You don't need a 4K webcam. Well, almost nobody needs a 4K webcam, but you probably don't even want one — or couldn't use one, even if you wanted to. If you're not a professional streamer or some other type of camera-based content creator, a 4K webcam is not going to do you much good: even in 2026, most video conferencing apps, such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom cap your outgoing stream at 1080p or lower. There's no reason to spend hundreds on one of the best webcams around if nobody is even going to see you in all your ultra-high-res glory.

Maybe you don't need a 4K webcam, but is a 2K webcam a good compromise? There aren't too many 2K webcams, but a little extra resolution might be just what you need to get a slightly clearer picture without going overboard.

Razer's Kiyo V2 X is a 2K webcam that records video at 1440p / 60 fps (also at 1080p / 60/30/24 fps and at 720p / 60/30 fps). It also features speedy (and somewhat trigger-happy) auto-focus, an 80-degree field of view, built-in microphones, and an integrated physical privacy shutter, and is available now in black, white, and "quartz" (Razer's signature pastel pink color) for $99.99.

Design of the Kiyo V2 X

The Kiyo V2 X is the budget-friendly product in Razer's Kiyo lineup, and you can tell immediately by the lack of removable USB cable. The Kiyo V2 X looks very similar to its pricier sibling, the Kiyo V2 — it has the same general design: a slim circle lens attached to a long, rectangular body, atop a fixed L-shaped monitor mount. In fact, it looks almost identical to the Kiyo V2 at first glance, but the differences become clear once you take a closer look.

The Kiyo V2 X is slightly smaller than the Kiyo V2, measuring approximately 4.3 inches (109mm) wide by 2.64 inches (67mm) deep, and is 2.7 inches (67.8mm) high. The Kiyo V2, by comparison, measures 4.7 x 2.57 x 2.9 inches (116 x 65.3 x 74mm) — so it's not gigantic compared to the Kiyo V2 X, but it's enough to be noticeable. The difference in weight is what's really significant, however, while the Kiyo V2 X weighs a mere 5.64 ounces (160g) with its cable and mount included (as they are, after all, non-detachable), the Kiyo V2 is a hefty 8.99 ounces (255g) without its cable.

There are other signs the Kiyo V2 X is built cheaper — not only does it have a non-detachable USB-A cable, which is arguably the hallmark of any budget webcam, it also has a smaller glass lens area and a cheaper, lighter-weight textured ring around the lens for opening and closing the privacy shutter.

Speaking of which, the Kiyo V2 X does have the same built-in physical privacy shutter as the Kiyo V2 and the Kiyo Pro Ultra, which is a fantastic feature to see in a "budget" model. The privacy shutter is very elegantly implemented — a quick, easy twist of the ring around the camera lens, and the shutter closes (it twists over the camera, under the glass lens, like a camera aperture). I especially like that it's easy to open and close without disturbing the webcam's position too much — you don't have to worry about turning your webcam around or knocking it off your monitor.

The Kiyo V2 X comes with its accessories permanently attached: a 5-foot (1.5m) rubber USB-A cable with a built-in cable tie, and an L-shaped monitor mount. The cable is fine, if a little stiff — but that's pretty typical of built-in webcam cables. It's a USB-A cable and it supports USB 2.0, which is a relief, as we've seen a couple of webcams recently that require USB 3.0 to even function (including the Kiyo V2, which needs a USB-C port).

The built-in monitor mount is a standard Razer-style L-shaped mount. It has a small lip at the front to secure the mount to your monitor, along with a rubber-coated "foot" that presses against the back of your monitor to keep the webcam in place. The mount allows you to swivel the camera (360 degrees) and tilt (slightly past 90 degrees), and has a 1/4-inch threaded tripod attachment point on the bottom, in case you want to put the Kiyo V2 X on a tripod.

Well-lit Performance

I take all my webcam test photos in my home office, which is a very well-controlled setting that gets zero natural light. For my well-lit test scenario, I have a ring light, a key light, and four desktop monitors (three 27-inch and one 34-inch) in front of me, an arching floor lamp above me, and two desktop lamps behind me, as well as some ambient lighting from my desk and peripherals. For consistency, I take all of my final photos in Windows 11's built-in photo app at 1080p resolution. These individual photos are used as visual references, but my observations come from my overall testing experience with each webcam.

The Kiyo V2 X performed fairly well in our well-lit test scenario. I wasn't blown away by the picture quality, detail-wise, even with the camera set to shoot in 1440p / 60 fps, but the webcam did a good job of balancing exposure quickly and auto-white-balancing to produce a realistic-looking and vibrant palette. I'd be pretty happy with this image for a plug-n-play product if I was meeting with my colleagues or friends over video chat. I think the lack of detail was mostly a function of the Kiyo V2 X's default software features/settings, as I found that turning off the 2D / 3D noise reduction in Synapse 4 and disabling auto-focus gave me much crisper pictures — at least while I was in the Synapse 4 software, anyway.

Low-Light Performance

To test the low light performance of this webcam, I turned off all of the lights in my home office except for my primary 34-inch monitor. I took this picture with the Windows 11 camera app taking up half the screen and the default Google homepage taking up the other half.

Razer's Kiyo line of webcams has always been pretty impressive when it comes to low-light scenarios, but the Kiyo V2 X didn't perform nearly as well as I hoped it would. It seemed to have trouble balancing exposure, oscillating between way too much and way too little several times until it landed on what was definitely way too little. It was very trigger-happy when it came to both the auto-focus and the auto-exposure — it couldn't seem to keep me in focus at all, even when there was a decent amount of light on my face. Also, any movement — or even no movement — seemed to kick the auto-focus into re-focusing, which resulted in me just... never being in focus.

The lack of detail in the well-lit scenario was definitely exacerbated by less-than-ideal lighting, so I went into Synapse 4 to see if there was something I was missing. Turning off 2D and 3D noise reduction did bring back some detail (it was smoothing over a lot of poorly-lit areas), but, naturally, introduced a lot of noise. But it was really the webcam's inability to stick to focusing on one area that made everything kind of fuzzy.

Overexposed Performance

To test the webcam's performance in an over-exposed setting, I turned off the lighting in front of me, save for my primary 34" monitor. I left the overhead light and the lights behind me turned on. An overexposed lighting scenario is any lighting scenario in which there's a lot of light coming from behind you (e.g., with your back against a window), but I use this particular scenario as I think it's pretty realistic — how often are you really taking on-camera conference calls while sitting up against a window?

The Kiyo V2 X performed pretty poorly in this scenario, too. Not only was it unable to calibrate the light balance properly (resulting in a lot of blown out areas in the background), it also couldn't focus on me basically... at all. It did keep trying, however, which was frustrating, to say the least, especially as even the tiniest movement from me seemed to trigger it.

After many, many minutes of this constant auto-focus battle, it seemed to just give up, and stuck me with an extra-blurry image that focused on nothing. I tried to switch over to manual focus, which worked in Razer's Synapse 4 app... and only in Razer's Synapse 4 app. Switching to the Windows 11 camera app or Google Meet or Discord video chat caused the camera to switch back to auto-focus (or at least, that's what I think it did — either that, or manual focus isn't actually all that manual). I'm sure this could be fixed with a firmware update, but, well, Razer needs to make that firmware update.

Specs

Features and Software

The Kiyo V2 X works about as well as you can expect right out of the box — though you will need to use Razer's universal peripheral software, Synapse 4, to update the webcam's firmware. You can also use it to adjust the camera's settings, though there's honestly not a ton that I'd recommend you change for the Kiyo V2 X (every setting I tried to tweak only made things worse, somehow).

You can set up cropped "scenes" in Synapse 4 using the Kiyo V2 X's 4x digital zoom; this is handy for people who want to crop out the mess around them and/or set up multiple angles to switch between so they can look like newscasters in their work meetings. You can also turn off the Kiyo V2 X's trigger-happy auto-focus and manually focus the lens, but this didn't seem to work outside of Synapse 4 in my testing. Whenever I switched to a different app, even after saving the settings to the webcam multiple times, it was back to non-stop auto-focus.

There are also a handful of other standard settings in Synapse 4, such as auto/manual exposure, low light boost, 2D/3D noise reduction, and the standard picture adjustments (brightness, contrast, saturation, white balance, etc) — but I found the webcam's default settings ended up giving me the best overall picture. The Kiyo V2 X does not support HDR; you'll need to upgrade to the Kiyo V2 for that.

Bottom Line

The Kiyo V2 X is... sort of mediocre. It certainly looks good — like the Kiyo V2, anyway — and it works decently well out of the box in ideal lighting setups. I am a big fan of the built-in privacy shutter, and I think it's one of the best-implemented on the market (it's not creative at all, and other companies — such as Logitech — also do it, but that doesn't mean it's not still really good). But as soon as you're in any lighting situation that's not basically perfect, it goes a little crazy trying to compensate, to the point where it never actually manages to compensate. The auto-focus worked well in my well-lit scenario — it was quick and accurate, that is — but it was still easily triggered by tiny movements. This resulted in me being out of focus about half as often as I was in focus, because it was constantly recalibrating.

At $100, the Kiyo V2 X is the budget option in Razer's webcam lineup, but that doesn't necessarily make it budget-friendly. The Logitech Brio 500 retails for $30 more and only records at 1080p / 30 fps, but it'll make you look better, faster, and it also has a cleverly-implemented physical privacy shutter (plus, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it on sale for around $100, if you're patient). The Elgato Facecam MK.2 records at 1080p / 60 fps and doesn't have a sexy privacy shutter (it does have one, just not a sexy one), but it's currently on sale for $100 at Elgato's website. And if you're looking for something that's actually budget-friendly, Elgato's Facecam Neo offers comparably solid performance for just $60.

It might seem like there's a streaming-specific, AI-enhanced 4K webcam being advertised around every corner — because there... kind of is. YoloLiv is a streaming hardware company that mainly focuses on multi-camera streaming setups, but the YoloCam S3 is a 4K webcam with a large sensor and lightning-fast autofocus that's clearly here to compete with the best webcams on the market.

The YoloCam S3 is a small, sturdy little webcam that captures video in 4K / 30 fps resolution (as well as 1080p / 60 fps). It features a large, 1/1.28-inch sensor, 4x digital zoom, and 82-degree field of view, autofocus, and AI-enhanced face-tracking and low-light performance. It has an all-aluminum body and comes with a magnetic monitor mount that lets you mount it in landscape or portrait mode. The YoloCam S3 is available now, retailing for $199.99 — the same price point as Logitech's newest 4K MX Brio.

Design of the S3

The YoloCam S3 is a small, surprisingly sturdy rectangular metal block with a glass-and-metal encased circular lens on the front. It measures approximately 2.38 inches (60.45mm) wide by 1.87 inches (47.5mm) high, and is 1.28 inches (32.5mm) deep, not including the removable magnetic monitor mount. It weighs 4.07 ounces (115.5g) without the mount, and 6.53 ounces (185g) with the mount, which makes it a little lighter than the MX Brio (4.83oz. / 137g) — though the mount is, arguably, a necessary component for this webcam.

The YoloCam S3 comes with a detachable metal L-shaped monitor mount. Even if you're not perching this webcam on top of your monitor, you'll probably need to use the mount — as the webcam has no mounting attachment points on its body, just magnets (located on two sides, so you can mount the webcam in portrait or landscape orientation. The mount is a fairly standard L-shaped mount, with a rubber "foot" that helps it grip the back of your monitor, but it is made of aluminum — most similar mounts, such as the one that comes with the MX Brio or the one that comes with the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, are plastic.

The webcam attaches to a vertically-tilting arm via a fairly strong magnet — strong enough that I wasn't worried the webcam would get knocked off the mount without some actual force, but not so strong that I was able to adjust the tilt by pulling on just the webcam. There's a lip at the back of the mount, presumably to prevent you from mounting the webcam too far back (and to keep the picture straight); while the mount doesn't really allow for horizontal swivel, you have some space to turn the webcam in front of the lip (but not much).

The mount also has a standard 1/4-inch tripod mounting attachment point on the bottom, so you can use the webcam with a tripod or other stand/mount. But because the only thing holding this webcam on the mount is moderately strong magnetic force, I wouldn't plan on using it as a replacement for your Go Pro. I will point out that the MX Brio also has a detachable, magnetic L-shaped monitor mount, but it's implemented in such a way that the webcam can swivel atop the mount (and the webcam has a tripod attachment point built-in — no mount necessary.

Aesthetically-speaking, this is a nice-looking webcam. It's slightly reminiscent of old-school cameras: It has a matte black metal front plate that's lightly textured to look like leather, as well as an etched metal ring around its circular lens. The ring, though textured, does not move or twist like the rings on Razer's recent Kiyo V2 and Kiyo Pro Ultra; the YoloCam S3 doesn't have a built-in privacy shutter, nor does it come with a lens cover. This seems like a pretty big oversight considering the webcam doesn't fold down (like the Insta360 Link), nor is there an easy way to turn it around — I suppose you can pop it off of the mount and unplug it, but you can do that with any webcam. There's a tiny, pin-prick of an LED on the front of the webcam that lights up when the camera is turned on, but that's not really enough of an indicator for me to be comfortable with an AI-powered 4K lens pointed at me all day long.

In the box, the YoloCam S3 comes with a detachable monitor mount, a thick, rubber-coated 5-foot (1.5m) USB-C to USB-C cable, and a USB-A to USB-C converter (in case you want to plug it into a USB-C port — the webcam does need to be plugged into a USB 3.0 port to work).

Specs

Well-lit Performance

The YoloCam S3 is a 4K webcam with a 1/1.28-inch sensor and a f/1.85 aperture. It has a fairly wide 82-degree field of view, 4x digital zoom, HDR, and AI-enhanced facial tracking and low-light boosting. It can stream video at 4K (30 fps) and at 1080p (60/50/30/25 fps).

I do all of my webcam testing in my home office, which gets virtually no natural light. For my well-lit test scenario, I have ring light, a key light, and four desktop monitors (three 27-inch monitors, and my primary 34-inch widescreen monitor) turned on in front of me, as well as two desktop lamps and an overhead arc lamp turned on behind me. There's also some ambient lighting from my desk and other peripherals, but it's negligible. For consistency, I take all of my photos using Windows 11's built-in camera app. (Note that my observations are based on my overall experience with the webcam — these photos will give you an idea of the picture quality, but they're not the sole criteria.)

The YoloCam S3 performed very well in the well-lit scenario — I was particularly impressed with how crisp and clear the picture looked right out of the box. Not all 4K webcams are created equal: Resolution is only one aspect of what makes you look good on a webcam (and let's be serious — it often works against that); the lens/sensor and software-based fine-tuning ("post-processing") also play a large part.

While image quality on the YoloCam S3 was excellent, it was a little too high-contrast. You can see in the image above that the result is a slightly washed-out looking subject (me), and blowouts in areas that are very white (the keyboard on my desk). It doesn't look terrible, but it's noticeable enough that it seems like I need to poke around in the companion software and do at least a little tweaking.

Low-Light Performance

To test the YoloCam S3's performance in low lighting, I turned off all of the lights in my office and three of my monitors, leaving only my primary 34-inch widescreen monitor turned on. I took these pictures with the Windows 11 camera app on one half of my screen, and my desktop wallpaper (dark) on the other half.

The too-high-contrast is more noticeable here — you can see blown out areas on my face, which is... not ideal, to say the least. The webcam still did a great job of picking up detail, both on the subject (me) and in the background, and there was very little graininess as I moved around (but, of course, lowering the contrast introduces a little more grain).

Overexposed Performance

To test the YoloCam S3's performance in an overexposed setting, I turned off all of the lights and monitors in front of me (except for my primary 34-inch monitor), and kept the lights behind and above me turned on. This is probably one of the more common lighting scenarios for people who aren't professional streamers, as most people don't have studio lighting set up to shine at them from behind their monitor.

The YoloCam S3 performed well in this scenario (no webcam does very well). It attempted to light both the subject and the background and ended up leaning a little too heavily on both contrast and saturation, which is pretty typical for, well, most webcams. The webcam didn't disappoint or impress in this scenario, it performed as expected.

Features and Software

The YoloCam S3 is configurable through the YoloLiv Compose companion app. The app gives you a nice amount of control over picture quality: You can manually adjust exposure, white balance, sharpness, contrast, and saturation; switch between continuous, single, and face-focused autofocus (and manual focus); switch the frame rate and orientation, and zoom and crop areas of the image (you can set four hotkeys for different "scenes").

The app also has a color-grading feature "similar to DaVinci Resolve" that lets you color-grade your images in real time — a nice feature for streamers, but it's too involved for the average person (and even the average streamer) to use constantly.

Bottom Line

YoloLiv mainly makes hardware for streamers, and the YoloCam S3 is... also for streamers. The image quality is excellent — on par with that of the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra — though you'll need to do some fine-tuning once you get it out of the box. But if you're not looking to move into professional streaming any time soon, the YoloCam S3 is a little too aimed at pros. It's designed to fit into a professional streaming setup, not a home office (or just home) setup — it needs a USB 3.0 port to function, there's no privacy shutter or lens cap, and you'll need to play with the software to get the picture perfect. If you're looking for something that will make you look good right away and still has 4K/30 fps resolution (even though video conferencing apps still limit you to 1080p outgoing at most), the Logitech MX Brio is a bit more amateur-friendly.

Too many of today's best webcams are 4K webcams these days, but at least that means they're starting to get more affordable. At $150, Razer's new Kiyo V2 isn't necessarily a steal, but it's half the price of the $300 Kiyo Ultra Pro. And, since you (probably) don't actually need a 4K webcam in the first place, this might just be the perfect price point for the average person seeking 4K image quality.

The Kiyo V2 captures video at 4K / 30fps, 1440p / 30 fps, and at 1080p 60/30/24 fps. It features an 8.3MP Sony STARVIS sensor with a 93-degree field of view, auto and manual focus, and a focal length of 3.0mm. It also has HDR (at 30 fps), 4x zoom, built-in omnidirectional stereo microphones, and a built-in monitor mount with a tripod attachment point on the bottom. At $149.99, it's cheaper than a lot of 4K webcams, and it comes in three colors: black, white, and quartz (pink).

Design of the Kiyo V2

The Kiyo V2 is a 4K webcam with a detachable USB-C cable and a built-in L-shaped monitor mount. It also features a built-in physical privacy shutter similar to the one in the Kiyo Pro Ultra, though it doesn't come with a lens cap, like the Pro Ultra does (the shutter is under the glass here).

The Kiyo V2 is no longer the single giant circle lens we're used to seeing in the Kiyo line — it's now a slim circular lens attached to an elongated body — it looks a bit like the Logitech MX Brio 4K, just... exaggerated. The bad news is that this definitely doesn't look as cool as the pure circle lens did (in my opinion, anyway). The good news is that being lower and wider over taller and more aesthetic probably makes it more convenient.

Well, probably. It's still pretty large: With the stand, it measures approximately 4.6 inches (116mm) wide by 2.6 inches (65.3mm) deep, and is 2.9 inches (74mm) high. The MX Brio 4K is quite a bit smaller, by comparison, at 3.84 x 1.73 x 1.42 inches (98 x 44 x 36mm). The Kiyo V2 is also pretty hefty, weighing 8.99 ounces (255g), versus the MX Brio 4K's 4.83 ounces (137g). The size and weight of the Kiyo V2 wasn't too much of an issue for me with my crazy 4-monitor setup, but it seems like it could be a bit of a liability on a laptop.

I'm a big fan of the Kiyo V2's built-in privacy shutter, which works exactly like the privacy shutter in the Kiyo Pro Ultra (and in the MX Brio 4K). All you need to do is twist the textured ring around the lens, and the shutter snaps into place, covering the lens and preventing any webcam-related mishaps. I do wish that it came with some sort of lens cap, however, just because the glass lens area is still pretty large (about 1.75 inches / 44.45mm in diameter), but that shouldn’t be an issue unless you regularly travel with your high-res webcam.

The Kiyo V2 comes with a permanently-attached L-shaped monitor mount that allows for both tilting and 360-degree swiveling. The monitor mount is sturdy, with a rubber-coated "foot" that helps keep it from moving around too much on your monitor. It also has a 1/4-inch universal tripod attachment point on the bottom, so you can attach it to a tripod or other stand if you prefer.

In the box, the Kiyo V2 comes with just one accessory — a detachable 6.5-foot (2m) rubber-coated USB-C to USB-C cable. The webcam must be plugged into a USB-C port with this specific cable to get the full 4K quality picture, however, which is a little inconvenient — both because the cable is a bit stiff, and because some of us don't have an abundance (or any) free USB-C ports on our PCs.

Specs

Well-lit Performance

I take all my webcam test photos in my home office, which is a very controlled setting that gets almost no natural light (I also take most of them at night, so there's zero natural light). For my well-lit test scenario, I have a ring light, a key light, four desktop monitors (three 27" and one 34") in front of me, and two desktop lamps and an arching floor lamp behind me. There's also some ambient lighting from my desk and other peripherals. For consistency, I take all my photos using Windows 11's built-in camera app, at 1080p resolution. (Note that my observations come from my overall testing experience with the webcam, not just these single photos.)

The Kiyo V2 performed very well in the well-lit testing scenario, especially when it came to white balance and auto-exposure. The white balance was almost perfect right out of the box: It gave my skin enough color that I looked alive, but not so much that it was obviously oversaturated. The webcam also did a very good job with auto-exposure, though I still found that I preferred the picture I got by tweaking the exposure manually in Razer's Synapse software.

I wasn't a big fan of the webcam's extra-wide 93° field of view, as it ended up showing too much of my space. Luckily this can be configured in Synapse (with zoom/crop). But the picture still looked good at a wide angle, with less distortion and warping than I expected. Razer's webcams tend to be tuned for a slightly more dramatic, cinematic picture than most webcams, which I particularly like — I don't think most people are looking for a webcam that's just pure, undiluted image quality; most people want a webcam that makes them look good.

Low-Light Performance

To test the webcam's low-light performance, I turn off all of my lights and three of my monitors, leaving just one 34-inch monitor as my sole source of illumination. I take my photos with the Windows 11 camera app occupying about half of that screen, and my desktop wallpaper takes up the other half.

The Kiyo V2 performed decently well in this scenario, though it tended to overexpose the subject (me) at the expense of the background. Still, I didn't look too washed out most of the time, and the overall image quality was good: There wasn't too much artifacting, and it was a little noisy in darker areas (as expected).

Overexposed Performance

To test the webcam's performance in over-exposed settings, I turn off all of the lights in front of me, except for my single 34" monitor, and keep the lights behind/over me turned on. If you're not sitting in a pitch-black room, the most common lighting scenario most people are going to end up with is (at least slightly) over-exposed — unless you're streaming professionally, you probably don't have a ton of lights behind your monitor.

The Kiyo V2 also performed fairly well in this scenario — or, well, it lit everything pretty evenly. It did a good job of balancing the exposure of the subject with the exposure of the background, and it also managed to get plenty of detail from the background without too much notable blowout. The result wasn't necessarily the most aesthetically-pleasing, but it worked well enough.

Features and Software

The Kiyo V2 works pretty well out of the box, especially if you already have decent lighting set up. It does an excellent job with auto-exposure and white balancing, but the ultra-wide 93-degree field of view is probably too much exposure (the other kind) for most people. Most of us don't want people to see everything we have in the background. To configure this and other settings, you'll need Razer's universal peripheral software, Synapse.

Synapse is far from my favorite piece of software, but at least for webcams, its clunkiness makes sense. Synapse lets you adjust the webcam's field of view (by zooming — up to 4x), auto focus, auto exposure, and color balance, manually. It has some streamer-friendly features, such as the ability to save different zoom presets and assign shortcuts, so you can quickly switch between angles while you're streaming.

You can also toggle on some software-based features, such as HDR, dynamic noise reduction, and low-light compensation. There are a couple of microphone settings as well, but let's face it — you're not using the webcam's built-in mics unless you're absolutely desperate (or your computer automatically switched to them when you plugged the camera in, and you didn't realize it). Like most webcam mics, they're just average; you'd be better off using the built-in mic on your laptop or anything else, first.

Bottom Line

The Kiyo V2 is a nice follow-up to the wildly expensive Kiyo Pro Ultra — it's got great image quality and 4K resolution, though the Kiyo Pro Ultra still looks better overall, if you're looking for the best picture (both in quality and aesthetics). If you have a free USB-C port, this webcam is definitely worth a look. If you don't have a consistently free USB-C port, however, this might be frustrating — nobody wants to keep plugging in a chunky USB-C cable every time they want to get on cam, and there are other things vying for that port (in my case, an external hard drive that could probably be plugged in elsewhere, but still). While I get that the Kiyo V2 probably requires a lot of power, other webcams that strongly advise you use their specific cable/port combo usually still work pretty well if you don't — but the Kiyo V2 doesn't even try.

