they found, in whatever order they found it, and the structured record is built from that.
Your experts don’t scale
xAssist resolves uncertainty by connecting the technician to a human expert on a video call. It works, and when it works it is excellent. It also requires that an expert is available, is free right now, and that there is enough bandwidth to hold a video stream.
FieldPal Find resolves uncertainty by asking your own documentation: manuals, service bulletins, repair history. There is no interruption, no bandwidth needed, and no waiting for someone senior to pick up.
The expert call is still the right tool for the genuinely novel problem. It should just be the exception rather than the default.
Which one is right for you
Choose Frontline if
- Your use case is warehouse picking or line assembly, where the sequence is fixed
- Live visual collaboration with a remote expert is a core requirement
- Strict step-by-step adherence and sign-off is the point of the exercise
- You need a large existing device partner ecosystem today
Choose FieldPal if
- The work varies job to job and can't be fully authored in advance
- You want technicians answered without pulling an expert onto a call
- Your experts are a bottleneck, or about to retire
- You want structured capture from natural speech, not sequence navigation
Test it on the same device
If you already have RealWear units in the business, we can put FieldPal on them. Same hardware, no procurement cycle, and you can judge the difference directly.