You need a webcam in a hurry, and you can’t get to the store or wait for Amazon to get the best webcam, so that old Android smartphone that is now lying in a desk drawer, waiting to be recycled, could just save your skin! Yes, that old smartphone that you keep in case of emergencies or to keep your child amused while grocery shopping, now it can be brought back into service as a webcam!

In this how-to, we’ll look at Camo Studio, a free tool that turns your old Android phone into a wireless webcam. This would be useful for general webcam duties and for streamers who need an additional angle in a shot. We’ll show you how to set up your Camo camera and then how to use it in OBS.

Camo is easy to install, and all you will need is a spare Android smartphone and a PC running Windows 11 or 10. The process works over Wi-Fi, but if you intend to use the setup for some time, it would be prudent to externally power the smartphone, as the process can drain your smartphone battery.

So let's get started!

Installing Camo Studio for Windows

Installing Camo Studio for Windows is really simple, and it provides us with the user interface that we will use to control the webcam.

1. Download the Camo Studio app from the website.

2. Navigate to the Downloads folder and double-click to install the downloaded exe file. The installation process will use the Microsoft Store to install the application.

3. Follow the prompts as the installation progresses.

4. Open Camo.

The Camo Studio User Interface

The user interface is broken down into four key areas.

1. Device: Here, we can select the device that we wish to use as a webcam,

2. Device Settings: Tweak the settings of the selected device, set the resolution, focus, and light modes. We can switch between the front and rear cameras

3. The main output: See what the camera sees, including any filters.

4. Filters and templates: Tweak the look and feel of the video stream using predefined filters and templates.

Camo can be used with normal USB / laptop webcams and our Android smartphone. But, for the latter, we need to install an app on our Android device.

Installing Camo on your Android device

1. Open the Google Play Store.

2. Search for Camo Camera and install the application.

Connecting Your Smartphone to Camo Studio

With both the Camo Studio and Camo Camera app installed, we can now connect the two together.

1. In the Camo Studio Windows app, click on Device >> Pair a device. In the graphic, look for 1 to spot where this is.

2. Open the Camo Camera app on your smartphone and click on the Wi-Fi+ icon. Your PC and Smartphone must be on the same network.

3. Scan the QR code displayed in the Camo Studio app using the Camo Camera app on your Smartphone. The phone and your computer should connect in a few seconds. If it fails, restart the process from step 1.

4. You should now see a live video stream from your smartphone. You won’t have to do the full process every time. In the future, your smartphone will be listed in the dropdown.

Tweaking Your Webcam Settings

The basic camera settings are fine, but we can easily tweak them to get the best possible output.

1. Click on the dropdown under Lens, and swap between the front-facing and rear cameras.

2. Under Background, try blurring the background.

3. Under Effects, try out some of the effects; Sketch and 8-bit are great fun. Emoji Face is very “Black Mirror.”

4. The Adjustments section is where we can alter the temperature, tint, contrast, etc. of the video stream.

Templates to Tweak Your Scene

On the right of the screen (4), we can see a selection of templates for our video stream. By default, Watermark is active. Clicking on any of the other templates will trigger the template to apply to our output. Let's tweak our scene to “Meet & Greet”.

1. From the templates, click on Meet & Greet.

2. Click on the Layers icon.

3.Select a text element from the list.

4. Click on the text dropdown and select Variables. You’ll find this dropdown on the right side of the UI.

5. Tweak the variables to meet your requirements and then close the dialog box. The changes have been made to the template.

This same process applies to all of the templates.

Using Camo with OBS

Open Broadcaster System (OBS) is like having a full TV production and mixing suite on your desktop. With Camo and OBS, we can coordinate the Camo webcam along with our usual webcam and create a multi-camera setup for use on streams and YouTube videos.

1. With your Camo setup running, open OBS.

2. Under Scenes, click on + to create a new scene called “Camera2” and click OK.

3. With the Camera2 scene selected, under Sources, click on +.

4. Select “Video Capture Device” from the list.

5. Create a new source called Camo and click OK.

6. From the list of devices, select Camo and click OK.

7. The Camo video source should now be displayed in the Camera2 scene.

8. Click on the Camera2 and another scene to swap between the Scenes in OBS, giving you multiple camera angles for your next stream.

The Emeet Piko+ is the "world's first AI-powered dual-camera 4K webcam," according to the company. Of course, it seems like every smartphone since 2014 has had two or more cameras, so the Piko+ might be new in the world of webcams, but we've seen it before.

That said, we're here to answer the question: Is the best 4K webcam actually two 4K webcams?

The Piko+ features a 1/2.55-inch Sony sensor with an aperture of f/1.8, and records video at 4K / 30fps or 1080p / 60fps. It has a 73-degree field of view, 1.5x digital zoom, and features two lenses — one for imaging and one to help out the webcam's AI with focusing and metering. It also has three built-in noise-cancelling microphones and works with Emeet Studio, which lets you link and switch between multiple cameras (complete with multi-device audio mixing). Perhaps the most enticing thing about the Piko+ is its price — its MSRP is listed at $95.99, which is already pretty good for a 4K webcam, and it's currently $16 off at Emeet, bringing it down to just $79.99.

Design

The Piko+ is smaller than most webcams — but, thanks to its design, it’s also higher-profile. This small, oval-shaped webcam measures 2.2 inches (56mm) high by 1.69 inches (43mm) wide, and is 0.87 inches (22mm) deep. On the front of the webcam, you'll see two lenses under a round glass cover — similar to what you see on the back of most smartphones these days. The Piko+ has two lenses: a primary lens (used for imaging) and an AI lens, which is used to help with focus, face detection, and metering. The Piko+ comes in three colorways — black, white, and mint green (our review unit came in black). There's a small indicator light, right under the dual lenses, that glows blue when the camera is streaming.

The webcam has a glossy finish that's pretty fingerprint-prone — not that you'll be touching your webcam too often. However, it was noticeable enough that I did start to wish the company had sent over a lighter color, where fingerprints would be less noticeable.

The back of the webcam features a USB-C port, and the bottom has a 1/4-inch threaded mounting point for attaching the webcam to a standard monitor mount or tripod.

The Piko doesn't have a built-in privacy shutter, but it does come with this cute, rubbery panda-wearing-sunglasses lens cover thing, that attaches to the Piko's lens magnetically. The lens cover is cute and it works pretty well — the magnet isn't very strong, so you can easily remove it from the webcam without moving the camera itself — but it is a completely separate piece. I don't love this, because it means it's easy to lose. I don't know about you, but I definitely misplace things often enough that I know it's only a matter of time before this goes missing. It's also not terribly useful for anything other than sitting on your desk — the moment you toss the Piko+ into a bag or, I don't know, lightly brush it against anything, the privacy cover falls off. Webcam privacy covers aren't necessarily designed to protect the lens, but most of them do — this little panda is cute, but gimmicky.

My review unit came with a lightweight aluminum tripod in lieu of a traditional monitor mount. I don't mind a webcam tripod, but everything about this tripod just feels cheap. It has three legs that measure 3.76 inches (95.5mm) and extend 2.44 inches ( 62mm) for a total length of 6.16 inches (156.4mm). With the legs fully extended and spread, the tripod lifts the webcam about 7 inches (177.8mm) off the surface of your desk. The tripod also tilts and swivels, so it shouldn't be too hard to keep yourself in-frame.

I like the idea of a webcam tripod, but not as a primary mount — it's hard to find a place on your desk for something like this, even if your desk is clutter-free. This tripod is also very flimsy and easy to knock over (I know this because I kept knocking it over). Anyway, I'm not the only one who doesn't particularly care for webcam tripods, and the Piko+ now ships with a clamp-style monitor mount instead of a tripod.

The thing about the Piko+ is that, at 2.2 inches (56mm) high, it's taller than most webcams. This might not be a problem for most people, but I have four monitors — two horizontally stacked in the middle, with a vertical 27-inch on each side — and the Piko+ adds just enough extra height to interfere with my top screen. I realize this is due entirely to my unique monitor setup, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who prefers a low-profile webcam.

Speaking of which, the Piko+ comes with just a handful of accessories: a 5-foot (1.5m) USB-C to USB-C cable with a USB-C to USB-A adapter, a small desktop tripod (now a clamp-style monitor mount), and a magnetic, panda-shaped lens cover.

SPECS

Well-lit Performance

Our well-lit webcam scenario is very well-lit — more well-lit than the average well-lit lighting scenario. Most webcams perform nicely in a well-lit setting, and this is usually where 4K webcams really shine — especially when it comes to all that extra detail. The Piko+'s performance was just okay in this scenario. The webcam did a decent job with color balancing, but the default settings looked a little overexposed. Also, getting good picture quality was tricky — the autofocus worked well enough for video, but couldn't keep me in focus long enough to get a good still photo.

The Piko+'s well-lit image wasn't nearly as crisply detailed as the images from other 4K webcams, such as the Logitech MX Brio, Elgato Facecam Pro, and Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, but this seems to be partly due to the dual lenses attempting to autofocus and create artificial depth of focus. Too much light meant too much to try to focus on, and the algorithm ended up kind of just putting everything in focus — but it also uses the AI lens to apply a pseudo depth of focus effect, and it ended up also applying this effect (mildly) to the whole picture.

This also explains why the Piko+'s image looks flatter and less dynamic than the pictures from other 4K webcams. In videos, however, the AI lens did a pretty good job of keeping a moving subject in focus, though the depth-of-field effect was still a little touchy.

(I should point out that the default Windows Camera app doesn't support 4K resolution, so unless a 4K webcam comes with its own app for taking photos, it can be tricky to get good still pictures of the webcam's image quality.)

Low-Light Performance

Our low-light scenario is basically just darkness — the only source of light in the room is one 27-inch monitor, set to 70% brightness, with a dark wallpaper and the Google homepage open in a browser window on half the screen. The Piko+ performed adequately in this lighting scenario — it tried to light the scene evenly, but it was still pretty dark overall (not to mention very grainy/noisy). It's pretty clear that I'm sitting in a dark room, and the Piko+ doesn't even try to make up for that.

Overexposed Performance

Our overexposed lighting scenario might seem unusual, but it's actually more common than you might expect — most people put lights everywhere except behind their monitor/laptop screen (screens are backlit for a reason). So, while you won't necessarily end up in a scenario manufactured to be overexposed, like ours — which consists of a 27-inch monitor with its brightness set to 70% and a screen that's split between a dark wallpaper and relatively white webpage (Google home page) and a bunch of overhead and background lighting — the average home or work office lighting scenario leans toward overexposed.

The Piko+ performed relatively well in our overexposed lighting scenario. Like just about every webcam, the Piko+ struggled to adjust the light balance between the subject and the background. The subject is fairly dark, and the background is still overexposed, but it's more balanced than the Logitech MX Brio — which lights the subject well but blows out the background. The Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra lights the background nicely, at the expense of the subject.

Features and Software

The Piko+ works with Emeet's combination peripheral / streaming software, Emeet Studio. You'll find the standard webcam settings in Emeet Studio — image adjustments and auto/manual exposure, white balance, and focus. The software also has some streamer-oriented features, including the ability to set up multiple linked cameras and switch between them (e.g., for switching between angles/scenes/close-ups). You will, of course, need more than one webcam to set up multiple cameras, which is why Emeet also sells a three-camera MultiCam Bundle (currently $209.99 — $69.99 each).

The Piko+ has three built-in noise-canceling microphones, which sound better than most webcam microphones — but that's not saying much. I was impressed with how well the Piko+'s mics picked up my voice: I was still pretty loud and clear even when I was a couple of feet away and facing a different direction while speaking. But don't be fooled into thinking this means the Piko+'s microphones are good — they're still webcam mics, after all. Voices are loud and clear, but sound a bit thin and hollow, a pretty common issue with webcam mics. I wouldn't recommend anyone actually use the mics in the Piko+ for anything real. But if you happen to be in an emergency that can only be solved with a webcam microphone, the mics in the Piko+ are better than most.

The Piko+ also has some other features, such as whiteboard mode — which autofocuses on the text or diagrams on the "whiteboard" behind you, and AI-powered autofocusing and light metering.

Bottom Line

The Emeet Piko+ packs a decent amount of power in a small package. It features two 4K lenses and uses AI to improve images (or, well, at least.... try to). I'm glad to hear the company scrapped the wobbly tripod for an actual monitor mount, and the sale is tempting me a little.

While we definitely got 4K video quality from the Piko+, there's more to image quality than just resolution — from the lens and sensor size to firmware updates and software workarounds/adjustments. The Piko+'s AI lens did a decent job of keeping a moving subject in focus, but it was a bit too finicky if you weren't moving all over the place.

So don't run out and buy this webcam just because it's relatively budget-priced — it comes down to what you're going to be using it for. If you'll be presenting or lecturing or otherwise moving around, the Emeet Piko+ is a pretty good budget alternative to fancier AI-enhanced action webcams, such as the Insta360 Link. But if you'll mainly be sitting in front of your PC and streaming, and you're looking for impressive 4K image quality, I still recommend the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra.

It might seem like all of today's best webcams are packed with crazy features — 4K resolution, AI-powered tracking and focusing, giant sensors, and next-level color and level balancing. But not everyone is looking for a webcam that they can shoot an Academy Award-winning motion picture with — some people just want to look… good enough.

Elgato's Facecam Neo is designed for those people: It's a simple, budget-friendly webcam that records video at 1080p / 60 fps, and has a 1/2.9" CMOS sensor, an autofocus lens, and a physical privacy shutter. It's part of Elgato's Neo lineup, which is all about being easy — easy to use, easy on your wallet, and easy on the environment (it all comes in recycled packaging). The Facecam Neo has a fixed USB-C cable that can plug into your Windows PC, MacBook, or iPad, which already makes it more versatile than most webcams. It's simple, straightforward, and easy to use — and Elgato permanently slashed the retail price from $99.99 to $59.99, which makes it one of the best budget-friendly webcam options we've seen.

Design of the Facecam Neo

The Facecam Neo is a budget-friendly webcam that records in 1080p / 60 fps. It's a pretty standard-looking webcam, housed in a lightweight plastic chassis that measures 3.5 inches (88mm) wide by 1.6 inches (40mm) tall and is 1.3 inches (32mm) deep. The front of the webcam features the lens, which has a black ring around it denoting the specs, as well as a large white LED on the left side that lights up to indicate whether the webcam is currently streaming.

On top of the webcam, there's a small oval-shaped slider that controls a physical privacy shutter. It's not very fancy — it slides into place and has Elgato's circular "play" symbol logo debossed into it. The slider works well enough — it's smooth but has a little resistance, so I did find myself moving the webcam on my monitor when I went to open or close the shutter. This isn't a big deal, but it can be frustrating if you've spent time perfecting your webcam setup.

That said, the webcam is extremely lightweight — it weighs just 2.82 ounces (80g), not including the cable and stand, or approximately 3.1 ounces (88g) if you include the cable. The cable, which feels sturdy and is braided, is hardwired to the back of the webcam and is fairly stiff — in other words, this webcam is pretty easy to accidentally knock out of alignment even if you're not operating the shutter.

The Facecam Neo comes with a standard clamp-style monitor mount, which attaches to the bottom of the webcam via a standard quarter-inch threaded attachment point. The mount is designed to sit on top of your monitor and "clamp" itself against the back. It's a pretty basic monitor mount, but it does have a transparent front piece (so as not to interfere with the picture on monitors with thin or nonexistent bezels), and it allows for tilting (forward and back) and is detachable — more than I expected to see with a budget webcam.

Like the other products in the Elgato Neo lineup, the Facecam Neo is designed to be plug-n-play and it comes with just two items in the box: the webcam itself, which has a non-detachable 4.5-foot braided USB-C cable, and the detachable monitor mount.

Specs

Well-lit Performance of the Facecam Neo

Our fully-lit lighting scenario consists of lighting all around the subject — in front, behind, and overhead. It's similar to a very well-lit office with a window — there's quite a bit of light in front of me, coming from four monitors, a ring light, and a fill light. Almost every webcam performs well in this scenario, and the Facecam Neo was no different. It performed pretty well, picking up a lot of crisp detail closer to the camera (you can practically count the strands of my hair) and balancing color fairly well. It did struggle with light levels (many webcams do in this scenario, which is very bright), and some parts of the image, such as the keyboards on the desk behind me, are blown out.

The Facecam Neo does have HDR, which you can turn on using Elgato Camera Hub. That’s Elgato's free webcam companion software. It’s not required for this webcam, but does give you access to some useful settings, such as HDR, auto/fixed focus, and digital zoom.

With HDR turned on, the Facecam Neo did a better job of adjusting light levels, but it wasn't perfect. As you can see, HDR did a better job of lighting my face — though I'd argue it needs slightly more contrast. Also, the keyboards behind me are still a little blown out. But turning on HDR did improve the light and color balance, even before I started manually tweaking settings. Turning on HDR does drop the Neo's frame rate to 1080p / 30fps, but that probably won't be too much of an issue for the Neo's target audience. Nobody is really considering this webcam for semi-professional Twitch streaming, let alone fast-paced action shots.

Low-Light Performance of the Facecam Neo

The Facecam Neo did surprisingly well in our low-light scenario, which is essentially complete darkness — the only light source in this picture is one 27-inch monitor, at 70% brightness, with a dark wallpaper and a website with a lot of white space (the regular Google homepage) open on half the screen. While the image still looked very grainy — there's a ton of noise and artifacting in the darker parts of the picture — I was impressed with how otherwise balanced the lighting and color representation looked. It's obvious from this image that I'm not in the best lighting scenario, but I don't think anyone would guess I'm practically sitting in the dark.

Overexposed Performance of the Facecam Neo

Our overexposed lighting scenario consists of one 27-inch monitor (at 70% brightness, with a dark wallpaper and half the screen open to the Google homepage) in front of the subject, and bright lighting over and behind the subject. This is generally the worst lighting setup for any webcam, but it's also one of the most common lighting setups (albeit, not necessarily quite as extreme). After all, most people work and game in well-lit rooms, but do not set up lighting behind their screen (unless they have a reason to, e.g., streaming).

The Facecam Neo didn't perform nearly as well in the overexposed scenario as it did in our other scenarios. It struggled a lot with lighting the subject — and it still ended up overexposing light-colored objects behind me. The webcam did a slightly better job with just a little more light — I maximized the Google homepage on my 27-inch screen, and the sensor adjusted the light balance instantly. It managed to get a decent amount of light on my face, but the picture quality is still pretty shaky.

Features and Software of the Facecam Neo

The Facecam Neo, like the rest of Elgato's Neo lineup, is designed to be as plug-and-play as possible. (But let's be serious: most webcams are fairly plug-and-play — while all come with software for tweaking settings, none require said software for the camera to work.) The Neo's out-of-the-box performance is good enough that you don't need to download any software, but Elgato's Camera Hub is fairly robust for a webcam app.

Camera Hub lets you toggle off automatic focus, exposure, and white balance, giving you fairly detailed control over how the webcam handles light. You can switch between standard and high dynamic range (HDR) in the exposure menu, and you can also adjust the webcam's post-processing (noise reduction and anti-flicker). The software has a handy "Frame" feature, which lets you zoom and crop the picture (you can save four presets and click to switch between them for different angles/focuses). It also has a handful of built-in effects, including filters and green screen-style backgrounds/background blur.

Camera Hub is only available for Windows / Mac OS — the webcam works on other platforms, but you'll need to change any settings on a PC or Macbook. The settings do save directly to the device, though — you don't need to have the software installed or running for settings like manual white balancing or HDR to work.

The Facecam Neo does not have a built-in microphone, which is not too surprising — webcam mics rarely sound passable, let alone good, so they're mostly just a waste. The Facecam Neo does seem to be designed for portability — it's lightweight and USB-C compatible, so you can plug it into a laptop, Macbook, or iPad — and most portable devices have built-in mics anyway (not that these are great, but they're no worse than webcam mics), so even a terrible mic would probably be redundant.

Bottom Line

The Elgato Facecam Neo originally launched with an MSRP of $99.99 — $30 cheaper than the Logitech Brio 500, a 1080p / 30fps webcam that's similar in size — but not exactly cheap. But Elgato permanently dropped the price of the Facecam Neo by $40 — down to $59.99 — this past summer, and that price makes it much more enticing. You won't get the same picture quality in the Facecam Neo as you will in 1080p webcams with better sensors and lenses, such as the Elgato Facecam MK.2, but you will get decent performance in both well-lit and low-light scenarios.

There are cheaper webcams out there, but the Facecam Neo is a solid performer that works on multiple platforms — you can't get much better for $59.99.

A new documentary featuring ALS patient Brad Smith has been published today. You may already know of Smith, as he was featured by Tom’s Hardware back in May after successfully using the Neuralink brain computer interface (BCI) to edit videos with added AI-voice narration. Now, Smith has teamed up with Insta360 to produce “a second pair of eyes,” as you can see in the short film below.

Smith’s powerful 8-minute video documents both the practical and heart-warming benefits of movable AI camera technology for those afflicted by ALS. Having a second pair of eyes has been life-changing for this devoted husband and father’s experience of family life.

ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease (in the U.S.), or Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in the UK. Scientists don’t know the cause of ALS, nor a cure. However, even with the best treatment, those afflicted can reach a stage where they are unable to eat or breathe.

Smith has been confined to a wheelchair for the last seven years. In November 2024, he became the third-ever Neuralink BCI patient. As indicated in our intro, this new technology was quickly embraced by Smith, and back in May, we reported on his newfound YouTube video editing skills. These were augmented by an AI recreation of Smith’s voice, allowing the non-verbal ALS patient to provide narration.

Insta360 engineers work alongside Smith

As well as not being able to move around or speak, Smith began to feel particularly constrained by being unable to turn his head, to engage naturally with his children during conversations. “Trapped in a static world, while life continued dynamically around me,” is how Smith poetically describes this situation. Moreover, he feared being an absent father “even while being physically present.”

At around five minutes into the documentary, we hear that Smith’s research into solutions led him to investigate the Insta360 Link 2. He sums up the appeal of this well-regarded webcam as a “small, movable webcam… to regain a view of my surroundings.”

Using one of the best webcams and with the engineering help of Insta360, Smith has happily been able to start to “look around, take photos and videos, and engage with my family in ways I couldn’t before, restoring a sense of mobility in my gaze.”

Some examples of the enhanced presence and interaction opportunities are shown in the documentary. For example, the video shows Smith panning the camera view to see his children’s merrymaking, becoming more of a part of daily family life.

Actually, Smith comments that he has felt a “dramatic change” in interactions with his children and wife since the Insta360 Link 2 became integrated with his MacBook and Eyegaze system setup. He feels more connected, more useful in the family, and can even participate to outdoor events. Overall, Smith seems especially satisfied that his Insta360 collab has helped him in “reclaiming my role as the family storyteller.”

There are some Raspberry Pi projects that are just so cool, you don't have to bother to ask why someone would ever create them. In our opinion, some of the best Pi projects come from makers who ask, "Why not?" and that's exactly what maker and developer André Esser has done with his latest creation. Using our favorite SBC, he's put together an ASCII video camera project and showed it off at the latest Pi Jam conference.

If you're not familiar with ASCII art, it's a way of displaying images using text in something like a terminal. The characters comprise the image in either a simple but crude fashion or with great complexity. ASCII art was much more common in retro computing, but you can still find some fun modern examples like this project today. In this creation, the Pi is able to convert video frames into ASCII art, which is then displayed frame by frame to make a video feed using Python.

In the project source files, we see an example of this in action using a demo video known as "Bad Apple". This demo is in black and white, which is great for showing off the ASCII format's potential. However, Esser wanted to make something interactive for the conference and took things a step further by integrating a camera connected to the Raspberry Pi as a main input source. This made it possible for people to walk up to his booth and see themselves represented by text in real-time.

You don't need too much hardware to recreate this project, nor do you need any special components. Esser opted to use a Raspberry Pi 5 as the main board, which has plenty of processing power for a project like this. It's connected to a screen, the larger the better in this case, which lets you see the ASCII output. For video input, Esser opted to use a Raspberry Pi camera module.

Esser was kind enough to make the project open source and has shared all the source code over at GitHub for anyone interested in either recreating the project or just digging deeper to see how it works. There are two versions of the project, according to Esser, one that uses Python and another that uses Cython. The project also requires OpenCV to operate. You can find not only the code, but also instructions on how to set everything up over at the GitHub page.

If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project in action, check out the video shared to YouTube by Esser.

Whether you are a professional content creator or you just need to make video calls on a regular basis, it’s important to have a high-quality webcam that not only takes great images, but also makes you and your surroundings look good. Insta360, a well-established player in the camera space, has just announced two new products that use the power of AI facial recognition to make sure you (and they) stand out from the crowd. Designed to compete with the best webcams on the market, the $199 Insta360 Link 2 and the $149 Insta360 Link 2C will track you as you move around at your desk or complete a task across the room. They also feature powerful sensors that can film at up to 4K / 30 fps in HDR for sharp, colorful images.

I had a chance to spend a few days testing out both cameras ahead of their announcement and came away impressed with both the image output and the AI tracking ability. They are expensive compared to the cheapest models on the market, but reasonably priced considering their 4K image sensors and powerful AI software — such as Insta360's original Link, which debuted in 2022 at $299.  However, I learned that you need a decent computer to take full advantage of the software and its AI features. 

Design

The Insta360 Link 2 is the more interesting camera because it comes with a built-in, 2 axis gimbal that can physically tilt the camera lens up and down or rotate it on its base.  The Link 2C has the same image sensor but saves money and space by not having a built-in gimbal and motors. Instead of physically moving, it just digitally adjusts the image cropping to center a subject. Both cameras have a fairly wide 79-degree field of view, so there’s plenty of room to zoom or crop without a motor. 

The cameras both have magnetic bottoms that allow them to snap onto included monitor clips. If you want to attach your camera to a tripod, there’s a standard ¼-20 UNC screw thread (the kind every camera uses) built into the monitor clips. If you lose your monitor clip, you may have issues because then you’d have no way to mount your camera on either a tripod or a monitor. The cameras come with detachable USB-C to USB-C cables that will plug into your computer. There’s also a USB-C to USB Type-A adapter in the box. Because the cables are detachable, you can easily swap them out for third-party cables that are either longer or have USB Type-A built-in. 

The Link 2 has a large green status light that is on when the camera is active. It is solid most of the time, but flashes if the camera is acknowledging an AI gesture (more on that below). The Link 2C, instead, has a single green status light. One big difference between the cameras is how they handle privacy. When it’s off, the Link 2 tilts downward so that its lens is not facing you, similar to how Insta360's original Link works. However, the Link 2C has a built-in privacy shutter that you can slide closed with your finger. I prefer the shutter, because it’s definitive — no software can cause it to open like it could potentially cause the Link 2 to tilt back into position. 

Another big difference between the Link 2 and Link 2C is their respective heights. Because of its gimbal, the Link 2 is much taller and heavier, which makes it a bit less secure to mount on top of a laptop. Also, if you have a set of monitors stacked on top of each other, mounting the Link 2 on top of the bottom one might be an issue. I have four monitors at home, mounted in a 2 x 2 configuration, and the Link 2 was too big to fit between my lower and upper row monitors, which is where I like to stick my webcams. This is not a problem many people will have, though, and using a tripod is one solution — but I wish there was a way to get the camera to jut out over the front of my monitor so it could fit.

You can use any tripod or mount you want with either of the cameras, but the company also sells its own mini tripod / selfie stick for $25 and we were sent one to test with our review unit. The tripod is very small and easy to carry, but it's not very weighty and the hinge isn’t very secure (and tends to flop over a bit). There’s a tiny little bolt that’s meant to lock the hinge in place, but mine kept falling out. You can make the mount a little taller by pushing the middle stick upwards, but it doesn’t get particularly tall. Overall, I found the tripod flimsy and annoying, so I’d recommend buying a third party one that's heavier and more solidly built.

Software

You can control either camera via the Insta360 Link Controller software, which is available for Windows or macOS. You can also use an Android or iOS device to control the camera remotely when it is plugged into a computer — though when I tried this briefly, I was unable to get a connection.

The controller software is well-laid out and easy to use. It has a large preview window, a series of buttons to toggle on or off major modes (AI Tracking, White Board, Smart Whiteboard and Desktivew) and it has three tabs in a sidebar: View, Effects and More. The View tab features an on-screen joystick that allows you to move the camera motor (or on the 2C, just digitally change its perspective), zoom buttons and the ability to choose a mode for AI Tracking. Head mode follows just your head, Half Body mode follows your torso, and Whole Body mode is for when you’re standing up and walking around a room and you want the camera to follow you as you move.

The Effects tab allows you to change the exposure, temperature, brightness, contrast, and other image settings. There’s also the ability to add a background or enable background blur or bokeh modes. There’s a set of color filters to choose among, including Portrait, Daylight and Vintage modes. However, I found that these just made slight changes to the color temperature.

The More tab is where you can enable or disable the three AI gestures: enable AI Tracking mode, enable Whiteboard mode and Zoom. It’s also where you can choose among a few different microphone audio modes and decide if you want to horizontally or vertically flip your image.

There’s a preview window in the Link Controller software that shows the camera feed here in your app and allows you to switch among 4K / 30 fps, 1080p / 30 fps and 720p / 30 fps modes. If I wanted to use the camera in any other app – even Windows camera – I had to disable Link Controller’s preview because otherwise the other program would not have permission to access the Link 2 / 2C. That’s not a real problem — in Windows, only one application can use your webcam at a time. 

In many apps the camera appears under two different names: Insta360 Link 2 (or 2C) or Insta360 Virtual Camera. If you’re using any of the special effects, including the AI tracking feature, from the Controller app, you’ll want to select the Virtual Camera option.

Stability and System Requirements

It took me several days and a few emails back and forth with Insta360 to figure out that the processing power of the computer you use matters a lot. A company rep said that the bare minimum requirements for running the software are a Core i5 CPU (5th gen or later) and 8GB of RAM. However, to use certain features, you need at least a 10th gen Core Series processor (or AMD equivalent) and the company recommends that you have a 13th Gen Intel CPU and RTX 2060 or higher GPU.

I did most of my testing before receiving this guidance from Insta360. So I used my laptop, a six year old Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a Core i7-8650U CPU and 16GB of RAM. For the most part, processes worked as advertised, but I did experience a significant amount of lag and the video feed would sometimes freeze, either in the preview window of the Link Controller app or in an individual app such as OBS. I also occasionally got an error message in the software that said “Video Stuttering detected,” which advised me to try a lower frame rate. This helped a little, but didn’t really fix the problem.

I didn’t have the problems with the image freezing or lagging in Windows Camera or in Chrome browser (using Google Meet), likely because these were operating at lower resolutions when I ran them. 

When I tried the Link 2 and the Link Controller software on my desktop, which has an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU and an RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, all of the lag disappeared, even at 4K resolution. The AI tracking was much smoother and it seemed to pick up my face and body a little more easily. When I looked at Windows Task Manager, I could see that the Virtual Camera Service was using about 5 percent of the CPU and the Insta360 Link Controller app was using about 4 percent of the GPU.

So the bottom line is that, if you want to run at 4K or use AI tracking, it pays to have a reasonably modern processor and graphics.

Tracking Capability

If you turn on AI Tracking, the camera will keep your face (or body) centered in the frame as you move around. On the Link 2, this is clearly better than the 2C, because the camera can actually move to follow you rather than just cropping in on your face. Depending on whether you are sitting at your desk or standing up, you can choose either Head, Half Body, or Whole Body tracking. You can also adjust the tracking speed so the camera motor moves faster or slower.

I tested the tracking extensively and it works pretty well, but not flawlessly. I found that it did a really good job of following my head as I tilted my neck in different directions. When I stood up and did whole body tracking, it did a good job, but occasionally lost me if I was moving too quickly or if I moved out of frame and then quickly back in again. One downer is that the camera doesn’t zoom in automatically if you, say, walk backwards — it follows you left and right but the image doesn’t get closer to you.

There’s also a group option, which tells it to track multiple people. When my son and I moved around in Whole Body mode, the Link 2 camera managed to stay centered on us.

AI Gestures

The cameras also have the ability to respond to three gestures. Holding all your fingers up to the camera is supposed to toggle AI Tracking mode. Holding two fingers up enables Whiteboard mode and holding your thumb and forefinger up should cause the camera to zoom. Unfortunately, I found that the software was very inconsistent and often didn’t recognize these gestures. The only one of them that really matters is zoom, and it rarely worked in my tests. Luckily, you can also just hit a button in the software to perform these tasks.

Whiteboard and Deskview Modes

If you’re using the Link 2 or 2C for a presentation that involves an actual whiteboard, the Link Controller software has two different modes to help you: Whiteboard and Smart Whiteboard. Smart Whiteboard mode uses AI to recognize a whiteboard and stay focused on it. I tried this mode in my office but, unfortunately, the software did not detect my whiteboard. (On the other hand, if I just pointed the webcam at the whiteboard and turned off autotracking, the board would stay in frame because the camera wouldn’t be moving.)

There’s also Whiteboard mode, which is like Smart Whiteboard but uses stickers to help it find your whiteboard. The cameras come with a few stickers you can place on the borders of your whiteboard for this task, but I didn’t want to mar the walls in my workplace with stickers so I didn’t test this function.

Deskview mode seems more useful. It’s designed to straighten out the image when you want to show something that’s flat on a table. It points the camera downward to show your keyboard or whatever else might be at hand-level and it seemed to work reasonably well.

Image Quality

The image sharpness and color quality was fantastic on images I took both in low light and normal lighting conditions. In photos taken at 4K, the hairs on my beard and the lines on my forehead were sharp and detailed. The teal in my glasses really popped and the green of my shirt was color-accurate too. The red letters on my Tom’s Hardware hat looked detailed and vibrant, too.

When I shot a photo of myself with my back against a sunny window, my face was more than a little washed out. That’s unfortunately very common and a problem on most webcams.

Just to see what would happen, I tested the camera in a completely dark room with just the light from my monitors. Clearly, this is a situation where most webcams would have a lot of visual noise and the Link 2 did also.

Audio Quality

The Insta360 Link 2 and 2C promise superior audio quality, thanks to their dual microphones and AI noise canceling. I haven’t been able to test the input in a noisy environment or compare it to my desktop microphone yet so we’ll update this story when we can do more extensive testing of the recording capability. Still, we generally recommend that you buy one of the best microphones if you want to sound great — built-in webcam mics are a last resort.

Bottom Line

Both the Insta360 Link 2 and 2C offer fantastic image quality and the flexibility of tracking you as you move around the room. If you’re just doing conference calls, you’re probably best off with the 2C, which is smaller, cheaper, and fits better atop a thin monitor laptop screen. However, if you’re a serious content creator who’s doing tutorials that require you to move around a workspace or showcase your hands doing something on your desk, the Link 2 seems like a great choice.

To avoid the lagging I experienced, you’ll definitely want to make sure you have a system with a processor that’s at least 10th Gen (or AMD equivalent). Having discrete graphics or a more recent integrated GPU may help as well, though it’s probably not a necessity.

Acer has been a leader in glasses-free 3D screens for a while now, having released a series of monitors and laptops under its SpatialLabs brand. Now the company is providing a means to create content for these displays, the SpatialLabs Eyes, a stereoscopic camera cable of capturing at up to 8-MP (aka 4K) per eye at 30 fps or 2K per eye at 60 fps. Available within the next few weeks for $549, the Eyes can record still images or videos either to a microSD card or, via USB connection, directly to your computer where it can also make video calls.

I had the chance to go eyes-on with the Acer SpatialLabs Eyes at Acer’s Computex 2024 media suite and I was impressed with the output, though fully aware of the challenges this intriguing technology faces. Acer had a nice demo where the camera was pointing at a Lego city that had a model Godzilla stomping it.  I stood in front of one of the SpatialLabs View 27 monitors and looked at a live feed where the Godzilla figure and Lego blocks appeared to pop out of the screen slightly. The objects looked like they were at different depths with Godzilla clearly in front of the Lego buildings that were behind him. 

Then I went over to another demo station where a SpatialLabs Eyes camera was connected to a computer and an Acer booth assistant called me from a different computer in another part of the room. As she waved some small toys in front of the camera, I could see them pop out of the screen. 

But there was also a catch: when my colleagues stood next to me, the View 27 monitor’s output became a little blurry because the eye tracking was confused by having multiple people in front of the screen. These glasses-free 3D monitors have cameras that track your eyes and, if they detect more than one pair of pupils, it can mess up the images. 

Acer reps explained that the way the camera works is that it actually shoots dual, side-by-side images, which the monitor then turns into a 3D image. If you look at the video feed or images on a non-3D monitor, you’ll see two, nearly-identical images next to each other, which is not a good user experience. During my video call, the side-by-side images of me were displayed in a preview window, which you can see below.

To see the 3D output, you either need one of Acer’s View monitors or laptops or something else that can turn side-by-side images or video into 3D. Acer reps said that if you view them in a VR headset, these images should also appear as 3D. 

But if you want one of Acer’s monitors, it will cost  you. The company has two 27-inch monitors, a 15-inch portable monitor and a pair of laptops with the glasses-free screens. The portable monitor alone is $1,099 and the gaming version of the 27-inch monitor, which was announced at CES, is supposed to be about $1,999 (but we haven’t seen it listed for sale yet). 

We reviewed the Acer SpatialLabs View portable monitor back in April of 2023 and lauded its 3D output and image quality. However, $1,099 is a lot for any monitor, especially one that's just 15.6 inches.

Acer reps told us that several programs, including Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, already support 3D calls. But to make a 3D call on them, both users obviously need the hardware. So, at minimum, we’re talking about two cameras at $549 each and two portable monitors at $1,099 each. That’s more than $3,000 just to get this going on a 15-inch display. 

An Acer rep told us that the camera can operate in 2D mode so, in theory, you could buy the Eyes and use it to do regular, 2D calls, enabling 3D mode only when you are talking to someone else who can see the output. However, you can get one of the best webcams with 4K output for a lot less than $549 so only consider the SpatialLabs Eyes if you plan to use its 3D functionality.

It’s important to note that the Eyes is not just a webcam. It has a built-in battery that promises two hours of endurance and it has a microSD card slot. It features a f/2.0 aperture, 80-degree field of view and 3.0mm focal length, all solid specs for a camera. It captures still images as JPGs and movies as MP4 files. 

So you can capture 3D images and videos on the go and then share them later. YouTube supports 3D, side-by-side videos so that’s one place  you could share your outputs. And it’s possible that someone using an inexpensive VR headset could view them.

The output is certainly impressive and the Eyes camera itself, which is very compact and looks like an ultra-slim point-and-shoot, is easy to carry with you. However, in order to make it a worthwhile purchase, you’d not only need to be able to view stereoscopic 3D images, but also have an audience or call partners who can view them also.

On the bright side for 3D, Acer is hardly alone. Apple’s iPhone 15 can film spatial video and its Apple Vision Pro headset can view it. The Meta Quest 3 headset can also view spatial videos so it should work with videos that the Acer Eyes camera shoots.

There aren't too many 1080p/60fps webcams. Don't get me wrong, some of the best webcams are 4K webcams that also record in 1080p/60fps, but they also cost $300 or so — if you want 60fps but you don't need 4K resolution, you can halve your expenses by picking up a 1080p/60fps webcam like the new Elgato Facecam MK.2. 

The Facecam MK.2 is Elgato's update to the original Facecam, which also features 1080p/60fps uncompressed video, a f/2.4 aperture fixed-focus lens, and an 82-degree field of view. The new Facecam MK.2 features a lower-profile redesign with a built-in privacy shutter, onboard memory, and 4x digital zoom. It also adds HDR and a couple of types of noise reduction, but otherwise image quality hasn't changed that much. It's definitely a nice update to the original Facecam, and its launch price of $149.99 is $50 less than the original Facecam's debut MSRP of $199.99 (however, the original Facecam is now going for $129.99).

Design of the Facecam MK.2

The Facecam MK.2 looks like a mix of the original Elgato Facecam and the 4K Elgato Facecam Pro (but closer to the Facecam).  The original Facecam measures 3.1 x 1.9 x 2.3 inches (79 x 48 x 58mm), and the new Facecam MK.2 is more of a flat rectangle (like the Facecam Pro), measuring 3.3 inches (84mm) wide by 1.5 inches (38mm) high by 2.4 inches (61mm) deep. The Facecam MK.2 weighs 3.17oz (90g) without the detachable monitor mount, which is slightly lighter than the original Facecam (3.38oz / 96g) — the webcam itself is very lightweight.

The Facecam MK.2 has the same overall aesthetic as the Facecam and Facecam Pro. It's housed in a boxy, black plastic chassis that looks and feels sort of cheap, but certainly contributes to its light weight. Elgato's arrow-in-a-circle logo is debossed on the top, and is printed in white on the right side along with the word, "Facecam." 

The back features a USB-C port near the bottom and venting to keep the Facecam MK.2 cool while it runs. The webcam gets a little warm when running but it wasn't anything to be concerned about.

The Facecam MK.2 has a built-in privacy cover that slides over the lens from the right side. Physical privacy covers are a must, in my opinion — not because I'm overly concerned about webcam hacks, but because it's far too easy to accidentally turn on your webcam in various apps and programs. It's also nice to see one that's built-in; the original Facecam had a detachable privacy cover, which is far too easy to lose, and the Facecam Pro had nothing. This privacy cover isn't particularly impressive, as far as privacy covers go: it's a little stiff to open and close, and it might be tricky to catch the little nub without nails. But it works well enough to cover the camera lens, which is all I'm really concerned about.

The Facecam MK.2 comes mounted on a detachable monitor mount clamp that's very similar to (but slightly smaller than) the Facecam Pro's monitor mount clamp. The clamp is simple, with a lip that hangs over the edge of the screen and a rubber-covered clamp that helps stabilize the mount on top of your monitor. It's not a particularly tight clamp, but it doesn't really need to be — this is a very light webcam, and should sit pretty securely on top of most monitors (so long as there aren't any earthquakes).

While mounted, the webcam can swivel and tilt forward (up to 90 degrees). If you'd rather use a different mount or a tripod, the mount easily screws off to reveal a standard 1/4-inch thread tripod mounting point. The mount measures 2.56 inches (65mm) wide by 2.03 inches (51.6mm) deep and weighs 1.71 ounces (48.5g), so it doesn't add much weight to the webcam.

Like its predecessor, the Facecam MK.2 connects via USB 3.0 (it comes with a thick, 6.5-foot / 2m USB-C to USB-A cable). It requires a USB 3.0 connection to record uncompressed video, but it doesn't require USB 3.0 to work — you can connect it via USB 2.0, it will just record in MJPEG format.

Specs

Well-lit Performance

The Facecam MK.2 records video in 1080p resolution at 60fps (and 30fps), which is the same resolution and frame rate as its predecessor, the Elgato Facecam. It also records video in 720p and 540p at 120/60/30fps. 

It has a fixed-focus Elgato Prime Lens with a focus range of 30 - 120 cm (11.8 - 47.2 inches) and a f/2.4 aperture. It has a focal length of 24mm and a diagonal field-of-view of 84 degrees, and sports a 1/2.5" Sony Starvis CMOS sensor.

I take all webcam test photos in my home office, which gets virtually zero natural light. (And as usual, I took these in the middle of the night so there was absolutely zero natural light.) For my well-lit scenario, I have a ring light, a key light, and four monitors (three 27-inch, one 34-inch) in front of me, an arching floor lamp overhead, and two desk lamps behind me. 

The ring light is set to 35% brightness at 3600K, and the key light is set to 15% brightness at 4100K. My three 27-inch monitors are set to display white screens and my main 34-inch monitor has the Windows 11 Camera app open on one half of the screen and the default Google homepage open on the other half. Trust me, this is plenty of light, and most older webcams tend to read this setting as overexposed. I take all photos using the Windows 11 Camera App.

The Facecam MK.2 performed fairly well in this scenario, with decent auto-exposure and auto-white balancing. I was surprised to see that the Facecam MK.2's auto-exposure actually skewed toward underexposed rather than overexposed, because I'm used to seeing the opposite. The auto-white balance isn't perfect and trends a little toward the warm side, but it's not too bad — and a little too warm is usually better than a little too cool when it comes to skintones, anyway. The Facecam MK.2 offers the detail you'd expect from a 1080p webcam, though the image is noisier (and therefore a little less detailed, especially if you look at the books in the background) from the lower exposure.

The Facecam MK.2 has a couple of software/processing settings that make a difference in image quality, including noise reduction (set to medium by default) and HDR. The webcam has two types of noise reduction: spatial "2D" noise reduction, which looks at surrounding pixels to determine what is noise, and then smooths over that graininess, and temporal "3D" noise reduction, which uses pixel data over multiple frames to determine what is noise. 

2D noise reduction looks softer/smoother and loses more detail, while 3D noise reduction retains more sharpness. In the case of the Facecam MK.2, there are three levels of noise reduction — "low," or 2D only, "medium," or 3D only, and "high," or 2D and 3D together (you can also turn it off).

Noise reduction reduces noise at the expense of detail (by smoothing over noisy parts of the image). I was surprised at how noisy my well-lit images were with noise reduction turned off — if you zoom in on the first image above, you can see a lot of noise and graininess, especially on my sweatshirt. This improves a little with medium (3D) noise reduction, and a lot with high (2D and 3D) noise reduction, but you do end up losing some detail in the last photo.

HDR, on the other hand, is turned off by default on the Facecam MK.2. HDR (high dynamic range) on a webcam isn't the same as HDR on a display — HDR on a webcam is a capture process that involves combining multiple exposures of the same shot for a more evenly-lit image that shows detail in both dark and light areas without under- or over-exposing the rest of the picture. 

SDR vs HDR is perhaps best represented by my French bulldog, who has a brindle coat with darker and lighter areas. In the first photo, which has HDR turned off, you can see some of his coloring but he's mostly pretty dark. 

In the second photo, with HDR turned on, you can see more dimension in his coat. However, the image also seems to have lost some detail and is much noisier and fuzzier. So... that's not great. While I did find that turning on HDR made a difference, I mostly preferred this webcam in SDR.

Low-Light Performance

To test a webcam's low-light performance, I turn off all of my lights (ring light, key light, overhead light, desk lamps), as well as my three 27-inch monitors — leaving my 34-inch monitor as my only source of light.

The Facecam MK.2 actually performed pretty well in this scenario: there's a little too much light on the subject (me), but at least the subject is lit, and there's some attempt at lighting the background as well. 

The image is fairly noisy, but that's what I expect to see from any webcam's low-light photos (the Logitech Brio 500 is an exception — Logitech's RightLight 4 technology is definitely doing some heavy lifting here). The Facecam MK.2 also did a good job with color balancing here — the slightly warm-leaning auto-white balance seems to be what's making me look more alive in this image, despite being illuminated by a single computer monitor.

Overexposed Performance

The last lighting test scenario I use is an overexposed lighting scenario. I turn off (almost) all of the lights in front of me: the ring light, the key light, and my three 27-inch monitors, leaving just my 34-inch monitor turned on as well as the lights behind and above me. This simulates a fairly common overexposed scenario, because most people don't place bright lights (or a window) behind their screen. 

The Facecam MK.2 performed... not as well, in this scenario. Ideally, a webcam will light both the subject and the background adequately without blowing the background out too much in an overexposed setting. While the Facecam MK.2 did manage to light my background without blowing it out, it didn't do the best job of lighting me — and let's face it, most people are more concerned about the subject over the background in this case. 

The Brio 500 does a good job of lighting both the subject and the background with only some minor overexposure in the background, which is very forgivable given how well the subject is lit. The Dell Pro Webcam (WB5023) does blow out the background quite a bit, but at last the subject is well-lit.

I tried turning on HDR to see if that might help boost the webcam's foreground lighting, but it didn't seem to do much. It did slightly improve contrast (especially in darker areas), and turn down some overexposure from around the light sources, but otherwise lighting largely stayed the same.

Features and Software

The Elgato Facecam MK.2 can be configured with Elgato's Camera Hub software, which offers fairly detailed control over exposure and image, a handful of processing effects that you can toggle on and off, and a framing section with four customizable presets so you can quickly switch between different shots. It does have onboard memory so you can save all of the settings directly to the hardware, which is a pretty unique feature for a webcam.

The Camera Hub lets you adjust exposure using shutter speed and ISO, as well as color temperature, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. You can also toggle HDR and adjust noise reduction (low, medium, high, and off). In the framing section, you can zoom, pan, tilt, and set presets so you can switch quickly between scenes. You can also turn off the Camera Hub's image preview option, which means you can continue to use the app to adjust settings while the webcam is active in another program.

The Camera Hub software also has a handful of AI features, some of which require the Nvidia AR SDK. These include backgrounds and blurring (basically what you'll find in any generic video conferencing app), as well as AI-powered face tracking and Nvidia's weird eye contact feature.

The Facecam MK.2 doesn't have a built-in microphone, which isn't too much of an issue — built-in mics on webcams are usually mediocre at best.

Bottom Line

If you're looking for a webcam that records 1080p/60fps uncompressed video (or 720p/120fps, for some reason), the Elgato Facecam MK.2 is a pretty good option — and it's well-priced at $149.99. The Razer Kiyo Pro also records 1080p/60fps uncompressed video, but it's a few years old now (though it's currently on sale at Amazon for $89.51 — down 55% from its retail price of $199.99).

If you don't need 1080p/60fps uncompressed video, however, the Facecam MK.2's image quality is mostly on par with (and, in some situations, below par with) that of the Logitech Brio 500 — which features a better built-in privacy shutter and better overexposed lighting performance, records video in 1080p/30fps, and is currently on sale at Amazon for $88.01, down from its retail price of $129.99.

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Logitech was once one of the only webcam games in town, but that has changed a lot in recent years — thanks, pandemic! The Logitech Brio 4K was one of the first 4K webcams on the market, and it was pretty impressive when it came out... in 2017. 

But it's 2024, and the competition for best webcam — especially best 4K webcam — is pretty fierce. 

The Logitech MX Brio is an update to the Brio 4K — it's got the same resolution as its predecessor (4K/30fps, 1080p/60fps), but it features a bigger, upgraded sensor and improved AI face-based image enhancement for (according to Logitech) an image that's twice as detailed, compared to the Brio 4K. The new MX Brio also features a sturdier, more professional-looking aluminum chassis, a large glass lens with an integrated privacy shutter, built-in dual beamforming mics, and is certified for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Chromebooks, Google Meet, and Streamlabs. It's available now for $199.99, and it comes in three colors (pale gray, graphite, and black).

Design of the MX Brio

The MX Brio is a pretty standard-looking webcam. Unlike Logitech's Brio 500 and Brio 300, however, the MX Brio doesn't come in fun colors and isn't made of post-consumer recycled plastic — instead, it's housed in a sleek, professional-looking aluminum chassis and comes in the exciting colors of pale gray (silver), graphite (dark gray), and black. So basically, several shades of gray.

The Brio features a large, 1.58-inch lens on the front, which has a movable ring around it that twists to open and close the webcam's integrated privacy shutter. This is very similar to the privacy shutter on the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, and I'm a big fan — all webcams should have privacy shutters like this! The MX Brio's privacy shutter rotates easily and smoothly and doesn't jostle the webcam on its perch. Unlike the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, however, the MX Brio does not come with a lens cover — not a necessity, but it would be nice to have a way to keep dust off of this large glass lens (and also for protection during travel).

The MX Brio is on the smaller side compared to other 4K webcams, measuring 3.84 inches (98 mm) wide by 1.73 inches (44 mm) tall by 1.42 inches (36 mm) deep. It's a little larger than its predecessor, the Logitech Brio 4K, but not by much. It won't take up too much space on your monitor, nor does it need a lot of back clearance. It is quite a bit heavier than the Brio 4K, however — the MX Brio weighs 4.83 ounces (137 g) without the monitor mounting clamp attached, while the Brio 4K  weighs less than half that at 2.22 ounces (63 g). If you're looking for a tiny, lightweight 4K webcam, your best bet is probably the Insta360 Link, which measures just 3.71 x 1.61 x 1.77 inches (69 x 41 x 45 mm) and weighs 3.73 ounces (106 g).

The MX Brio comes with a monitor mounting clamp, which attaches magnetically to the bottom of the webcam. The monitor mounting clamp measures 1.5 inches (38mm) wide by 1.78 inches (45 mm) deep, and is 0.79 inches (20 mm) high when folded. With the mount attached, the webcam is 2.44 inches (62mm) high and 2.04 inches (52 mm) deep, and weighs 6.21 ounces (176 g). The clamp is a pretty standard monitor mounting clamp and is very similar to the one that comes with the Brio 500, with a lip that catches the front of your monitor and an adjustable foot that sits against the back of your monitor to stabilize the camera. The foot has a microsuction adhesive pad that helps it stick tight to your monitor. I don't love adhesives, but this webcam is on the heavier side, so this will help keep it stable (especially on thin laptop screens).

Once attached to your monitor, the mounting clamp allows you to tilt the camera back about 5 degrees and forward over 90 degrees. The magnetic attachment point is round, so the webcam also rotates easily on the mount. If you'd rather not use the included monitor mount, the webcam also has a standard tripod mounting point (1/4-inch thread) on the bottom.

The MX Brio comes with a thick, stiff 5-foot (4.75 feet of cable — the connectors are pretty long) USB-C to USB-C cable and requires a USB-C port that supports the USB 3.0 standard. If you don't have a USB-C port, you can use a USB-C to USB-A cable (or an adapter), so long as you plug it into a USB 3.0 port.

Specs

Well-lit Performance

The MX Brio is a 4K webcam with an 8.5MP Sony Starvis sensor with an autofocus lens, 4x digital zoom, and a 90-degree field of view. It features Logitech's RightLight 5 image-enhancement technology, which I'll assume is some slightly more advanced version of RightLight 4 (found in the Logitech Brio 500). Logitech says the MX Brio offers 2x finer image detail and face visibility compared to the Brio 4K, as well as "AI face-based image enhancement" for even more detail on faces. 

I take all my webcam test photos in my home office, which has almost no natural light (I actually took these photos at night). For my well-lit scenario, I have a ring light, a key light, and four monitors (three 27-inch, one 34-inch) in front of me, an arching floor lamp overhead, and two desk lamps behind me. The ring light is set to 35% brightness at 3600K and the key light is set to 15% brightness at 4100K. My three 27-inch monitors are set to display white screens, while my main 34-inch monitor has the Windows 11 Camera app open on one half of the screen and the default Google homepage open on the other half of the screen. This scenario is very bright (most older webcams tend to read it as overexposed), and has a lot more light shining at me than most users will have — it's more of a streaming setup.

The MX Brio performed very well in this scenario, producing a bright, evenly-lit image with a decent amount of detail — though not quite as much detail as I expected to see from a modern 4K webcam. It did a very good job with both auto-exposure and auto-white balancing; the image looks very balanced (maybe a little too balanced) and colors appear accurate. The image does look slightly undersaturated (or maybe I just need more sun), but these pictures were taken using the webcam's default, out-of-the-box settings — you can manually adjust settings, including saturation, contrast, and vibrance, with Logitech's Logi Options+ and/or G Hub software. 

The MX Brio does seem to fall right into place with the rest of Logitech's webcam lineup: Its auto-exposure and color balancing profile is similar to that of the 1080p Logitech Brio 500, but the MX Brio's image is more detailed and has slightly better color balancing (likewise, the Brio 500's images look like an upgraded version of the Brio 300's images). All of Logitech's webcams do a very good job with balancing exposure and lighting, and the MX Brio is no different — the images are bright and evenly-lit, with plenty of detail in both the foreground and background. This is great for a professional/office setup, but it isn't as interesting or cinematic as the shots you'll get from something like the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra.

According to Logitech, the MX Brio brings twice the detail of the Brio 4K, thanks to the combination of its larger, improved sensor and AI image enhancement. This does seem to be accurate — you can definitely see a lot more detail in the MX Brio's image, especially in my face (the background seems to have about the same level of sharpness and detail). But the MX Brio's image still wasn't quite as detailed as images I'm used to seeing from other 4K webcams, such as the Insta360 Link. This seems to be partly because of the lighting boost and AI image adjustment. The MX Brio, like the other Logitech Brio webcams, tends to over-adjust the lighting for a very evenly-lit image, which sounds like a good thing but ends up making everything look a little flat. The AI image enhancement involves noise reduction, and this seems to be part of what's smoothing over finer lines — i.e., details. I did see some of that (offensively) high-resolution detail as I moved around in front of the MX Brio, but it was fleeting as the webcam went in and out of autofocus. 

The autofocus on this webcam was decent — fairly quick and accurate, even if it wasn't giving me extreme detail consistently (frankly, I don't really want extreme detail from a webcam in the first place). While it's not the best webcam for certain types of advanced content creators, the MX Brio is a pretty good option for most non-content-creation situations. The bright, even lighting is especially good for professional use because it just looks better. The important thing to note here is that the MX Brio (and all of Logitech's Brio webcams, to be honest) does a good job of balancing light and making you look professional and well-lit in more typical lighting scenarios. If you're not planning on setting up studio lighting for your webcam, and most people probably aren't, the MX Brio will give you a solid, well-lit image in your home office, straight out of the box.

Low-Light Performance

To test how well a webcam performs in a low-light scenario, I turn off all of my lights and my three 27-inch monitors, leaving my 34-inch monitor as my only light source.

The MX Brio's low-light performance was about average. It did a decent job of lighting me, and the color balancing is good, if not perfect — though I probably didn't help by wearing a blue shirt. But the background isn't lit or color-balanced well at all, unlike in the Brio 4K and Brio 500 images. The Brio 4K and Brio 500 low-light photos obviously have their own issues, but they do a pretty good job of trying to evenly light the scene, while the MX Brio doesn't really do much for anything except the subject. When it comes to details, the MX Brio outperforms its predecessor, but it's not one of the best low-light performances we've seen.

Overexposed Performance

The last lighting scenario I use to test webcams is an overexposed lighting scenario — I turn off all of the lights in front of me, including three of my four monitors, and leave the lights above and behind me turned on. This isn't the most extreme overexposed lighting scenario but it's a pretty common one, because most people don't position their computers in front of a bright light source (like a window).

The MX Brio's performance was a little underwhelming in this scenario, especially with Logitech's RightLight 5 allegedly working to boost lighting in less-than-ideal lighting conditions. While the webcam did fine with keeping the background lighting balanced, it didn't do the best job of lighting me. But maybe this is a good thing (or, at least, not the worst thing) because the image does retain a little more detail in my face than seen in the Brio 4K and Brio 500 photos — because there's less artificial light-boosting. But most people would probably prefer a brighter-lit subject, even if it meant sacrificing some detail.

The MX Brio does have HDR, which is turned on by default. HDR didn't make much of a difference in well-lit images, but it made a big difference in overexposed images — with HDR turned off, the MX Brio was better able to light me, but at the expense of the background, which is so bright that it's blown out.

Features and Software of the MX Brio

The MX Brio can be configured using Logitech's Logi Options+ software (for its productivity line), Logitech's G Hub software (for its gaming line), or Logi Tune (for its enterprise line).

You can use both pieces of software to toggle auto-exposure, auto-white balance, and autofocus, as well as HDR, low-light exposure, and "Show Mode" (which we'll talk about in a moment). You can manually change the webcam's field of view (and zoom/crop your image), adjust exposure (shutter speed, ISO), adjust color settings (temperature, brightness, contrast, saturation, vibrance, sharpness), and adjust focus. Each section has some built-in presets and you can save additional custom presets in the software.

The MX Brio also features "Show Mode," which is a presentation-focused feature that lets you tilt the webcam down to display whatever is on your desk. It's not particularly revolutionary — Show Mode just flips the webcam's orientation when it's pointed downward, so that people can easily see what you're working on. It's not difficult to tilt the webcam down using the included monitor clamp mount, but it does require a modicum of force — enough to mess up the webcam's perfect positioning on top of your monitor. This isn't really the best way to show off your real-world desktop, as you can see from how fuzzy the text is when you zoom in enough to read it, but if you think you might use this function with any regularity, a better option would be a gimbal-mounted webcam like the Insta360 Link. 

The MX Brio has built-in dual beamforming noise-reducing mics for when you don't have a good gaming headset, let alone a standalone USB gaming microphone, nor do you have a pair of Apple AirPods and the built-in mic on your laptop is broken and so your only option is to yell at your webcam and hope people can hear you. Just kidding (sort of) — while built-in webcam mics are notoriously terrible, the MX Brio's mics are actually not bad. In my testing they did a good job of eliminating constant background noise (like my PC and its 17 fans) and my voice sounded crisp, clear, and relatively full. (Maybe about 75% full, which is significantly better than most webcam mics make me sound.) There was still some echo, but that's sort of understandable when you're sitting three feet away from a mic. The MX Brio's mics are still nowhere close to a dedicated one (like the Logitech Yeti Orb) or a great headset mic (like the Razer Blackshark V2 Pro), but people I talked to over video chat said I sounded better over the MX Brio's mic than I did over Apple AirPods — which isn't much, but is still something.

Bottom Line

The Logitech MX Brio does a good job of bringing Logitech's 4K webcam offering into 2024, and it's a solid update over the Brio 4K — it's got a solid, sturdy build with a fantastic built-in privacy shutter, an improved sensor with objectively better image quality, and very good built-in dual beamforming mics. Also, it's nice that Logitech made the MX Brio compatible with at least three of its many different companion apps. If there's anything I dislike more than overwrought peripheral software, it's having to download three of them from the same company. 

Anyway, the MX Brio does what I expected it to do, which is produce pretty balanced, evenly-lit, professional images, right out of the box, in higher resolution than the Brio 500. And that's great... but I'm not sure it's enough. After all, this is a $200 webcam. Sure, $200 is on the lower end of the price range for 4K webcams — most are $300+. Of course, the MX Brio also isn't really on par with most $300+ 4K webcams — it doesn't offer the extreme detail and image quality of the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra or the Insta360 Link or even the Elgato Facecam Pro. 

It's a solid option for someone who's mostly video chatting with coworkers and friends, and maybe casually streaming, but I wouldn't recommend it for content creators. And $200 for work meetings, friend chats, and the occasional Twitch run is pretty pricey. Also, despite its work- and collaboration-focused angle, the MX Brio isn't compatible with Windows Hello (the Brio 4K was). (There's also a business version of the MX Brio, the MX Brio 705 for Business; it's also not compatible with Windows Hello.) 

The MX Brio is a tough sell when there are several 1080p webcams (remember, most video chat and streaming services limit your output to 1080p anyway) that also offer great image quality, auto-exposure, and auto-white balancing out of the box, including Logitech's own Brio 500, which is currently $88.09 at Amazon.  

That tape over your webcam may not be enough. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have highlighted imaging privacy threats enabled by ambient light sensors, in a paper recently published in Science Advances. Device users concerned with security and privacy may be comforted by hardware solutions (shutters) and software permissions restricting webcam use. However, researchers have shown visual information can be gathered via one of the common ambient light sensors installed in many devices. These small sensors usually aren’t shuttered or disabled by users and are typically permission-free on a device level.

Ambient light sensors are categorized as low-risk by device makers and can often be accessed directly by software (or malware) without any permissions or privileges. Nevertheless, previous studies have shown such a rudimentary sensor can provide enough information to infer keystrokes on a virtual keyboard and steal a device PIN, about 80% of the time. The new research shows what an ambient light sensor can do when combined with an active light source component – namely the device' screen.

For their experiments, the MIT researchers used a Samsung Galaxy View 2. This rather old and large (17.3-inch) consumer tablet has its ambient light sensor next to the front-facing (selfie) camera, which is still a very common configuration.

In brief, the researchers found that the position and shape of a user's hand could be determined using their technology. Also, hand gestures could be revealed, as could the number of fingers used and gesture directions. Lastly, it was possible to detect other shapes, like the presence of a human face, for example.

The scientists explained that the ambient light sensor reads the light emitted by the screen shining on a person’s face and being partially blocked by the hand / screen interaction. A whole lot of complicated math, aided by AI and image processing technology, was used by the researchers to deliver their results.

Every device offers a variation in light sensor speed and measurement bit depth, screen brightness, and light sensor precision so some devices will be more vulnerable to this ambient light sensor spy technique than others (see figure above). In the source article figures you will see some of the image captures took several minutes on the tablet device used. However, ambient light sensor imaging snooping tech is demonstrably real and could be refined and optimized.

As ambient light sensors are quite useful, we don’t want devices to get rid of them due to security concerns. Instead, the MIT researchers propose the following adjustments to their implementation:

• Rethink ambient light sensor device permissions
• Reduce sensor speed
• Reposition the sensor so it doesn’t face the user

The above security-conscious changes could easily be implemented by device manufacturers without any obvious drawbacks, so we hope to see them adopted going forward.

It doesn't matter if you're video conferencing with coworkers, chatting with family members, or live streaming to an audience of thousands — you want to look good! There are many things you can do to look better on camera, of course — but it starts with a good webcam.

It's impossible to recommend a universally perfect webcam, because there are so many different ways to use webcams these days. There are also many different types of webcams: from standard HD (1080p) to 4K resolution, with different lenses, sensors, and software (including various types of "AI-powered" features). Don't just grab an ultra high-res 4K webcam and call it a day — higher resolution doesn't automatically mean better picture quality. Plus, the most common video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, don't even support resolutions higher than 1080p.

We've tested dozens of webcams to determine the best webcam for every situation — whether you're trying to appear professional and put-together in front of colleagues while working from home, keep in touch with friends and family on the other side of the planet, or livestream content to millions of viewers.

The Quick List

Best Webcams 2025

Best Webcam for Most People

The Logitech Brio 500 is the first new Logitech webcam for non-creators in over a decade, and while its 1080p/30fps resolution may sound underwhelming, its performance is not. Armed with a flexible 90-degree field of view and Logitech’s "RightLight 4" image adjustment technology, the Brio 500 produces an impressive, exposure-balanced image right out of the box and is a great choice for most people.

We were especially impressed with the Brio 500’s auto-white balance, which is something almost all webcams struggle with: it wasn’t perfect, but it was almost as impressive as the auto-white balance seen on much pricier webcams, such as the Insta360 Link. Logitech’s "RightLight 4" technology, which is designed to compensate for less-than-ideal lighting situations, did an excellent job of producing flattering, evenly-lit images in both low and overexposed lighting.

The Logitech Brio 500 is a great example of how higher resolution doesn't automatically mean better picture quality — it may have the same surface-level specs as older Logitech webcams, such as the C920s and C930e, but it produces much better images. For the average person looking to upgrade their webcam from whatever’s built into their laptop’s bezel — or even from an older Logitech model — the Logitech Brio 500 offers the best out-of-the-box performance at a reasonable price ($130), with more modern software and a convenient USB-C connection.

Most web conferencing apps limit your streaming resolution to 1080p or 720p, but that doesn’t mean a webcam with a higher resolution is completely wasted. If you plan on zooming in to crop out your background, the 2K WB5023 Dell Pro Webcam is similarly priced to the Brio 500, offers impressive out-of-the-box performance, and outputs a 2K resolution, which will give you a touch more detail in closer shots.

Read: Logitech Brio 500 Review

Best Webcam for Content Creators

The Insta360 Link is an AI-powered 4K webcam perched on a 3-axis gimbal, packed with a variety of capture modes and features that will appeal to content creators such as AI movement tracking, and offers incredibly impressive color reproduction and auto-exposure. This doesn’t come cheap — the Link is one of the pricier webcams on this list with a retail price of $300 — but it's inline with other 4K options.

The Link offers unparalleled image quality, thanks to its 1/2-inch sensor and 4K resolution. But — more importantly — the Link has some of the best auto-exposure, color reproduction, and auto-focus we’ve ever seen in a webcam. Most webcams have difficulty adjusting between different lighting scenarios (especially quickly), and while the Link isn’t perfect, it’s very good at adjusting on the fly. This, combined with the webcam’s 3-axis gimbal and AI-powered movement tracking, makes the Link a very powerful contender for content creators who move a lot, or for professional or educational presentations.

The Link is a very impressive webcam — maybe a little too impressive. Realistically, the Link is probably overkill for all but a very small user demographic. 4K resolution isn’t even possible in most web conferencing apps, and capture modes such as “portrait mode,” “top-down mode,” and “desktop mode” are fun to play with but aren’t terribly beneficial unless you already know how you’re going to use them. Remember, this is still a webcam — it needs to be connected to a computer to work, so it's not as versatile as a standalone action cam, like a GoPro.

Read: Insta360 Link Review

Best Budget Webcam

You don't need a crazy 4K webcam if all you're doing is chatting with friends, family, and even coworkers — as I've mentioned throughout this piece, most video conferencing software limits you to 1080p resolution (or lower), anyway. Elgato's Neo line is designed to be simple, easy to use, and budget-friendly — and the Elgato Facecam Neo is exactly that. The Facecam Neo records video at 1080p / 60fps and has a 1/2.9" CMOS sensor, an autofocus lens, and a physical privacy shelter. It features a non-detachable USB-C cable, a detachable monitor stand, and it works with PCs, MacBooks, and iPads.

The Facecam Neo is a pretty standard-looking webcam, with a lightweight white plastic chassis that measures 3.5 inches (88mm) wide by 1.6 inches (40mm) tall and is 1.3 inches (32mm) deep. The front features a black circle around the lens, as well as a white indicator LED so you know when the webcam is streaming. It also has a physical privacy shutter, which slides over the lens via a small slider on top of the webcam. On the bottom of the webcam there's a standard tripod mounting point, which you can attach to the included clamp-style monitor stand or any other webcam stand/tripod. A 4.5-foot braided USB-C cable is permanently attached to the back.

The Facecam Neo is designed to be plug-n-play — like all of Elgato's Neo line. It does a decent job as a plug-n-play device: the default settings performed pretty well in our fully-lit lighting scenario, with nice color balancing and crisp details, though it did struggle slightly with light levels (as many webcams do). It performed impressively well in our low-light scenario — while the image was grainy, the light and color balance was better than what I've seen from many pricier, fancier webcams. Finally, the Facecam Neo struggled a bit with our overexposed lighting scenario, which is the hardest scenario for most webcams. The webcam does have HDR, though you'll have to turn it on in Elgato's Camera Hub software (so it's not really plug-n-play anymore), which helps it balance light a little better. I'm a big fan of Camera Hub, though, so I recommend downloading it regardless — it also lets you tweak the webcam's color and lighting settings, turn on digital zoom, and crop the image (always handy — most of us don't have picture-perfect webcam backgrounds set up and ready to go).

When the Facecam Neo first came out, it was priced at $99.99 — and I probably wouldn't recommend it at that price. But it's since undergone a permanent price reduction, down to $59.99, and that makes it a great buy. It's not a very fancy webcam — it doesn't even have a built-in microphone (not that you should ever be using the built-in mic on any webcam) — but it does what you need it to do, and it'll even work on your iPad.

Read: Elgato Facecam Neo Review

Best 4K Webcam

YoloLiv's YoloCam S3 is a small, sturdy 4K webcam with a large 1/1.28-inch sensor and AI-enhanced face-tracking and low-light performance. While it doesn't have the built-in gimbal of the Insta360 Link or the ability to record 4K video at 60fps like the Elgato Facecam Pro, its performance is impressive. While it's definitely not cheap, it does start at a lower price point of $199 — though this price isn't so uncommon now that 4K webcams are more prevalent. In addition to its 1/1.28-inch sensor, the YoloCam S3 features a f/1.85 aperture, an 82-degree field of view, 4x digital zoom, and HDR. It streams video at 4K (30 fps) and at 1080p (60/50/30/25 fps).

The YoloCam S3's performance was pretty solid all around. The picture looked crisp and clear out of the box, and while the default contrast was a little high, the webcam picked up a lot of detail and offered decent auto-exposure and auto-white-balancing. It performed well in all three of our lighting scenarios — well-lit, low-light, and over-exposed — balancing light as expected, without too much noise or artefacting in darker areas, and with all the high-resolution detail a 4K webcam promises. It's also fairly configurable through the companion app, YoloLiv Compose, which lets you manually adjust exposure, white balance, sharpness, contrast, and saturation, and features a color-grading feature "similar to DaVinci Resolve" that lets streamers color-grade their images in real time.

The YoloCam S3 is very sturdily built, and it comes with a magnetic monitor stand that allows you to mount it horizontally or vertically (and also has a standard tripod mounting attachment point on the bottom). It does not have a built-in privacy shutter, nor does it come with a physical lens cap, which is... not great. Luckily it's pretty easy to just pop it off of your PC when you're not using it, as the mount is magnetic, but I'd rather not have to move my webcam whenever I'm not using it. You can of course get a third-party privacy shutter, but you shouldn't have to.

Privacy shutter issues aside, the YoloCam S3 is a pretty impressive little powerhouse in a somewhat affordable package. Like other 4K webcams, it's almost certainly overkill for the average user who's chatting with family, friends, and coworkers, but for streamers or content creators it's definitely worth a look.

Read: YoloLiv YoloCam S3 Review

Best Image Quality

Razer’s first 4K webcam, the Kiyo Pro Ultra, has the largest sensor ever put in a webcam — a 1/1.2-inch Sony Starvis 2, with a wide f1.7 aperture — as well as 4x digital zoom, an adjustable field of view (72 - 82 degrees), and a nicely-integrated physical privacy shutter. It’s a large but relatively lightweight webcam, and it has the same detached-DSLR lens aesthetic as its predecessors.

This is one of the best webcams we’ve tested when it comes to image quality — it has excellent auto-exposure and color balancing and a shallow depth of field that gives you a nice blurred-background effect without using software. Its impressive image quality was most apparent in our well-lit test setting, but it also did pretty well in our low-light and overexposed scenarios (once we tweaked some settings). The crispness and clarity of the picture is shockingly good, even compared to other 4K webcams — and while the average person probably doesn’t need (and can’t even use) such ultra-HD streaming, this does mean a better picture for lower-resolution streams, especially if you’re zooming and cropping.

The Kiyo Pro Ultra works with Razer’s Synapse 3, which offers pretty detailed control over the webcam with manual adjustments for focus, exposure, and color balance, as well as photo and video resolution settings and processing effects. Unfortunately, to adjust any of the Kiyo Pro Ultra’s settings in Synapse 3, you must have the in-app preview turned on, and Windows only allows you to use the webcam with one app at a time — so if you’re trying to set up an image in a program other than Synapse 3 (and you probably are), this quickly becomes a very frustrating process.

While this may not be too much of a problem for the casual user, professional streamers and content creators who are looking for precise control over their streaming output will probably be better off with the Insta360 Link or the Elgato Facecam Pro — both similarly-priced 4K webcams with very usable software.

Read: Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra Review

Best 2K Webcam

If you’re not quite ready to spring for a 4K webcam — and, let’s face it, you probably don’t need one — a 2K webcam like the Dell Pro Webcam (WB5023) is a nice compromise. This 2K QHD webcam records video at 1440p/30fps (1080p/60fps) and has a 78-degree field of view as well as HDR, 4x digital zoom, a built-in mic, and AI auto-framing.

The Dell Pro Webcam looks similar to its pricier sibling (but... cheaper). It has a plastic chassis, a magnetic lens cap, a non-detachable USB-A cable, and a built-in monitor clamp — it’s definitely less “premium” than the Dell Ultrasharp, but it’s well built and still looks relatively sleek sitting on top of your monitor.

The Dell Pro Webcam is a good plug-and-play webcam — it performed well in all of our lighting scenarios right out of the box. It was especially impressive in our low-light test scenario, as it’s one of the only webcams we’ve reviewed that has managed to adequately light both the foreground and the background in a near-dark setting. It also features Digital Overlap HDR.

Most video conferencing apps cap streaming video quality at 1080p, so a 2K webcam might not seem any more usable than a 4K webcam in that regard. However, a higher resolution webcam can still make a difference if you plan on zooming in (perhaps to crop out your background), so it’s not just content creators who can benefit.

Read: Dell Pro Webcam (WB5023) Review

Specifications Comparison

Other Webcams We Tested

Elgato Facecam MK.2

The Facecam MK.2 is a nice upgrade to the original Facecam, but it's just... not that different. It's got the same basic specs as its predecessor — 1080p/60fps video, a f/2.4 aperture fixed-focus lens, and an 82-degree field of view.

It adds onboard storage, HDR, and 4x digital zoom, and has been redesigned with a built-in privacy shutter and a lower-profile chassis. It's also cheaper at $150 (the original Facecam debuted at $200).

Performance-wise, it displays good auto-exposure and white balancing in well-lit and low-light scenarios, but the HDR was underwhelming. It's a good webcam, but the Logitech Brio 500 has better out-of-the-box image quality, a better built-in shutter design, and is cheaper.

Logitech MX Brio

The MX Brio is Logitech's update to the Brio 4K — the first 4K webcam... ever. The MX Brio sports the same resolution (4K/30fps, 1080p/60fps) as its predecessor but has an upgraded sensor and improved software for an image that's twice as detailed as the Brio 4K. It's also got a nice new look — a sleek aluminum chassis with a convenient integrated privacy shutter.

The MX Brio produces balanced, evenly-lit images that work especially well in a professional setting, and this webcam is aimed at business users (rather than gamers/streamers/creators). It's not quite as dramatic or as detailed as the creator-focused 4K webcams we've tested (but it's also cheaper, at $200).

It's certainly a solid option for someone who's mostly chatting with coworkers or clients, but those users generally don't need 4K resolution. The MX Brio is certified for popular video conferencing apps Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom — none of which even support 4K webcam video. (Also, it doesn't support Windows Hello — though its predecessor did.) We're just not sure who this webcam is for.

Razer Kiyo Pro

The Razer Kiyo Pro is a good 1080p/60fps option for those who don't need (or want) the 4K resolution of the Kiyo Pro Ultra. It drops the built-in ring light we saw in its predecessor (the Razer Kiyo), and has a design that looks a lot like its 4K successor (the Kiyo Pro Ultra), minus the convenient built-in privacy shutter (it does come with a lens cover, though).

The Kiyo Pro features a large, impressive light sensor that boosts the image in low-light conditions, as well as HDR, an adjustable field of view (80/90/103-degrees), and records uncompressed 1080p/60fps video.

How We Test Webcams

We test each of our webcams by inspecting its specs, design, and build quality, as well as how easily its lens can be covered for privacy. We also test the stability and flexibility of any built-in or included monitor stands, and check each camera for third-party mounting options.

We then shoot test photos in three lighting conditions: (1) well-lit, with bright lighting both in front of and behind the subject; (2) backlit/overexposed, with bright light behind the subject and one 27-inch monitor in front of the subject; and (3) low-light, with no lighting aside from one 27-inch monitor in front of the subject, displaying the standard Google home page. Our home office lighting is completely controlled.

Our first round of shooting uses the camera's default, out-of-the-box settings. We then manually adjust the camera's settings using the camera's companion software, if applicable. If the camera doesn't come with software, we use a third-party application (YouCam 9) to adjust its settings. We adjust the settings so that the camera looks best in each of our lighting conditions and then take another round of photos. If there are any special settings, such as HDR or low-light boost, we also take photos with those turned on and off in each setting.

While we do test the photo capabilities of any included software, we take all of our final photos using the Windows Camera app for consistency.

Quick Shopping Tips

Here are a few details to consider while you're shopping for the perfect webcam.

• Resolution: It's easy to be wooed by that 4K label, but make sure you actually want — and can use — an ultra high-res webcam. Common web conferencing apps such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams limit your outgoing video stream to 720p or 1080p, so it's unlikely your coworkers will benefit from that extra quality unless you plan on zooming (higher-res webcams will offer more detail in zoomed-in shots).
  
  
• Field of View (FOV): Webcams with wider FOVs show more of the room. This is good if there will be multiple people in the shot, or if you're planning on presenting using a visual aid such as a white board. It's not so good, however, if you have a thrown-together work-from-home setup and you don't want viewers to see the mess around you.
  
  
• Autofocus, auto white balance, and low-light correction: Most webcams look pretty good with a professional lighting setup, a thoughtfully-framed and curated set, and some manual software fine-tuning. But if you don't have the space, equipment, time, or patience to perfect your picture, look for a webcam that works well out of the box. We test webcams using both default and manually-configured settings, in a number of ideal and less-than-ideal lighting scenarios.
  
  
• Privacy cover: Privacy is a real concern — and not just from malicious hackers or spying governments. Internet security is important, but here's a more likely situation: you, accidentally turning your webcam on (or leaving it on) without realizing it. Yeah — something as simple as a physical privacy cover can save you from potential embarrassment, and all webcams need one.

Finding Discounts on the Best Webcams

Whether you're shopping for one of the best webcams or one that didn't quite make our list, you may find savings by checking out the latest Logitech promo codes, Newegg promo codes, Amazon promo codes, Razer promo codes or Micro Center coupons.

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If you're wondering why the camera on your Surface Pro X suddenly stopped working this week, you're not alone. A flood of Surface Pro X owners took to Reddit yesterday to complain that their webcams unexpectedly stopped working — an issue that can have various repercussions.

Surface Pro X owners attempting to use the camera are greeted with the following error message: 

Error code 0xA00F4271 (0x80004005). 

What's interesting about this particular issue is that it affects every single Surface Pro X customer. Given the encompassing nature of the camera failures, the most likely culprit is an expired security certificate, according to Reddit user Wapitiii. If you roll your Surface Pro X back to any date before May 23, 2023, the camera "magically" starts working again — giving credence to the suggestion that a security certificate is to blame. This isn't a good workaround, by the way, as rolling back the date on your device can result in authentication problems for secure websites or programs on your PC.  

"Well, setting the date manually back to April, but as stated before, the incorrect date interferes with date/time sensitive websites or apps," wrote PCurrington on the Microsoft Community forum. "Chrome immediately started blocking my email website, and I was unable to access a travel message board. Any software/website that tracks the date. So, when I want to use the camera, I have to manually adjust the date back, use Zoom, and then correct the date to automatic to use other apps or websites."

Without functioning cameras, Surface Pro X customers are unable to partake in video calls using Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet (among other popular apps used for work and education). In addition, the Surface Pro X's camera also works as a way to log into Windows 11 using Windows Hello. Users with non-functional cameras will need to login using alternative methods. 

Despite the widespread nature of this latest Surface Pro X problem, Microsoft hasn't officially commented on the problem yet. The company is at least aware of the problem, as a note in the Windows 11 Feedback Hub shows that Microsoft is "looking into it." Unfortunately, there is no timeline for a fix, so customers will need to roll back the system clock manually to use the camera (and risk upsetting other programs), or perhaps invest in an external webcam. 

Microsoft's Surface Pro X is a bit of an odd duck in the broad PC market to begin with: it's a 13-inch convertible powered by a Microsoft SQ1 or SQ2 Arm processor. The use of a power-sipping Arm processor allows the device to last up to 15 hours per charge. 

Microsoft earlier today released the Windows 11 "Moment 3" Update (KB5026446), but it is doubtful that it addresses the camera issues faced by Surface Pro X owners.

Now that the pandemic is (sort of) over, and every webcam on our list of best webcams isn’t in short supply, Logitech has been revamping its line of regular consumer webcams. It started with the 1080p Logitech Brio 500 in September, and released the Logitech Brio 300 — also 1080p — earlier this year. 

The Brio 300 is a smaller, lighter, more budget-friendly version of the Brio 500. It records video in 1080p and 720p at 30 frames per second and has a fixed-focus 2MP lens with 1x digital zoom and a 70 degree field of view. It has an integrated privacy shutter, a built-in monitor mount, and a non-detachable USB-C cable (like the Brio 500, it doesn’t come with a USB-C to USB-A converter). 

It’s available in pink, black, and white, and it retails for $69.99 (currently on sale for $59.99), which might be pretty tempting if you’re looking for a sub-$100 1080p webcam. But you can also find the 1080p Logitech C920s, which has a better lens and a more flexible stand, for around the same price these days.

Design of the Brio 300

The Brio 300 is an interesting-looking webcam: it has a cone-shaped body with a large, circular faceplate at the front that tapers into a point in the back. The webcam’s small lens is surrounded by a wide faceplate with Logitech’s logo printed on the left side and an LED activity light on the right side. Below the camera is a single noise-reducing microphone.

I don’t love the way the Brio 300 looks, but at least it’s relatively small and unobtrusive, especially on a laptop. Logitech lists its measurements as 2.58 inches (65.63mm) tall, 2.09 inches (53.1mm) wide, and 1.78 inches (45mm) deep. While it is 2.58 inches (65.63mm) tall, this measurement includes the built-in mount — if you place it on your monitor it will rise approximately 2.21 inches (56mm) above the screen. The webcam weighs around 2.63 ounces (74.6g), including the built-in mount and cable.

Like the Brio 500, the Brio 300 is made with part post-consumer recycled material (48% - 62%, depending on color), and its matte, speckled plastic finish reflects that. It comes in three colors — graphite (black), rose (pink), and off-white. It has a built-in physical privacy cover, which is a little circle that flips up to reveal the lens. The shutter is pretty well-integrated when closed, but the top part of the circle does extend past the webcam’s faceplate when it’s open. This doesn’t seem like too much of an issue — it could snap off if it was tossed into a bag and jostled around, but it feels fairly sturdy so it would probably take a decent amount of pressure for that to happen. (Also, who’s tossing webcams — with the shutter open — into a bag? Not most people, I suspect.)

All of the Brio 300’s accessories — mount and cable — are permanently attached to the webcam, so there’s nothing else in the box. The webcam has an attached, five-foot USB-C cable (and no USB-C to USB-A converter, so plan accordingly), as well as an attached clamp-style monitor mount.

The mount is lined with rubberized, non-stick material for stability, and features an adjustable foot to “clamp” (sort of) onto your monitor or laptop screen. The foot is adjustable enough to fit even a very slim laptop, and in my testing I found the Brio 300 to be relatively stable — though I credit this more to the small size and lightweight of the webcam, rather than the integrity of the mount.

The webcam does not swivel on the stand, which is unfortunate as it means that it can only sit perpendicular to your monitor. It does tilt — approximately 25 degrees backward and 40 degrees forward. If you don’t want to put the webcam on your monitor/laptop screen, you’ll have to balance it on a flat surface or something, because it does not have a threaded tripod attachment.

Specs

Well-lit Performance of the Brio 300

The Brio 300 is a 1080p full HD webcam with a 2-megapixel image sensor with a fixed-focus lens, 1x digital zoom, and a 70-degree field of view. It does feature Logitech’s RightLight 2 technology, which helps boost lighting in low-light conditions but isn’t the same as RightLight 4 (in the Brio 500), which uses face-tracking and other factors to ensure the subject is well-lit.

I take all my webcam test photos in my home office, which has almost no natural light. For my well-lit scenario, I have a ring light, a key light, and four monitors (three 27-inch, one 34-inch) in front of me, as well as some ambient lighting from my desk, desktop, and various plugged-in peripherals. There’s an arching floor lamp and a desk lamp behind me. The ring light is set to 35% brightness at 3600K, and the key light is set to 15% brightness at 4100K. This lighting scenario is actually very bright, and many older webcams tend to read it as overexposed. For consistency, I take all photos using Windows 11’s built-in camera app.

The Brio 300’s performance was solidly average in this lighting scenario. It produced an image that was bright and evenly-lit, but, upon closer examination, seemed unnecessarily over-processed. While there’s a decent amount of detail in the photo (especially in the background), all of the edges are very soft. The Brio 300 has a fixed-focus lens — unlike the Logitech C920s, Brio 4K, and Brio 500, which all have autofocus lenses — but this seems like less of a focus issue and more of an overall processing issue. There’s also a lot of graininess in the photo, considering this is a very bright lighting scenario — no gain boost should be needed with this much light.

The Brio 300 did a pretty good job with white balancing (though perhaps it was aided a bit by my choice of a bright white sweatshirt), and the picture looked pretty true-to-life with the webcam’s out-of-the-box settings. I changed my shirt and toyed around with the picture adjustment settings in Logitech’s Logi Tune software, but I couldn’t come up with anything that looked much better than what the Brio 300 gave me with its auto-exposure and auto-color balancing.

Low-Light Performance of the Brio 300

To test the Brio 300’s low-light performance, I turned off all of my lights, including three of my four monitors, leaving just one monitor as my sole light source. I took the first photo with the Windows 11 camera app taking up approximately half of my screen, and my desktop wallpaper taking up the other half. 

The Brio 300 did not perform very well in this scenario — not that I expected it to, as this is a tricky scenario for even the best webcams to navigate. But I’d say this is lower than my expectations, given that this is still a 1080p webcam released in 2023. The picture is extremely noisy and the lack of sharpness is even more apparent, and the white balance is pretty off. This is still better than what I’d expect from a standard built-in webcam in a laptop, but not so much better that it’d be worth the extra hassle and expense.

The low-light scenario is one in which very small changes in lighting can have a pretty drastic effect, so I opened up a browser window on half of my screen and navigated to a mostly-white page (the Google search page) to see if I could get the Brio 300 to color balance properly. This did have a pretty big effect, and the color balancing here actually looks pretty good — even if it did come at the expense of exposure (again, probably due in part to my white sweatshirt). This is a much better picture, though the image is still pretty noisy in all areas despite being much darker.

Overexposed Performance of the Brio 300

To test the Brio 300’s performance in an overexposed setting, I turned off all of the lights in front of me as well as three of my four monitors. While this isn’t the most extreme overexposed lighting scenario, it’s a fairly common one — most people do not have bright lights or windows behind their computers, so this type of lighting scenario is often seen in both casual and professional video calls. 

This was, unfortunately, the Brio 300’s worst lighting scenario. It’s basically as noisy as the low-light photo, and it’s especially noisy in the foreground where the webcam attempted to boost the lighting. This is kind of the opposite of ideal, since the subject should be the focus of the picture, yet the background looks better than I do. While it’s not totally unusable, 

I definitely expected a better showing from a 2023 Logitech webcam — part of Logitech’s RightLight technology is supposed to be about spot-lighting and focusing on the subject, after all. Before you jump to the Brio 300’s defense, consider the level of noise in photo I took with the built-in webcam on my IBM ThinkPad on April 21, 2004:

Microphone on the Brio 300

The Brio 300 has a built-in noise-reducing microphone with a range of up to four feet. No webcam’s built-in mic is particularly impressive, but the Brio 300’s mic isn’t terrible — it’s pretty sensitive to sound and it picked up my voice clearly, even from a few feet away. My voice did sound a little hollow and echo-y, however. 

I’m not sure what kind of noise-reducing tech Logitech thinks it’s put in this mic, because it did not seem to be able to reduce any outside noise at all — not from my PC fans, not from my dog barking, not from my husband talking in the other room. Even left-clicking the button on my mouse came through loud and clear. Let’s just say it’s a highly-sensitive mic, but it will work if you need to take an emergency video call in a very quiet room and your laptop’s built-in mic is broken.

Features and Software of the Brio 300

The Brio 300 is largely designed to be an easy, plug-and-play device — and for the most part, it is. It is supported by Logitech’s Logi Tune software, which has a couple of settings that can be toggled on or off, as well as a handful of image adjustment sliders for fine-tuning the picture.

In Logi Tune, you can toggle the Brio 300’s auto-exposure, auto-white balance, and low light compensation settings. Turning off auto-exposure gives you an adjustable exposure slider as well as an adjustable gain slider, and turning off auto-white balance gives you a color temperature slider. Turning on low light compensation won’t affect how the static picture looks, as it’s a feature that dynamically varies the frame rate to compensate for low lighting conditions. 

In addition to the exposure and color balance adjustments, Logi Tune also has adjustable sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. I played around with the sliders for a bit, but for the most part the webcam’s default settings looked best. Logi Tune also has a “filters” tab with six preset filters, none of which are particularly inspiring. The filters are just image presets, so if you apply a filter and go back to the adjustments tab, you’ll see that filter’s presets (e.g. the black-and-white “mono b” filter is just the saturation slider dialed to 0).There’s no way to save your own custom image adjustments as a filter, however, which is too bad.

Bottom Line

The Logitech Brio 300 does some things well — its best settings seem to be its default settings, so it’s a decent plug-and-play device, so long as you have a USB-C port handy. It produces a pretty good picture in brightly-lit settings, managing auto-exposure and auto-color balance better than expected. It’s also smaller and lighter than many webcams (though oddly-shaped), and it has an easy-to-use built-in physical privacy shutter. 

But even in perfect lighting conditions, images look a little noisy and fuzzy around the edges, and image quality quickly degrades as lighting conditions become less-than-ideal. Don’t get me wrong — the picture isn’t objectively bad, but it’s not so much better than, say, the standard built-in webcam on a laptop that I’d recommend purchasing a separate device. Plus, the Brio 300’s built-in monitor mount doesn’t swivel or have a tripod attachment, and the built-in cable is USB-C and doesn’t come with a USB-C to USB-A converter. 

The Brio 300 could work for very specific situations, but Logitech’s older C920s has a better lens (and the C930e has an even better lens) and a detachable mount with a tripod attachment, and can be found for the same price or less. The Microsoft Modern Webcam is another budget-priced 1080p webcam that has a better handle on low-light and overexposed lighting scenarios. There’s just no compelling reason to choose this webcam over any of its competitors or over the one that’s built into a laptop.w

Razer debuted its first webcam, the Razer Kiyo, in 2017, and followed it up with the Razer Kiyo Pro in 2021. And now, in 2023, Razer’s back with the newest iteration of its gamer-slash-streamer-oriented webcams: the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra. (Let’s hope Razer comes up with a new product line name for the next one, and doesn’t call it the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra Max, or something like that.)

The Kiyo Pro Ultra is Razer’s first 4K webcam, streaming in 4K/30fps (as well as 1440p/30fps, 1080p/60/30/24fps, and 720p/60/30fps), and it features the largest sensor ever put in webcam — a 1/1.2-inch Sony Starvis 2 sensor with a wide f1.7 aperture that allows for the artsy shallow depth of field you get with a DSLR where the subject is sharp and in focus but the background is blurred. (You can also do this with the “background blur” effect in various video conferencing apps, but... you shouldn’t.) It also has 4x digital zoom, an adjustable field of view of between 72 and 82 degrees, and an innovative integrated physical privacy shutter (as well as a separate lens cap to protect the glass from dust and scratches). 

There’s no question this is one of the best webcams we’ve tested, and it’s priced to match: the Kiyo Pro Ultra costs $299.99 (available exclusively at Razer.com), which is $100 more than the Kiyo Pro but in line with other premium 4K webcams such as the Insta360 Link and the Elgato Facecam Pro.  

Design of the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra

The Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra has the same overall design as its predecessor, the Kiyo Pro — large, round, and all lens (well, all glass, at least). It looks a little like a detached camera lens, complete with a movable “focus ring” that twists to open and close the webcam’s new iris-like privacy shutter. The webcam’s properties are listed around the lens in white, and Razer’s logo is subtly embossed under the glass. A white LED indicator light at the top of the webcam tells you when it’s being used. 

 The Kiyo Pro Ultra has the same dimensions as the Kiyo Pro, measuring approximately 3.01 inches (76.5mm) in diameter and 2.36 inches (60mm) deep (not including the mount). Although it’s large, it’s not overly heavy — the webcam weighs 6.28 ounces (178g), and the mount adds another 5.61 ounces (159g). The Kiyo Pro Ultra is smaller and lighter than the Elgato Facecam Pro (4.6 x 3.1 x 1.5 inches / 116 x 79 x 38mm; 8.47oz / 240g), but is still quite a bit larger than the Insta360 Link (2.71 x 1.61 x 1.77 inches / 69 x 41 x 45mm, 3.73oz / 106g). 

The Kiyo Pro Ultra comes with an L-shaped, clamp-style monitor mount (already attached), a lens cover, and a 5-foot, braided USB-C to USB-C cable. The USB-C cable is a little stiff — a webcam cable doesn’t need to be as malleable as does a mouse cable, but positioning the webcam would have been a little easier with a more flexible cable (I ended up using one of Razer’s “Speedflex” mouse cables, for convenience).

The Kiyo Pro Ultra doesn’t necessarily need to be plugged into any specific USB port on your PC, but Razer does recommend plugging it directly into a USB 3.0 port for the best performance. The webcam still worked for me when plugged into other ports, but I did see some stuttering in higher-res video (both in preview mode and while streaming).

The monitor mount screws into the webcam’s universal tripod mounting point, and features rubberized, non-slip material for extra stability and grip when it’s sitting atop your monitor. Once attached, the mount allows the webcam to tilt a few degrees upward and 90 degrees downward. 

There’s no built-in swivel, but the screw mount makes it relatively easy to turn the webcam as needed. The webcam sits at the front of the mount, so the overall depth of the webcam and mount together is approximately 3.68 inches (93.5mm). The mount also has a universal tripod mounting point, in case you want to put the webcam on a tripod without removing the mount.

The Kiyo Pro Ultra comes with a soft, rubbery physical lens cap, as well as an internal privacy shutter that’s cleverly designed to mimic an iris. Twisting the webcam’s outer ring to the left closes the privacy shutter, while twisting it to the right opens it. I love this implementation: it’s smooth and easy to operate, and I was able to open and close the shutter without knocking the webcam off my monitor or even mildly displacing it.

For those of you keeping track, this webcam has not one but two physically-operated privacy controls, while other impressive 4K webcams such as the Insta360 Link and the Elgato Facecam Pro have none. Also — closing the privacy shutter does not turn off the camera.

Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra Specifications

Well-lit Performance of the Kiyo Pro Ultra

The Kiyo Pro Ultra is a 4K webcam with an extra-large, 1/1.2-inch image sensor with a f1.7 aperture, 4x digital zoom, and an adjustable field of view of between 72 and 82 degrees. It can stream video at 4K/30fps, 1440p/30fps, 1080p/60/30/24fps, and 720p/60/30fps.

I take all my webcam test photos in my home office, which is a very controlled setting as it gets almost no natural light. For my well-lit test scenario, I have a ring light, key light, and four desktop monitors (three 27” and one 34”) in front of me, and a desktop lamp and an arching floor lamp behind me. The ring light is set to 35% brightness at 3600K, and the key light is set to 15% brightness at 4100K. There’s also some ambient RGB lighting from my desk, desktop, and various peripherals. For consistency, I take all photos using Windows 11’s built-in camera app.

The Kiyo Pro Ultra looks great with its default, out-of-the-box settings. It does an excellent job with auto-exposure and auto-color balance, even better than the Insta360 Link. 

It has a nice, shallow depth of field, which gives you that blurred background effect without the use of software. It does have an overly-sensitive autofocus, as many webcams do, but you can turn this off in Razer’s Synapse 3 software (though you may have to do this several times before it saves — more on that later).

The Kiyo Pro Ultra’s autofocus is overly-sensitive but relatively quick, and the webcam does a pretty good job of on-the-fly light metering for those who move around a lot. I went into Synapse 3 and played with the image settings, but nothing I did dramatically improved the picture — the default settings are very good.

Like other 4K webcams, the Kiyo Pro Ultra’s extremely high resolution is absolutely overkill for most users — the majority of video conferencing platforms, including Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, limit your outgoing video resolution to 1080p or 720p, and Twitch also limits your streaming output to 1080p/60fps.

Low-light Performance of the Kiyo Pro Ultra

To test the Kiyo Pro Ultra’s performance in a low-light scenario, I turned off all of my lights, as well as three of my four monitors, leaving just one monitor as a light source. I took this photo with the Windows 11 camera app taking up around half of my screen and my desktop wallpaper on the other half.

The Kiyo Pro Ultra performed well enough in this scenario. It did a very good job of evenly lighting both me and my background — it lit my background so well that I had to double-check to make sure there was no light leaking in from outside my office (there wasn’t). In fact, this scene is almost too well-lit and could probably use a little more contrast. 

Also, this kind of lighting boost doesn’t come without a price — there’s a lot of noise in the image, though there’s still plenty of detail. This photo was taken without any of the low-light processing effects toggled on, however, so I went ahead and turned on 2D and 3D noise processing:

As you can see, both images are still noticeably noisy, though less so over the subject (me), and the last image managed to do a better job of color balancing.

Overexposed Performance of the Kiyo Pro Ultra

To test how the Kiyo Pro Ultra performed in an overexposed lighting scenario, I turned off all of the lights in front of me as well as three of my four monitors. (This isn’t the most extreme overexposed lighting scenario, but it’s probably the most common overexposed scenario.) 

The Kiyo Pro Ultra didn’t do quite as well in this scenario, lighting my background but leaving me somewhat dark and grainy (and pink). The Insta360 Link and the Elgato Facecam Pro did better in this situation, but the difference isn’t too significant — none of them are great.

I turned on several of the webcam’s processing features, including HDR, low light compensation, and 2D and 3D dynamic noise reduction, and the picture was a little better and more subject-focused (though it seems the HDR managed to make the brightly-lit areas even brighter, somehow). The Insta360 Link produced a similar image with better color balancing after a reset, but with less graininess.

Microphone of the Kiyo Pro Ultra

The Kiyo Pro Ultra has a built-in omnidirectional microphone, which is... not the best. No built-in webcam mic has ever come close to the mics you’ll find on the best gaming headsets, let alone a standalone USB gaming microphone, and the mic on the Kiyo Pro Ultra was solidly average among webcam mics. It picked up my voice fairly well (albeit a little on the quiet side), and my voice sounded a little thin but not too echo-y. 

Unfortunately the omnidirectional nature of the mic means it also picked up everything else in the area — most notably, the sound of my PC fans (which are, admittedly, pretty loud). The mic isn’t bad, it’s just not particularly good, and I wouldn’t recommend using it if you don’t need to.

Features and Software of the Kiyo Pro Ultra

The Kiyo Pro Ultra is configurable through Razer’s Synapse 3 software, which as you may know by now is my favorite gaming peripheral software. Wait, did I say favorite? Sorry, I meant to say least favorite. Synapse 3 is the bane of my existence. Why is it never running when I’m trying to use it? Why does it update 17 times a week? I’m not kidding when I say that it feels like I’m getting punk’d with this software.

Anyway.

The good news is that Synapse 3 does offer some pretty detailed control over the webcam, letting you manually adjust focus, exposure, and image settings, as well as resolution and processing effects. The bad news is that you must be in Synapse 3 with the in-app preview open in order to change any of these settings (turning off the in-app preview locks all of the settings), and Windows only lets you use your webcam with one app at any time. Plus, while Synapse 3’s settings are supposed to save to the webcam when you hit “save,” they don’t... always manage to do that.

So, if you’re trying to set up an image in a program other than Synapse 3, and I assume you are, you will probably find yourself going back and forth between the two programs... constantly. And since Synapse 3’s settings only save to the webcam about half the time, this is, needless to say, a very frustrating experience.

There are three sections in the Kiyo Pro Ultra’s menu: camera, processing, and image. The camera section lets you control focus and exposure (and turn off auto-focus and auto-exposure), and lets you zoom, pan, and tilt to crop your scene. Once you’ve zoomed, panned, and tilted perfectly, you can save that setting to one of five presets, which can be tied to any shortcut key you choose.

In the processing section, you can set the Kiyo Pro Ultra’s preview resolution and MJPEG quality, as well as turn on HDR, lens distortion compensation, low light compensation, and 2D or 3D dynamic noise reduction. For the most part, these processing tweaks are pretty subtle (some are too subtle). Turning on HDR did improve the image slightly in lower lighting conditions, but it wasn’t able to tame overly bright areas (it has “dark room” and “bright room” options, but the difference between the two isn’t noticeable). 

The low light compensation also didn’t seem to do much, even as I moved between a light and dark room on camera. The dynamic noise reduction worked okay, but images were still noisy in darker settings.

The image section gives you manual control over brightness, contrast, saturation, and white balance (which can also be automatic), as well as anti-flicker adjustment. There’s a toggle for a watermark, in case you’re a Razer brand ambassador (or you just want everyone to know you’re using a $300 webcam), as well as a toggle to mirror your video stream, which you should never do, especially if you have words in the background or on your clothing (as you can see, my entire life is words). Razer does include a handful of image presets, but none of them are particularly good — in fact, the “cool” preset looked incredibly warm until I tried the “warm” preset, which made me look orange.

Synapse 3’s camera, processing, and image controls are actually pretty impressive and refined, and they fix most of the minor issues I had with the webcam’s performance (such as the trigger-happy auto-focus). But trying to get Synapse 3’s settings to save to the webcam and work in other programs is so frustrating — and all I was doing was taking photos for this review. I can’t imagine being a content creator and wanting to wrangle Synapse 3 every other time I try to hop on and stream or record.

Bottom Line

The Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra is one of the best webcams we’ve tested. It delivers incredible image quality straight out of the box, with a beautiful depth of field and excellent auto-exposure and white balancing. Razer wasn’t kidding when it said “DSLR-like quality.” Plus, it’s well-built, relatively lightweight, has a nicely integrated privacy shutter, and it looks cool perched atop your monitor.

That said, Razer really needs to do something about Synapse 3, because it is possibly the most frustrating piece of software I’ve ever had to deal with. The good news is that the webcam works very well out of the box, so if you’re just looking for a webcam that will make you look great in work calls and while you’re chatting with your friends, the Kiyo Pro Ultra is an excellent option (assuming you have $300 burning a hole in your pocket).

But serious streamers and content creators will be better off with the Insta360 Link or the Elgato Facecam Pro, which are both similarly-priced 4K webcams with top-notch image quality and well-made, detailed, usable software. Unless you’re already so deep into the Razer ecosystem that you have to wrestle with Synapse 3 on a daily basis anyway, I can honestly say I do not think it’s worth the frustration. But hey — maybe this won’t always be the case. Maybe one day Razer will fix its peripheral software and then this webcam will be perfect.

It’s hard to make eye contact with your webcam. But it’s also hard to connect with people you’ve never met, in a Google Meet/Zoom/Microsoft Teams/Discord/etc. video call, when everyone seems to be distractedly looking at their screens. Of course, they’re looking at their screens because they’re looking at you, probably — but even when you know that, it doesn’t really feel that way. 

Because eye contact is that big of a deal. 

But webcams, including the best webcams, are mostly mounted at the tops of monitors, so you usually need to make a choice: do you look at the webcam, so others will feel like they’re making eye contact with you, or do you look at the screen, so you can actually see the people you’re trying to connect with? Wouldn’t it be great if you could do both? 

Well — do both and still look like a human, and not a killer robot clone (or something). It’s pretty low-tech compared to Nvidia’s AI-powered Eye Contact effect (which is how you can look like a killer robot clone), but the Center Cam might be the real answer to the eye contact problem. The Center Cam is a small webcam that sits in the middle of your screen, designed to be unobtrusive enough that you can place it over whatever you want to look at — someone’s face, a script you’re reading from, a game you’re playing, etc. — and look like you’re making eye contact with the camera. 

The Center Cam is available now in a standard package ($120), which comes with a monitor clip and a USB-C adapter, as well as in a deluxe package ($140), which includes a ring-light mount and a soft storage case.

Design

The Center Cam doesn’t look like a typical webcam. The camera itself is tiny, measuring 0.63 inches (16mm) square, and is 0.71 inches (18mm) deep. It’s attached to an “eye-to-eye flextube,” or a flexible metal gooseneck arm approximately 16 inches (40.64cm) long. The end of the flextube is attached to a 3.5-foot (1m) USB-A cable. The Center Cam comes with a monitor clip mount and a USB-A to USB-C adapter (for Mac users).

To set it up, you thread the USB cable through the holes of the monitor clip until you get to the flextube, and then thread about half of the flextube through as well. Next, clip the monitor clip onto your monitor and determine where you want the camera to sit — ideally, it should be as close to eye level as possible, but you’ll also want to make sure it’s in front of the screen.

Once you’ve determined where you want the camera to fall, bend the flextube and snap it into place on both sides of the monitor clip. I was initially concerned about clipping the mount onto my main monitor, which has no bezel at the top, but snapping the flextube into place decreased the clip’s tension to the point where I wasn’t concerned about placing the clip directly on my screen. 

This proved to be an issue with my laptop, however, because the clip didn’t really have enough tension to stay put on such a thin screen (some fiddling helped, but it still didn’t seem particularly sturdy). The monitor clip fits monitors up to 2 inches (5cm) thick. 

Keep in mind that, even if the Center Cam fits securely on your monitor, you will have to move it into place before every call and then bend it back or remove it entirely to go back to using your computer normally. There’s no way you can just leave it there as it blocks a significant portion of the desktop when you’re trying to work or play.

The Center Cam comes with a 6mm, f2.1 lens with a 65-degree horizontal field of view and a small plastic lens cap for privacy (it’s not particularly notable, but it’s better than nothing). It has a 2MP 1/2.9 inch CMOS sensor, which is separate from the lens.

Unlike other webcams that have autofocus or fixed focus lenses, the Center Cam’s lens is manual: you’ll need to twist the lens to focus on the subject (you), based on your distance from the camera. This is trickier than it sounds, because you’ll need to be within arm’s length of the camera to focus it but you may want to sit further than arm’s length from your screen, in which case finding the right focal point will require some back and forth.

Once you focus the camera, you can lock it in place by using the nut at the base, but this is also tricky to do without bumping the lens out of focus.

Specs

Well-lit Performance

To test a webcam’s performance in a well-lit environment, I turn on all the lights in my home office — and there are a lot of lights. In front of me I have four monitors (three 27-inch, one 34-inch ultrawide), two lights (Elgato Ring Light, Elgato Key Light Air), and the ambient light from my desk (Cooler Master GD160 ARGB). Behind me, there’s an arching floor lamp and an LED desk lamp that I use for fill. Most webcams have difficulty with this much light, so I wasn’t too surprised when the Center Cam’s default settings washed me out:

The Center Cam is designed to be an easy-to-use plug-and-play device; subsequently, it doesn’t come with software. Any number of third-party programs should be able to open the webcam’s settings (I used Nvidia Broadcast because I already had it open).

After manually adjusting the Center Cam’s settings — mainly brightness, exposure, gain, gamma, and white balance — I managed to get a better picture:

The final result is still grainier than I’d like, especially for such a well-lit setting, but otherwise it looks pretty good. Colors are vibrant (without being oversaturated) and are relatively accurate. Manually focusing the lens was a bit tricky, but I appreciate the depth of field you can achieve with a fixed focal point; the Center Cam’s picture looks more dynamic (though, perhaps a little less flattering) than the flat, balanced lighting of the Logitech Brio 500. 

The Center Cam is a full HD (1080p) webcam, so it can’t exactly compete for quality with 4K webcams such as the Elgato Facecam Pro or the Insta360 Link. But it’s able to balance lighting better than older webcams with the same resolution, such as the Logitech C920S.

Low-Light Performance

To test the Center Cam’s low light performance, I turned off all of my lights, my desk, and three of my monitors — leaving one 27-inch monitor as my only light source. Different webcams handle this type of lighting scenario differently — some focus on lighting the subject, leaving the background in darkness, while others try to light both the subject and the background (but this often washes out the subject). The Center Cam is the former:

I was impressed with the Center Cam’s low-light performance. It didn’t even attempt to light the background, but it did a pretty good job of lighting the subject — me — evenly and in a way that was at least fairly flattering if not perfectly color-accurate.

Overexposed Performance

To test the Center Cam’s performance in an overexposed setting, I turned off almost everything in front of me (the two lights, my desk, and three of my four monitors), leaving one 27-inch monitor and my background lights on. While this isn’t an extremely overexposed scenario, it’s a pretty realistic one in a home office setup — most people don’t place lights behind their screens unless they’re trying to look good on camera.

This lighting scenario is where the Center Cam performed best — and this was using the webcam’s default settings (I did some tweaking, but I wasn’t able to improve much). The Center Cam did a great job of keeping me well-lit without blowing out the background, and it even managed to keep the colors pretty accurate. This photo is pretty grainy (as is the low-light photo), but I expect some graininess in poorly-lit settings and it’s not that much grainier than the well-lit photo.

Features and Software

The Center Cam doesn’t come with software and is pretty light on features overall. It does have a built-in microphone, which is, unsurprisingly, terrible — it picks up sound inconsistently and muddles voices, and I wouldn’t recommend it over basically any other microphone option.

The Center Cam’s lens is also interchangeable. Center Cam sells additional lenses on its website for $17 each — a narrower telephoto lens with a 52-degree HFOV for people who are further than 2.5 feet from the camera, and a wide lens with an 80-degree HFOV for people who are sitting closer to the camera (such as laptop users) or who just want a wider angle.

But the Center Cam’s main feature is being unobtrusive enough to sit over your screen so you can maintain eye contact with the camera lens while also being able to see what’s happening on your screen. And it does this very well. It’s one of the best solutions to the whole webcam-eye-contact-problem I’ve seen, because it solves both the problem of you maintaining eye contact with your camera and being able to look at the person you’re talking to. If you’re looking for a camera that will let you have a pretty genuine heart-to-heart, this is it.

There is a drawback to this feature, however: when you’re not using the webcam, you’ll need to move it off of your screen. It’s unobtrusive enough to use during a video call, but it obstructs too much of the screen to just leave it in place while you’re doing other things. The clip mount is easy enough to unclip and move to the side, but it’s still more of a hassle compared to a normal webcam that doesn’t need to be moved (plus, this means you’ll need to re-position it every time you make a call).

Bottom Line

The Center Cam isn’t the best webcam we’ve tested in many (okay, most) ways. But it’s not trying to be. It’s here to do one thing — facilitate human eye contact, on both sides, and it’s surprisingly effective. 

I wouldn’t recommend it for the audience most webcams seem to be made for these days: streamers, content creators, professional speakers, extremely vain tech journalists reviewing webcams, etc. It doesn’t have the image quality, polish, or features most professionals are looking for (the Elgato Facecam Pro and the Insta360 Link do, however). 

But if your webcam needs are less scripted, more personal, and primarily about connecting one-on-one with other humans rather than an audience, the Center Cam is a very solid contender. The main caveat with the Center Cam is that it does require some manual setup and adjusting — it’s not like the Logitech Brio 500 or the Dell Pro Webcam (WB5023), which work almost perfectly out of the box. It also needs to be moved to the side when you’re not using it, which might be more effort than you’re willing to make for the illusion of eye contact.

Razer just debuted its newest webcam, the Kiyo Pro Ultra, which has the “largest image sensor ever used in a webcam” (according to Razer). The Kiyo Pro Ultra is the company’s first 4K webcam and features AI-powered face tracking as well as an HDR mode. It’s available on Razer’s website today for $299.99 — which is pricey, but in line with other similarly-equipped 4K webcams. 

The Kiyo Pro Ultra uses a Sony 1/1.2-inch Starvis 2 sensor with a pixel size of 2.9 micrometers, and has a F/1.7 aperture lens to let in more light. I had a chance to see the Kiyo Pro Ultra in action at Razer’s CES suite, and while the picture looked pretty good (too good, like all 4K webcams, in my opinion), I wouldn’t say that it looked shockingly well-lit compared to the low-light performance of other 4K webcams.

It’s a large webcam — though, Razer was quick to point out, not as large as the Elgato Facecam Pro — but it features the same round, lens-focused design as its predecessor, the 1080p Kiyo Pro, one of the best webcams. Like the Kiyo Pro, this webcam comes with a physical dust cover that slides easily over the lens to protect it from dust and scratches.

Unlike the Kiyo Pro, the Kiyo Pro Ultra also features a built-in physical privacy shutter, which is situated behind the glass and opens and closes with a twist of the ring surrounding the lens. I’m paranoid, so I love to see a physical privacy shutter, and this one is very nicely integrated into the webcam’s design.

The Kiyo Pro Ultra can record 4K video at 30 frames per second (fps), or 1080p video at 60 fps, and use a “cutting-edge processor” to transcode it to 4K at a cinematic 25 fps, 1440 at 30 fps, or 1080p at 60 fps while streaming. It can’t record 4K video at 60 fps, so the Elgato Facecam Pro remains the only webcam that can record in that resolution.

It features AI-powered face tracking, which is designed to keep your face in the center of the picture while applying a background blur with a bokeh effect. Notably, Razer said this doesn't require any extra software, which would suggest you don't need Synapse for that feature. For those who do use Synapse, the Kiyo Pro Ultra will have a number of settings you can change in the software, including the pan, tilt, ISO and shutter speed.

It also supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) — but only at 30 fps — and Razer says the camera can correct over or underexposure and adjust lighting and contrast on the fly.

If you’re serious about streaming, you need a webcam that’s serious about streaming — and what’s more serious than streaming in 4K at 60 frames per second (fps)?

Okay — maybe that’s a little too serious. It’s definitely too serious for anyone who’s not a streamer, since most web conferencing software caps resolution at 1080p or lower, and 60fps can be problematic for bandwidth. But for the professionals who want to take their streaming to the next level, there’s Elgato’s new Facecam Pro.

Designed to compete with the best webcams on the high-end, the Facecam Pro is a 4K webcam that captures video in 4K/60fps — the world’s first; other 4K webcams, such as the Insta360 Link, max out at 4K/30fps. The Facecam Pro also sports a large Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor and a premium autofocus lens, and has a wide 90-degree field of view. It’s definitely not for everyone, but for the right content creator it’s pretty damn powerful (it also draws a lot of power — more on that later). The Elgato Facecam Pro is available now for $299. 

Design of the Elgato Facecam Pro

The Elgato Facecam Pro borrows much of its design from the Elgato Facecam, which is the brand’s 1080p streaming webcam introduced about a year ago. The first Facecam was pretty large for a 1080p webcam, and the Facecam Pro is...larger.

The Facecam Pro is housed in a boxy plastic chassis measuring 4.6 inches (116mm) wide, 3.1 inches (79mm) deep, and 1.5 inches (38mm) tall. The chassis features some unexciting branding and has vents at the back for heat dissipation. The plastic doesn’t exactly scream “high-end,” but it feels sturdy enough and weighs very little (8.47oz/240g) — making the Facecam Pro slightly more maneuverable when it’s sitting on top of a monitor.

The Facecam Pro comes with a detachable monitor mount, which attaches via the webcam’s tripod attachment mounting point (standard size — 1/4-inch). It’s a pretty basic L-shaped mount, with rubberized backing and tilt adjustment (90 degrees). I do think the Facecam Pro is too big to be elegantly mounted on most monitors — period. But I have no complaints about the mount, which kept the webcam perfectly stable atop my main 27-inch monitor.

The Facecam Pro also comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, which plugs into a USB-C port at the back of the chassis. This webcam requires a certain amount of power to work, so you’ll need to plug it into a USB-C port or perhaps a USB 3.1 port using an adapter.

The Facecam Pro does not come with a physical privacy cover/shutter...but it should. No webcam, but especially no offensively high-def 4K webcam that streams at 60fps, should not come with a privacy cover. (Also, the first Facecam had a lens cap, so I’m not sure what Elgato was thinking.) 

Elgato Facecam Pro Specifications

Well-lit Performance of the Facecam Pro

My home office gets almost no natural light, but I have plenty of artificial light. My “well-lit” lighting setting includes a dedicated ring light, a dedicated key light, four desktop monitors (three 27” and one 24”), an arching floor lamp for background light and a desk lamp for fill. There’s also some ambient RGB lighting from my desk, PC, and various peripherals. It’s a bright, evenly-lit setting with a busy, colorful background; webcams usually struggle with adjusting auto-exposure and auto-color balance, as well as auto-focus.

In my well-lit scenario, the Elgato Facecam Pro managed pretty well using its default settings — not incredible, especially when compared to a webcam with wizard-level AI processing such as the Insta360 Link, but fine for a quick setup. The Facecam Pro handled auto-exposure adequately, though the resulting image was perhaps a little too evenly-lit and flat-looking overall. It struggled with auto-white balance, however — images leaned very warm, even after I adjusted the temperature of my lights to be much cooler. 

Luckily, this was easy to fix with a few manual adjustments in Elgato’s Camera Hub software.

Low-Light Performance of the Facecam Pro

To test the Facecam Pro’s low-light performance, I turned off all of my lights and three of my monitors — leaving just one 27-inch monitor as a light source. The Facecam Pro did not perform very well in this scenario with default settings, and produced an extremely grainy image. I managed to tweak the image into something acceptable, but it was still pretty grainy..

The Facecam Pro performed pretty well in this setting, considering. It managed to light both the subject (me) and the background — unlike the Insta360 Link, which very dramatically left the background in darkness. Also, while the graininess isn’t great, the only real alternative is some kind of software-based smoothing like we see in the Logitech Brio 500, which isn’t really any better.

Overexposed Performance of the Facecam Pro

To test the Facecam Pro’s performance in an overexposed setting, I turned off all lights except for the floor lamp and desk lamp behind me, as well as three of my monitors. (This is actually a pretty common lighting scenario because people generally try to avoid having a lot of light behind their monitors.) 

The Facecam Pro performed okay in this scenario, though it did a much better job with the background than it did with the subject. I found it difficult to tweak the webcam’s settings for this one, and I couldn’t find a combination that satisfied me. That said, this is the type of lighting situation that’s much more likely to come up in a non-professional webcam setup — and very unlikely to come up in a professional one. So it’s not too much of a ding for the Facecam Pro, which isn’t aimed at most webcam users. 

Features and Software of the Facecam Pro

For the most part, the Facecam Pro works okay out of the box. But you don’t spend $300 on a webcam for “okay.” 

I’m not a big fan of peripheral software in general, and I usually find webcam software particularly offensive. Elgato’s Camera Hub, however, is an exception — not only does it offer detailed control over things like exposure, focus, and white balance, it also has some handy features to help streamline (haha) the streaming experience.

Camera Hub has several sections for adjusting the Facecam Pro’s image, including exposure, white balance, and picture, with more detailed controls in each section. I’m a big fan of the exposure section having controls for shutter speed and ISO instead of generic nonsense like “gain.” The same thing goes for the white balance slider listing temperature instead of vaguely indicating warmth.

There’s also a framing section that lets you narrow the webcam’s 90-degree FOV and frame your image. This section has four customizable presets, which you can use to quickly switch between different “scenes” while you’re streaming. It’s not quite a multi-cam setup like the Logitech Mevo where you can switch between cameras, but the Facecam Pro’s wide FOV and detailed zoom allows for a decent amount of creative freedom.

Bottom Line

The Elgato Facecam Pro is aptly named — it’s definitely designed for professionals. While it didn’t blow us away in some of the standard webcam scenarios, it’s also...not really a webcam for standard webcam scenarios. The Facecam Pro will definitely be a very powerful tool in the hands of the right person, but it’s not a purchase to take lightly.

Almost no non-professional needs or even has use for a 4K/60fps webcam; nor do many professional streamers. If you’re a creator who needs that smooth 4K video, the Facecam Pro is a no-brainer (it is, after all, the only webcam on the market that captures 4K/60fps). That’s not the only reason to buy it, however — the Facecam Pro is not only bundled with Elgato’s pro-level Camera Hub software, it’s also part of the Elgato streaming ecosystem, which means it will work with other Elgato streaming devices (such as the Stream Deck).

Of course, if you’re just a regular webcam user looking for a good webcam, this is not the webcam for you. A good 1080p webcam like the Logitech Brio 500 will do a better job of making you look good during early-morning Zoom meetings and late-night heart-to-hearts (and is less than half the price).

It’s been...quite a while since Logitech released a webcam for non-creators — the Logitech Brio 4K was released in 2017, while the company’s ride-or-die C920 first hit shelves in 2012. 

So, after only a decade, Logitech is finally releasing a new 1080p full HD webcam aimed at personal and professional users: the Logitech Brio 500. While a 1080p webcam might not sound that exciting, especially when Dell’s new similarly-priced webcam is 2K and especially when the 10-year-old C920s is...also a 1080p full HD webcam, there’s more to webcams than just resolution! (Plus, it’s not like most video conferencing apps will let you stream at more than 1080p, anyway.)

In addition to its 1080p/30fps; 720p/60fps resolution, the Brio 500 also has a 90-degree field of view (configurable  to 78º or 65º), dual microphones, a built-in privacy shutter, and both Logitech’s RightLight 4 image adjustment technology and an experimental “RightSight” AI auto-framing feature. 

The Brio 500 comes in three colors, including off-white and rose (pink), and costs $129. That’s not quite budget-priced, and is approaching some 4K webcams on sale (including Logitech’s own Brio 4K), but the webcam market is still a little skewed from the pandemic. 

That said, you can find many 1080p/30fps webcams for less than $100, and the Brio 500 doesn’t have any specs that particularly stand out. But while its main selling point may be the internal improvements Logitech has made, remember that, pre-pandemic, Logitech was practically the only webcam game in town. The company has a lot of experience here, and while the specs may not show it, the Brio 500’s performance does.

Design of the Brio 500

The Logitech Brio 500 has a different, more modern design than its predecessors — not that that’s saying much, considering its predecessors are between 5 and 10 years old.

The Brio 500 is housed in a wide, cylinder-shaped plastic chassis, which comes in three colors: graphite, off-white, and rose (my review unit was rose). The webcam is certified carbon neutral, and the chassis is made with post-consumer recycled plastic (68% for graphite, 54% for off-white and rose). It’s not the sleekest or smallest webcam (it’s actually bigger than the C920s, C930e, and Brio 4K), but it’s low-profile and lightweight (2.8oz, not including stand), so I have no complaints.

It’s not a wildly innovative design, but it does (finally) include a built-in privacy shutter, which slides upward to reveal the camera when you twist the right end-cap. I dislike having to touch my webcam once I have it perfectly positioned on my monitor, but I am also paranoid enough to not trust non-physical privacy shutters; the Brio 500’s privacy shutter hits the right balance of being a physical shutter that’s easy to maneuver without disturbing the camera’s position.

The Brio 500 has a 5-foot, non-detachable USB-C cable, so you’ll need to plug it into a USB-C port or find a USB-C to USB-A adapter (not included). The webcam also comes with a magnetic monitor mount, which clamps onto your monitor and has an adjustable “foot” lined with microsuction tape — while I don’t love adhesive, removable or not, on monitor mounts, it’s relatively easy to remove/move and it does make the mount extremely stable.

The webcam attaches to the mount magnetically; the attachment point is round, which allows the camera to rotate while it’s on the mount, and the mount also has built-in tilt adjustment. The magnet unscrews to reveal a standard tripod mounting point.

Adjusting the webcam on the mount is pretty easy, the only minor hiccup is that the magnet is a tiny bit too weak to effortlessly lift the tilt adjustment; I kept accidentally pulling the webcam off of the mount if I tried to tilt it too quickly. It’s not impossible; it’s just not totally seamless — which is too bad, because the webcam’s “Show Mode” feature is designed to show off what’s on your desk, and presumably involves a lot of tilting.

Specs

Well-lit Performance of the Brio 500

My home office is extremely well lit, thanks to my four monitors (three 27-inch and one 24-inch), as well as actual lighting (Elgato Ring Light, Elgato Key Light Air, Logitech Litra Glow), plus an overhead lamp and a desk lamp. While most webcams read this as overexposed, the Brio 500 did a good job of adjusting exposure and white balance to produce a nicely-lit, balanced image out of the box.

I was especially impressed with the Brio 500’s auto-white balance, which is almost always a struggle. While the Brio 500 could still use some tweaking, in my opinion, its auto-white balance and auto exposure are very impressive, especially for a webcam that isn’t $200 or $300.

The Brio 500 does produce a flatter, less-dynamic overall image than other webcams we’ve tested, such as the Insta360 Link. This isn’t really an issue that will concern most people — a flat, evenly-lit image is, for the most part, a best-case scenario when it comes to webcam performance.

One of the features Logitech is touting with the Brio 500 is RightLight 4 — the most recent evolution of Logitech’s RightLight technology – which uses face-tracking and other factors to make sure the subject is evenly-lit in less-than-ideal lighting situations.

Unfortunately, RightLight 4 is still trying to do this even in very ideal lighting situations, which is why my well-lit setting looks kind of flat. I tried playing around with my lighting to see if I could create a more dynamic picture, but RightLight 4 thwarted me at every turn, evenly-lighting me no matter how dramatic I tried to make my lighting. Again, this isn’t really an issue considering it’s a webcam — but it might not be the best webcam for creating dramatic YouTube shorts.

Low-Light Performance of the Brio 500

To test the Brio 500’s low-light performance, I turned off all of my lights and three of my monitors, leaving just one 27-inch monitor as my only light source. The Brio performed pretty well — it’s clear that I’m sitting in a dark room, but you can see both me and my background. This is probably partly due, once again, to RightLight 4.

Also, while the Brio 500 definitely had to pump up the gain to compensate for the lack of light in this setting — you can see this in the lack of detail in my facial features — it still managed to produce a decent-looking overall image. The Brio 4K’s low-light image is pretty similar to the Brio 500’s, but displays less detail and has a grainier texture.

Overexposed Performance of the Brio 500

To test the Brio 500’s performance in an overexposed setting, I turned off all of the lights in front of me, as well as three of my four monitors, leaving my background lights and one 27-inch monitor on. The Brio 500 did an excellent job of keeping me well-lit, though my background still looks pretty over-exposed. It’s not perfect — if you look closely, you can see that there’s still a lot of detail lost in my facial features as compared to the well-lit setting — but the overall image looks very good, and I’m especially impressed with how evenly-lit and un-grainy my skin looks.

Microphone of the Brio 500

The Brio 500 has built-in dual microphones with beamforming noise-reducing technology designed to pick up your voice even if you move around in front of the camera. While most webcam mics are...kind of terrible, the Brio 500’s mics are not bad — they were able to easily pick up my voice, even from a few feet away, so long as I was facing the webcam.

My voice also sounded fuller and richer than it does on most webcam mics (which tend to make you sound hollow and distant). When I was close to the Brio 500 and speaking directly at it, the mic quality was — dare I say — comparable to a basic headset mic: not incredible, but definitely usable.

Features and Software of the Brio 500

The Logitech Brio 500 works with Logitech’s Logi Tune software, which is Logitech’s ... non-creator webcam software for newer peripherals, I guess (Logitech has a lot of different peripheral apps). You can use Logi Tune to update the Brio 500’s firmware, turn on features such as “RightSight” (AI auto-framing, still in beta) and “Show Mode” (makes things on your desk more easily readable/visible), and change the field of view. Logi Tune is also designed to be a productivity app, and integrates with calendar and video conferencing apps to (sort of ) streamline your schedule.

Logi Tune also has an image adjustments section, with toggles for autofocus, auto-exposure, auto-white balance, and HDR, as well as brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness sliders. If you turn off autofocus, auto-exposure, or auto-white balance, manual sliders will appear. Logi Tune isn’t the most precise or detailed webcam app — it gives you slightly more control than Logitech’s Camera Settings app, but I still miss Logitech’s old Webcam Software.

Bottom Line

The Logitech Brio 500 is actually a pretty impressive webcam that not only does a very good job of keeping you evenly-lit (too good of a job, arguably), but also manages to make you look...really good in less-than-ideal settings. It’s got a cute, lightweight, carbon neutral design, an easy-to-use built-in privacy shutter, and a microphone that doesn’t make you sound like you’re talking over a walkie-talkie in an underwater tunnel — what more could you want? Better peripheral software and a lower price point, perhaps.

The Brio 500 is $129, which isn’t insane, but the C920s, which has the same 1080p/30fps resolution, can often be found for less than half that. The C930e, which has the same resolution and the same 90-degree field of view, can often be found for around $80, and even the Brio 4K will often go on sale for around $150, which is just $20 more. There’s more to the Brio 500 than just resolution, but if $129 still seems too pricey for 1080p, the Dell Pro Webcam WB5023 is worth a look — it also has excellent auto-exposure and auto-white balance, and adds a little extra with 2K 1440p/30fps as well as 1080p/60fps streaming. Whichever model you eventually settle on though, it'll always be worth checking to see if there's a Logitech promo code available.

Dell impressed us with its sleek, sexy 4K Dell Ultrasharp webcam — but $199 is a lot to pay for a webcam, especially when most of the popular video conferencing platforms only support a maximum resolution of 720p or 1080p. 

Well, if you’re a pandemic-displaced remote worker with a tight home office allowance, the Ultrasharp now has a cheaper, lower-res, more pedestrian sibling: The Dell Pro webcam. The Dell Pro webcam is a 2K QHD 1440p/30 fps (1080p/60 fps) webcam with a 78-degree field of view, HDR, and 4x digital zoom. It has a built-in monitor clip with a tripod attachment point, a built-in microphone (the 4K model has no mic), and features such as AI auto-framing, which can track your face as you move to keep you centered in frame. 

It might seem difficult for the average webcam to compete against pricey 4K options when it comes to pure performance and image quality, but there’s a reason our list of best webcams isn’t just a list of 4K webcams. Not only do most people not need a 4K webcam, most people couldn’t use a 4K webcam to its fullest potential even if they wanted to. With its 2K QHD resolution, the $135 Dell Pro Webcam  offers something more than 1080p without breaking the bank.

Specifications

Design of the Dell Pro Webcam

The Dell Pro Webcam looks similar to its 4K sibling: It also has a gunmetal gray cylinder-shaped body, a large, round, glass-covered lens, and a removable magnetic lens cap. Including the lens cap, the Dell Pro webcam measures 3.6 inches (92 mm) long by 1.73 inches (44 mm) in diameter — just a tad shorter and wider than the Dell Ultrasharp webcam.

The similarities mostly end there, however. While the Dell Ultrasharp has an all-aluminum body and premium features such as a detachable USB 3.0 cable, the Dell Pro is made of plastic and has a non-detachable USB 2.0 cable. The Dell Pro also has a built-in monitor clip with a threaded tripod mounting point. The monitor clip is rubberized to prevent slipping and has a movable “foot” that allows you to adjust the webcam’s tilt angle and helps keep it fastened securely to your desktop or laptop screen. This is actually an improvement over the Ultrasharp’s interchangeable magnetic mounts — which, while visually sleeker, are less secure and easier to misplace.

The Dell Pro webcam connects to your computer via a permanently-attached, five-foot long USB-A cable. The cable is perpendicular to the webcam’s body, so it doesn’t jut out awkwardly or take up more space than necessary.

Well-lit Performance on Dell Pro Webcam

My home office has almost no natural light and a ton of artificial light: Four monitors (three 27-inch, one 24-inch), three direct lighting sources (Elgato Ring Light, Elgato Key Light Air, Logitech Litra Glow), an overhead lamp for background lighting, and a desk lamp for fill. When all of my lighting is turned up, most webcams (understandably) read this as extremely overexposed.

The Dell Pro Webcam, however, did a good job of reining in exposure levels — maybe too good a job, because the resulting image seems a little too dark. The webcam’s auto-white balance was decent but not perfect; I’m not overly orange or blindingly blue, but my skin looks a little sallow. It’s not nearly as good as the Insta360 Link’s auto-white balance, but it’s better than what you’ll find on most webcams. Also, this might not bother others but it did bother me: The Dell Pro Webcam’s sensor takes … a while to adjust its auto-exposure/white balance/focus/etc. It’s not too long but it is a noticeable second or two, and I’m very impatient.

Low-Light Performance on Dell Pro Webcam

To test the Dell Pro Webcam’s low-light performance, I turned off all artificial lighting sources except for my main 27-inch monitor. The Dell Pro Webcam impressed me with its ability to light the scene evenly; not only can you see the details of my face pretty clearly, most of my background is visible and relatively crisp. Other webcams, such as the Logitech C920s, don’t even attempt to light the background.

The Dell Pro Webcam features Digital Overlap HDR, which is supposed to offer a better image, with more accurate colors/white balance, in extreme lighting situations. Turning on HDR in my low-light setting did seem to net a more evenly-lit picture with slightly more accurate colors, but at the expense of clarity — this picture is significantly grainier than the first.

Overexposed Performance of Dell Pro Webcam

To create an overexposed setting, I turned off all of the lights and monitors (except for my main 27-inch monitor) in front of me, and left my background lighting on. This is actually a pretty extreme lighting situation, it just looks less extreme because the Dell Pro Webcam was able to adequately light my face and body (though the background still looks very overexposed). While the image has some expected graininess, it’s not overly grainy especially on my face — unlike the overexposed image taken with the Logitech C920s or the Logitech C930e.

Turning on HDR in my overexposed setting definitely improved the background exposure levels, but didn’t do much for me (colors are slightly improved, but not much more accurate).

Features and Software of Dell Pro Webcam

Dell’s Peripheral Manager software automatically installs when you first plug the Dell Pro Webcam into your PC, and runs through a very quick, basic setup that guides you through picking an image preset and turning on things like HDR and AI Auto Framing. Dell Peripheral Manager isn’t the most robust webcam software I’ve used, but it has sections for camera control (adjusting FOV and zoom), capture settings, and color and image adjustments.

Using the software, you can play with the webcam’s white balance, brightness, sharpness, contrast, and saturation. I played around with these settings and found it difficult to tweak the image to my ideal — I would definitely like to see sliders for adjusting exposure and gain. Luckily, there’s not much to adjust anyway because the Dell Pro Webcam’s auto-exposure and white balance are pretty good.

Microphone on the Dell Pro Webcam

The Dell Pro Webcam does have a built-in microphone (unlike the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam), which is handy if you’re ever so desperate for a microphone that your only option is one placed as far from your mouth as possible. Most webcam microphones are not great, and the Dell Pro Webcam’s is…also not great.

It had trouble picking up my voice when it was perched on my monitor (which makes sense — my monitor is a little over two feet away from my face), and what it did pick up sounded tinny and hollow. This isn’t at all unexpected; most webcam microphones are terrible. But perhaps Dell could have left the Pro webcam mic-free and knocked a few dollars off the price.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking for something that just works, the Dell Pro Webcam might be the webcam for you. Stick this webcam on your monitor, plug it in, and do nothing else except go about your video-conferencing-twitch-streaming-selfie-taking day, and the Dell Pro Webcam will serve up high-definition, impressively balanced images with relatively accurate coloring in just about any lighting situation. Remember, when it comes to most webcams’ out-of-the-box auto-exposure and white balance settings, you usually end up with an image like this:

The Dell Pro Webcam is an excellent webcam for most people, but it’s not for everyone. If, like me, you want to be able to manually fine-tune the image to your exact standards, Dell’s Peripheral Manager software lacks detailed controls (and the controls it does have aren’t nearly subtle enough). The extremely image-detail-oriented may just want to skip straight to a 4K webcam such as the Insta360 Link. But for everyone else, the Dell Pro Webcam offers very good image quality at a very reasonable price.

Insta360 is best-known for its action cameras, most of which are durable and waterproof and shoot 360-degrees’ of…well, action. While some of Insta360’s action cams can be used as webcams, the company hasn’t made a webcam — until now.

The Insta360 Link is an AI-powered 4K/30fps webcam perched on a 3-axis gimbal and packed with a variety of capture modes. The Link sports a 1/2-inch sensor and has some of the most impressive auto-exposure and auto-white balance we’ve seen in a webcam. It’s got built-in dual noise-canceling microphones and features AI-tracking, 4x digital zoom, and gesture controls. 

The catch: It’ll set you back $300, which puts it solidly in the “very, very expensive” camp. Most of the pricier products on our list of best webcams top out at $200. But this is because the Link isn’t really designed for business professionals (no matter what Insta360’s marketing may say). It’s not so much a webcam as it is a 360-degree action cam in webcam form. 

Design and Build Quality of the Insta360 Link

The Insta360 Link is small and sturdy, with a weighty base and a smooth 3-axis gimbal that allows it to easily swivel and turn as it tracks subjects’ movements. The webcam’s housing is all plastic and is somewhat prone to fingerprints, but it feels very well-built.

The Link’s gimbal is perched atop a base, which has a built-in monitor mount and a 1/4-inch tripod mounting point. The monitor mount is designed to fit monitors approximately 1.25-inches thick, and has rubberized backing to help the webcam stay firmly in place. It’s not a particularly adjustable mount, but it doesn’t need to be. The 3-axis gimbal gives you all the angle/tilt adjustment you need.

The Insta360 Link’s base features a “touch key” on the front, which you can double-tap to reset the camera’s lens positioning. The camera’s AI-tracking does occasionally get a little confused — especially if you’re quickly switching between modes and/or apps, so double-tapping the touch-key is a convenient way to re-center the camera. I’m not a big fan of tapping things that are sitting precariously on my monitor, however, so I used the software to reset and re-center the camera when necessary.

The Link has a bright LED light strip around its base, which lights up when the camera is in use. The light changes colors to indicate different modes, statuses, and gesture recognition. The Link doesn’t come with a physical privacy shutter, but instead has an automatic privacy mode that activates after 10 seconds in standby. In privacy mode, the camera turns on its gimbal to face downward, and the light around the base turns off. I am paranoid and prefer physical privacy shutters, but the camera’s gimbal makes a physical privacy shutter difficult to implement (and constantly touching the moving parts potentially invites damage), so the Link’s privacy mode makes sense.

The Link has a built-in microphone (actually, two built-in noise-canceling microphones) which, like most webcam mics, isn’t great but will work in a pinch. I tested the Link’s mic capabilities over a Discord call, and while it was able to pick up my voice pretty well, it sounded a bit hollow and echo-y, and its noise-canceling capabilities were no match for my barking Pomeranian. (To be fair, almost no microphone is a match for my Pom.)

The Insta360 Link comes with a 5-foot USB-C to USB-C cable, a USB-C to USB-A adapter, four reusable whiteboard corner-marking stickers, and a microfiber cleaning cloth. Unlike some 4K webcams, the Link does not need to be plugged into a USB 3.0 port for all of its features to work.

Specifications

Well-Lit Performance

My home office has no natural light, but it has a ton of artificial light: I have four monitors (three 27-inch, one 24-inch), three main lights (Elgato Ring Light, Elgato Key Light Air, and Logitech Litra Glow), plus an overhead light that I use to light my background and a desk lamp I use as a fill light. Oh, and my desk has ARGB lighting along the front and back edge for even more ambient light.

Most webcams read this as overexposed — see the above photo, taken with the Logitech C930e using default, out-of-the-box settings.

The Insta360 Link did an excellent job of balancing both exposure and white balance, producing an image that required almost no tweaking out of the box. One of the Link’s main selling points is its “True Focus,” which uses Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) to quickly auto-focus on a subject. I wouldn’t say the Link’s auto-focus was “near-instant” — it definitely wasn’t — but it was much quicker and more consistent than other webcams I’ve used.

Low-Light Performance

To test the Link’s low-light performance, I turned off all of my lights (including my desk) and all but one 27-inch monitor. While the Link didn’t exactly hide the fact that I’m basically sitting in darkness, it did do a good job of capturing my face and body to produce an image that has relatively little graininess and no major artifacting.

Overexposed Performance

To test the Link’s performance in an overexposed setting, I turned off all of the lights in front of me and all but one 27-inch monitor, and left my background lights (overhead and fill) on. This is a pretty common at-home lighting scenario — people often have lighting behind or beside them, but not in front of them (minus their monitor/computer). As you can see in the above picture, the Link initially had some trouble adjusting when I switched from regular lighting to background-only lighting.

I ended up resetting the Link by tapping the touch key and after the reset the camera was able to produce a higher-res and more white-balanced image, though it still wasn’t perfect.

For an even more overexposed shot, I turned on my lights and monitors and pointed the Link directly toward the Elgato Key Light Air. The Link actually performed adequately in this setting — it’s not easy for a camera to manage being pointed directly at a light source — the details of my face are visible, even if this lighting is casting some less-than-flattering shadows.

Features and Software on the Insta360 Link

The Insta360 Link works okay as a plug-and-play device, but you’ll need the Link Controller companion software to get the full experience from this webcam. The Link Controller software has three sections: Gimbal Control, Image Settings, and More Settings. In Gimbal Control, you can manually control the gimbal to adjust angle, tilt, and position, as well as the camera’s digital zoom. When you find a position you like, you can add it as a preset (up to six).

In Image Settings, you’ll find toggles for auto-exposure and auto-white balance, as well as sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. If you turn off the auto-exposure, you can use the software to manually set the camera’s ISO and shutter speed, and adjust the exposure curve. This level of detail is nice for people who like to play with their image settings but is probably a little too much for most; luckily the Link has some of the best auto-exposure and auto-white balance I’ve seen, so you shouldn’t have to do too much tweaking.

In More Settings, you’ll find settings for the Link’s gesture controls and AI-tracking and zoom, as well as toggles for HDR and “Streamer Mode” (vertical 9:16 video — yes, in case you want to stream vertically, like you’re holding a phone).

The Link’s big selling point, aside from its unnecessarily high definition and excellent auto-everything, is its four alternate AI-driven capture modes. These include tracking mode, whiteboard mode, overhead mode, and deskview mode. In tracking mode, the Link uses AI-powered tracking to follow your movements and keep you centered in frame. Whiteboard mode enhances the text on a whiteboard, which you can designate using the included reusable whiteboard corner stickers.

Overhead mode is designed to capture a top-down view of a flat surface — you’ll need to mount the Link sideways, on a table stand, for this to work. Deskview mode is a variation of overhead mode that doesn’t require special mounting; switching to deskview mode angles the camera at your desk.

The Bottom Line

Insta360 is marketing the Link as the perfect webcam for a variety of situations — from making presentations at work to filming a dance tutorial for YouTube. Don’t get me wrong: The Link is an excellent webcam, but for a very specific audience. Most of the Link’s features are overkill for the average webcam user, especially in a work environment (unless you’re trying to outfit a dedicated meeting/presentation room). Features such as whiteboard, overhead, and deskview mode aren’t really necessary in most work environments, and will shine better in some sort of educational Twitch lecture or maker’s tutorial on YouTube.

When it comes to image quality, the Link offers some of the best auto-exposure, auto-white balance and auto-focus I’ve ever seen on a webcam. And its 4K images are crisp, detailed, and so hi-def that I’m kind of offended. I took one look at this webcam and spent, like, two hours doing my makeup. But this perfectly-tuned focus and ultra-HD detail will be lost (or at least highly diminished) on any web conferencing platform.

The Insta360 Link is an excellent, multi-functional webcam for streamers and content creators, or perhaps for a conference room. But it’s probably too much if you just want to look incredible during team standups. If you’re on the hunt for an impressive work webcam, the Dell Ultrasharp webcam retails for $100 less and offers bright, crisp images at 4K/60fps resolution.

A lot of people are "back in the office", but more workers are now based at home than before the lock-downs of the global pandemic so using a webcam for meetings and learning remains a must-have. The Logitech Brio 4K Webcam is now down to $139 at Amazon —  that's a very good price for a 4K webcam that you can use for streaming on sites like YouTube or Twitch. 

If you're looking to make a cheap PC build and need the foundations of a good budget AM4 socket motherboard, then this Gigabyte B450M DS3H WiFi AM4 Micro ATX is on sale for $59. 

The second RTX 3070 price drop of this degree I've seen in the last week — we have the Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC discounted to $549, which is a big saving on a great high-end graphics card. Check out the GPU hierarchy for more information. 

More great deals lower down the page. 

TL;DR — Today’s Best Deals

• Logitech Brio 4K Webcam: was $199, now $139 at Amazon
• Gigabyte B450M DS3H WiFi AM4 Micro ATX Motherboard: was $94, now $59 at Newegg
• Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC LHR GPU: was $689, now $549 with code SSBT3Z26 at Newegg
• Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 15.6-inch Gaming Laptop: was $999, now $749 at Micro Center
• Samsung M7 43-inch Smart Tizen 4K UHD Monitor: was $599, now $399 at Best Buy

Today’s best deals in detail

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The AnkerWork B600 Video Bar is a premium webcam, but one with different priorities than I’m used to seeing. Rather than a 4K resolution or an onboard processor, this camera has a comparatively underpowered 1440p sensor that’s propped up by an impressively-powerful and configurable light bar alongside a built-in speaker, AI auto-framing, a robust app for detailed settings management and on-camera touch controls for making broader adjustments quickly.

Put all of those together with the fairly average, but nonetheless noteworthy four built-in microphones, and you’ve got a strong all-in-one conferencing solution. These options are also more arguably useful for the best webcams to have than 4K, as many video call and streaming services don’t support such a high resolution.

But with the B600 Video Bar costing $229, it still packs a lot of features that the average person won’t need, and you can get cameras with similar visual fidelity for much less.

Well-Lit Room

Thanks to the AnkerWork B600’s light bar, I opted to shoot my example photos for it later in the afternoon than I usually do, so that I could get some use out of it. All of the photos you’re about to see were taken around 1.5 or 2 hours before sunset, and while the light bar is most noticeable in low light shots, I did mildly incorporate it in other photos where appropriate. I made the majority of light bar adjustments based on feel, by sliding the touchbar on the camera while looking at my feed.

As for the webcam I leaned on for most of my comparisons, I chose the Dell Ultrasharp webcam. While this is a 4K webcam with 1080p @ 60fps support, and thus boasts a wider array of shooting options than the B600, it costs $199, which is actually cheaper than the B600’s $220 price point. Regardless, I have also shot comparison photos with other 1440p webcams and will share them further on into the review.

In a well-lit room, with my curtain up and most light sources turned on, the most noticeable difference between the two webcams is color temperature. Photos taken with the B600 tend to have a cooler tone, while the Dell Ultrasharp’s have a warmer, more golden glow to them. Both are exaggerated compared to reality, and it’s a matter of personal taste which one you prefer. 

Details also appear just a touch sharper on the Dell Ultrasharp, largely thanks to the bump in resolution, although the B600’s photos are still high quality. I did notice some fuzz when blowing them up on my 4K monitor, but they were otherwise presentable.

Low Light Room

AnkerWork B600 Video Bar

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

It’s in a dark room, with my curtain drawn and all light sources save for my monitor turned off, that the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar really shines (literally). Despite my environment being nearly pitch black when I shot my test photos, the B600’s light bar worked well enough in it that I could easily have taken a work call had I needed too. There’s a spotlighting effect, and the light bouncing off my cheeks doesn’t exactly make for a flattering effect, but given the Paranormal Activity-like grain the Dell Ultrasharp’s photos had under these conditions, these small quibbles are easy to ignore.

Besides, the B600’s light bar is easily adjustable, and you can change both the quantity and quality of the light it gives off. While I’ve included example photos with low, medium and high brightness, I was eventually able to land on an ideal setting that mitigated most of the problems I had by playing with the camera’s software. With the light bar set to give off warm light at 1/3rd brightness, the light from the webcam felt much more naturally integrated into my environment.

Overexposed Room 

The AnkerWork B600’s light bar also proved surprisingly useful in a highly-lit environment. When I saturated both it and the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam by pointing them at my window, both covered my face with shadow. But thanks to the light bar on the B600, I was able to correct for that and make sure my face was just as well-lit as my background.

Color temperature was more even across both cameras in this environment, although the Dell Ultrasharp still produced slightly warmer photos.

1440P Competitors 

Because of its price, I opted to compare the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar against the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam for the majority of this review. However, that’s not a fully accurate picture of the device, as the AnkerWork webcam tops out at 1440p while the Dell Ultrasharp can capture photos and video at 4K. For that reason, I’ve also decided to briefly discuss the Ausdom AW651 webcam and the Monoprice Workstream 2K webcam.

These are both 1440p webcams that don’t have as many bells and whistles as the B600, but might suit your needs just fine while costing you much less. Ausdom’s camera is currently going for $79, while Monoprice’s has seen a recent price jump to $50. 

As you can see from the photo examples above, however, you’re probably better off paying the extra $29 for the Ausdom. We generally disliked Monoprice’s offering, despite its inclusion of a ring light, thanks to a fuzzy picture and overly warm colors.

The Ausdom AW651, meanwhile, lacks a ring light but has more natural colors, a distinct lack of fuzz, high fidelity, HDR and one feature that the AnkerWork lacks— the ability to capture in 1080p @ 60fps. It also comes with a small desk tripod, if you don’t want to mount it to a monitor.

You won’t have as much control over your lighting, nor will you get a built-in speaker. Those might be heavy losses for businesses planning to incorporate the AnkerWork B600 into video conferencing solutions, but could be easy sacrifices for your typical home user.

Videos on the B600 Video Bar

Well-lit

Dark

While it’s easiest to take photos when reviewing a webcam for a written article, it’s still important to acknowledge that these devices are usually made with video as their chief priority. For that reason, I’ve shot two videos with the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar, in which I demonstrate how well it holds up in motion, audio quality and the various light bar levels.

Because of the light bar, I shot one video in a well-lit environment and the other in a much darker one. It’s in that second video where you can see the difference between the various light bar levels live, and the convenience the touch bar allows for in adjusting them. 

Ultimately, I was impressed by the video performance on this camera, despite the AI auto-framing not following me too much during my live demonstrations. It was far more responsive when I wasn’t filming, which is unfortunately the way of these reviews sometimes.

Microphone quality was, unfortunately, another matter. While background noise from my mouse and keyboards was successfully muffled or cancelled, my voice lacked depth and was generally quiet, which isn’t the perfect solution for a device that’s clearly aiming at conference calls, which might take place in larger rooms with multiple speakers. While the quality is perhaps comparable to what you might hear from a headset microphone, I’d expect more from a device aimed at such a professional market.

Design of the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar

Right off the bat, the first thing you’ll notice when looking at the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar is that it’s long. Stretching 7 inches, this is not a portable device and is going to take up more real estate on your desk or monitor than you might be used to seeing from a webcam. Still, I never noticed it sagging nor did I feel like it was putting undue stress on my monitor when mounted. For what it’s worth, the camera weighs 1.01 pounds.

The second thing you’ll probably notice is just how much plastic comes with this camera. Most of this is to your benefit, but it’s a lot to keep track of. Essentially, because the B600 Video Bar draws power and transfers data over separate connections, it needs to come with both a standard USB-C cable and a power adapter (which also draws power over USB-C in this case). As a nice bonus for any travelers, and also probably for Anker (as the company will need to produce fewer regional variants), the charger for the B600 comes with three potential toppers for three different plug shapes.

Despite coming with so much plastic, the B600 makes clever dual-use of its light bar by also having it function as a webcam cover. Rather than needing to constantly keep track of a secondary piece, just flip the light bar up when you’re ready to shoot and down when you want to cover the camera lens. It works well and looks spiffy, but because the light bar is so long and the camera is on the hefty side, it does make it hard to flip it without using both hands— one to stabilize and one to do the actual flip.

When you get around to actually using the B600, you’ll notice that its speaker sits alongside the back of the device and a touch-activated brightness slider for the light bar sits along the front. I had no issues adjusting this slider while shooting, nor did I have problems with the two touch-to-toggle buttons on the sides of the webcam (the left side mutes your mic, while the right side turns the light bar on and off).

The back of the B600 has two USB-C ports on its right side, one for power and one for data. It also, curiously, has a single USB-A port on its left side. According to the device’s instructions, the USB-A port is only meant for use with certain compatible Anker products, such as its wireless headphones. I don’t have any of these on hand for testing, so the best I can do right now is take the manual’s word for it. Regardless, don’t expect to plug a USB-A cable into this device and have it work for data transfer.

The instructions also warn you not to plug the power adapter into the data port, or vice versa. You can easily distinguish the two thanks to the blue coloring on the power port, but if you do make this mistake, the LED indicator on front of the camera will flash red. “Power” is also written below the power port, while “Type-C,” a much less helpful designation given that the device also charges via Type-C, is written below the data port.

The B600’s monitor mount is sturdy, which is great given the length of the device, and easily attached to both my flat back and curved back monitor. Once mounted, the B600 can tilt 180 downwards and rotate a full 360 degrees. The only caveat is that if you’re planning to use the B600 with a laptop, its 1.01 pounds of weight will make its screen topheavy.

Overall, the AnkerWork B600 makes for a sturdy, professional, impressive build, but there’s one glaring flaw with the out-of-the-box inclusions. The data cable is too short. Measuring a paltry 33 inches when pulled fully taut, it could not easily work its way behind my desk and to my tower. This is highly unusual, with competitors like the Dell Ultrasharp having much longer cables. In particular, Dell’s cable is 76 inches long. At the very least, because this USB-C cable is removable, you can replace it with your own, longer alternative.

Special Features on the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar

The AnkerWork B600 Video Bar is compatible with Anker’s AnkerWork software, but one of its most special features is built into its body, so let’s start with that. Included along the webcam’s back are “low distortion” speakers, clearly meant for conference calls. In my testing, they initially came across as quiet, but also high-quality. 

When I bumped the volume up to 85%, I could make out the bass, highs and vocals in Final Fantasy XIV’s “Footfalls” song almost as well as I could on my Sennheiser headset. Unfortunately, being quiet is a killer for the conference call utility these speakers are meant to have, but pushing the volume to 100% allowed sound to easily fill my entire home office and much of my two-bedroom apartment. 

To test the conference call utility of this webcam, I also put on a podcast and recorded some audio at the same time. Regardless of volume, I could hardly hear the podcast in my recorded audio, which is ridiculously impressive given how dominant it was in the room. You won’t need to worry about echo with this device.

As for the AnkerWork software itself, it comes with your typical image settings controls, plus the ability to choose from 3 different preset FOVs or allow for AI auto-framing. I found the AI auto-framing to be responsive and flattering, and almost always opted for it as my preferred option.

The key selling point behind the AnkerWork software, though, is the greater control it gives you over the webcam’s lightbar. It’s a more robust set of options than the touch controls that are on the camera itself, although less immediately accessible. Aside from being able to lock in a specific brightness, you can also set the light to be always on (otherwise, it’ll shut itself off after a few seconds when you’re not filming) or allow for automatic light adjustment, which I found did an admirable job of finding a sweet spot based on my room’s lighting. But my favorite feature was the ability to change the color temperature from its default cold light to a warmer setting, which I found helped ease shine on my cheeks. Without the software, I wouldn’t have been able to find my favorite light bar setting, which is warm light at about a third brightness.

The on-camera touch controls are great for on-the-fly changes, but AnkerWork’s software adds enough functionality to be more than just a gimmick.

Conference Rooms

We tend not to review business conferencing solutions on Tom’s Hardware, instead preferring to focus on webcams for individual, home users. Some devices straddle that line, though, and the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar is one. It advertises itself as a “personal conferencing solution,” but much of its build is more suited to large office environments. 

While it can be useful for niche home purposes, we feel it’s important to address the elephant in the room here. A business, for instance, likely won’t care about a 3 foot cable, as business cameras often sit close to consoles. A business would get a lot of use out of a built-in speaker setup, since not needing to buy separate devices for input and output is a more appealing prospect when the only thing you’ll be using a room for is video conferencing. At the same time, though, the microphones on this device are generally too weak for multi-user setups, and the light bar could be useful both at home and in the office.

That leaves us in enough of a gray area where we feel comfortable reviewing this device for home use, but keep in mind that home users likely weren’t Anker’s first consideration when making this webcam. This also likely explains the device’s high price, as businesses are often willing to spend more than individuals, oftentimes because of deals they get on mass orders.

Bottom Line

The AnkerWork B600 Video Bar does just about everything it says on the tin, and it does it well, making it a strong all-in-one webcam solution thanks to its built-in speakers, camera, lightbar and microphones. For people who don’t want to wrangle a bunch of devices and are in constant video calls, or who need to outfit a conference room, it’s an easy recommendation. But with other, higher resolution cameras costing a little less and cameras with similar visual fidelity but fewer fringe features costing much less, it’s a harder sell to individual buyers who only take occasional calls, despite the word “personal” being in the camera’s tagline.

1440p is more than most people will need, sure, as many video call and streaming platforms don’t even support resolutions higher than 1080p. Still, if you’re charging $229 for a camera that maxes out at 1440p, you need some kind of premium feature to make up for the lack of 4K. The light bar serves that role here, and while it does work well, it won’t be necessary for many people, either because of where their desk is, how professional their calls need them to be or when they take their calls. Similarly, a built-in speaker will likely be useless for anyone working off a personal device, as laptops have their own audio and desktop users probably won’t want to rely on a webcam as their main audio source, meaning they’ll probably have a more dedicated set of speakers to rely on already.

Speaking of laptops, this is a big, heavy camera, meaning it’s not the easiest to mount to portable solutions. That’s a shame for a device being marketed as all-in-one, as portability is often a key point of appeal for such options.

If it sounds like the B600 either has features you don’t need or otherwise won’t fit into your setup, you might want to consider the Ausdom AW651, which offers similar 1440p visuals but cuts most of the B600’s other features in favor of a much more approachable $79 price. Similarly, the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam offers a higher resolution, though at a price closer to the B600’s and without its extra features, like the light bar.

But if you just want to buy one device and be done with it, or if you need to deck out a larger room where multiple people might be sitting around a table while taking a call, or even if your home office is prone to being dark, the AnkerWork B600 Video Bar is one of the better options I’ve seen so far.

As the best 4K monitors become more and more accessible, one would expect 4K webcams to follow suit. But any that are worth writing— or streaming— home about still tend to come with a high premium worthy only of the best webcams. There’s a few reasons for this, chief of which being that most video call services don’t support 4K, so the use cases for a 4K webcam are still pretty niche. Still, if you want to shoot UHD video and don’t want to spend a king’s ransom, your choices are few and far between.

Enter the Elecom 4K webcam, which seeks to offer passable 4K quality for only a prince’s ransom. While it originally released for $199, it’s since dropped to $149, making it slightly cheaper than the MSRPs for both the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam and the Logitech Brio 4K.

But $149 is still quite expensive, and if the drop in quality exceeds $50 worth, this camera arguably offers less value than its more costly peers. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. 

Well-Lit Room

Originally released for $199 and targeting a 4K resolution, HDR and 1080p @ 60fps video capability, the Elecom 4K webcam makes for an obvious contender to premium alternatives like the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, currently a top choice on our best webcams list. A month out from release, it’s since dropped in price to $149, which is for the best, as its out-of-the-box image quality is high detail but handles lighting poorly when compared to the $199 Dell Ultrasharp.

When I took a photo on the Elecom 4K Webcam in my home office with the windows open and most light sources turned on, the Elecom still produced a dim image, with shadow being particularly noticeable on my face. There’s little artifacting nor much grain to worry about, but the high quality texture capture means little if you can’t actually see it.

Low Light Room

In a low light environment like my hallway, neither the Dell Ultrasharp nor the Elecom 4K performed especially well. But when put side by side, images taken with the Dell Ultrasharp look like the HD remaster of those taken with the Elecom. The Elecom’s pictures appear grainy, dim and poorly saturated here, with my face giving off an unhealthy pale tone and my hair looking far too gray for my age.

Overexposed Room

One would hope that saturating the Elecom 4K Webcam’s sensor with light would solve its issue with dim photos, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Both it and the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam were able to capture detail impressively well when I pointed them at my window, but only the Dell camera prioritized my face when it came to interpreting the extra light. Meanwhile, my face appears dimmer than ever in photos taken with the Elecom.

Videos on the Elecom 4K Webcam

Despite having “4K” right in its name, the Elecom 4K Webcam also sells itself with a few premium video features that are more likely to find use on bandwidth constrained video conferencing services than 4K. Chief among these is the ability to capture at 1080p @ 60 fps, which can be useful when using a facecam alongside 60 fps footage. But this camera also boasts automatic zoom that aims to keep you in frame when possible, plus an optional “live speaker” icon that displays an animation next to the loudest person in the room (although, after some a/b testing and some careful reading of the advertising and software tooltips, it doesn’t seem to actually mute anyone else).

In practice, the only one of these features that actually felt like it made an appreciable difference was the 60 fps capture, which worked flawlessly. The live speaker icon, meanwhile, mostly just came across as an annoyance, since the webcam doesn’t isolate noise from other speakers as well. The automatic zoom could be useful, but only triggered at inconsistent intervals, with little rhyme or reason. You’d be better off with third-party software like Nvidia Broadcast.

Testing video also gave me an opportunity to test the webcam’s two built-in microphones, which unfortunately made my voice sound muffled and distant. Despite having up to 4K quality footage, don’t expect to have audio to match. On the plus side, they didn’t pick up my cat eating in the background, which was more than audible in real life. This wasn’t due to any software integration, but was still nice to see here.

Build Quality of the Elecom 4K Webcam

The Elecom 4K webcam’s body has little in the way of flair, but offers plenty of functionality. Its included, removable USB-C to USB-A cable is among the longest I’ve seen, reaching 85 inches when pulled fully taut (as opposed 76 inches on the Dell Ultrasharp webcam). Its wide, rectangular monitor mount fits most displays, both curved back and flat back. The only issue I came across was that taking off the included lens cover, which fits snugly to the webcam, means unplugging your USB cable.

There’s an argument to be made that the Elecom 4K webcam, given its price, should look more stylish or include less plastic and more metal in its design. But webcams typically aren’t statement pieces. They are, by their nature, the part of your setups that others are going to see the least. If you’re ok with the look, that will be enough here.

Software and Special Features on the Elecom 4K Webcam

The Elecom 4K webcam uses a very barebones software suite that, regardless, easily changed my webcam’s settings even when closed (a surprisingly uncommon feature). In this suite, you can toggle on HDR, adjust settings like contrast and access four special features that aren’t otherwise present.

The first of these is an auto frame function, which as I discussed in my video section, tends not to trigger as often or predictably as I’d like. The second, backlight compensation, is a touch more useful, helping to brighten up dim backgrounds. This is technically achievable in free software like OBS, but involves fiddling with sliders. The simple on-and-off functionality here is appreciated. Distortion correction seeks to prevent any fish-eye effects when shooting at wide or zoomed out angles, but is a bit of a cheat, as it just crops the image and therefore negates the point of shooting with a wide angle.

Tracking active speaker is a bit of an oddball feature, as it displays a small, canned waveform-esque animation next to whoever is speaking loudest. Unfortunately, as I stated in my video section, it doesn’t actually reduce background noise and is more of a novelty than anything else.

Bottom Line

The Elecom 4K webcam feels like a budget camera, and when compared to other 4K cameras, technically is. At the same time, it still costs $149. That’s a premium price, and while this camera captures higher-than-usual quality footage, it still suffers from poor audio quality and dim footage, which is not an issue with its slightly costlier peers. The software also claims to do more than it actually does, with near-useless features like “tracking active speaker” easily being mistaken for more practical offerings like speaker isolation.

This is not a bad camera, but if you’re already spending $150, you’d get arguably more bang for your buck by going the extra mile and getting a slightly more expensive competitor like the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam. You’ll be spending more, but the jump in quality will be so high that your dollars will go farther than they would with the Elecom 4K Webcam. 

AMD briefly mentioned Privacy View for Radeon graphics cards at CES 2022. Now it has released a fuller exposé of the technology, which is designed to minimize the opportunities for shoulder surfers or other office snoops to check what's on your screen. AMD Privacy View has been designed in partnership with Eyeware of Switzerland.

If you've looked into eye tracking previously, some use cases and applications have required expensive dedicated or higher-end hardware for this kind of technology to be effective. AMD has partnered with Eyeware of Switzerland for its Radeon Software Privacy View, as it only requires a standard webcam — and a Radeon GPU, naturally.

In the video above you can see a laptop user in a busy public place toggle on the AMD Privacy View feature. The brief clip shows that, once enabled, the section of the screen central to your gaze remains clear, while the rest of the monitor is cast into darkness. This obscuring of the screen contents could be pretty effective against a casual snooper.

Privacy View isn't a simple on or off choice, a pop-up control panel offers controls over variables like blur type and visible gaze area/shape. Furthermore, users can use the eye tracking tech for user presence detection, window focus switching, and using a gaze pointer when screen sharing. Last but not least, AMD and Eyeware have all-important calibration tools available via the control panel.

If you are curious about the technology behind AMD's Privacy View, dev partner Eyeware says that it uses "patent-pending computer vision algorithms and machine perception AI to enable remote head pose and gaze tracking for consumer device integrations." The tech is platform independent, but as an AMD driver feature, it will be restricted to Radeon GPU use. The first driver featuring Privacy View is slated to arrive sometime in H1 2022.

Technology Potential Beyond Privacy

Last but not least, this might be only the beginning of AMD and Eyeware collaborations in adding features to the Radeon driver. Interestingly, Eyeware's pages suggest this same tech can be a big positive for immersive gaming. It already has an Android/iOS app where you can purpose your smart device as an eye and head motion tracker for PC gaming. This could be folded into Radeon Drivers to use a PC / laptop webcam as a neater solution.

There's also the potential (not discussed yet) to use the technology for something akin to foveated rendering, where the area of the screen you're looking at gets rendered at a higher resolution than the rest of the display. We're speculating here, and integrating that sort of thing — and integrating it well — would prove difficult, but there are plenty of future use cases for this type of technology.

Since they plug into a computer, even the best webcams don’t think to include a hefty processor of their own onboard. Not so with the Opal C1. Armed with the Intel Myriad X, a VPU specializing in on-device neural networks, the Opal C1 aims to help webcams catch up to the quality you might find on an iPhone or a Google Pixel. 

The Opal C1 uses computational photography, a fairly common smartphone camera technique where the device combines developer tricks with details it’s learned about your face from past photos to touch up and adjust your video feed in real-time. This data doesn’t go into the cloud, so there are no privacy concerns (although there are ongoing debates about what it means to take photos or videos that “enhance” reality rather than reflect it), but that doesn’t mean the device doesn’t come without trade-offs.

Essentially, while it’s pretty hard to deny that the Opal C1 takes a great picture, it also costs $300. Of course, it’s targeted mainly at Mac users, coming with a robust software suite that doesn’t work on Windows. Sure, you can use the device on Windows, but it’s meant to work in tandem with its software. In other words, it’s intended to slot into the Apple ecosystem as a high-end lifestyle accessory for other high-end lifestyle products. There, it makes sense, but otherwise, it’s still not the DSLR replacement its advertising claims it to be. Video professionals will want to look elsewhere, while Windows users or casual video conferencers probably won’t need to shell out $300 for quality on this level.

At the same time, I shouldn’t undersell what having a smartphone-level camera experience on a webcam could mean for the future of the field. The Opal C1 sets a very exciting precedent.

Design of Opal C1

The Opal C1 unit I reviewed was technically still in beta, so while there were minor scuffs and black marks on my device, we shouldn’t expect those to be in the final version. However, what we should expect to see in the final version is the same textured, all-metal exterior, magnetic lens cover, miniature smartphone-style look, and heatsink on the back. That heatsink reminds us that this device is essentially a small computer, and its presence is necessary— the camera did get noticeably warm while I was testing.

You’ll notice that the Opal C1’s lens is off-center on the module’s body, and that’s because the right side of the device is dedicated to something called the “MicMesh.” This is an array of 3 omnidirectional beamforming microphones, and while you shouldn’t expect it to serve as a replacement for the best desktop microphones, these are the types of mics you find in the best gaming headsets. 

Aside from the Opal C1’s main body, the device comes with a footless monitor mount that nonetheless gave me a sturdy connection to both curved and flat back monitors. The part of the mount that the camera screws into can also tilt 180 degrees downwards, although my unit needed a good amount of force to adjust it. Unfortunately, it can’t tilt upwards, although you can fake a swivel effect on the Opal C1 itself by adjusting the tightness of the screw that connects it to the mount. That screw-based connection also means you can mount the Opal C1 on a tripod if you prefer.

The Opal C1 also has a single USB-C connection on the back, and the cable included with the device is USB-C to USB-C. I confirmed with one of the camera’s designers, Veeraj Chugh, that you can use a USB-C to USB-A cable with the device, but it must be USB 3.0. According to Chugh, the device comes with a C-to-C cable because it’s intended for use with current-generation MacBooks, which prioritize Type-C ports. 

Speaking of MacBooks, the Opal C1 unit I reviewed has a white, black, and gray color scheme reminiscent of what you’ll find on Apple products. White is, of course, the primary color, with black and gray getting about equal levels of play across the device. If you prefer all-black devices, the device is also available with that color scheme. 

Well-Lit Room

Because this is a $300 webcam, it wasn't easy to find many cameras in my collection that I could reasonably test against the Opal C1. I ultimately decided on the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, a $200 webcam that's one of our favorites and one I have been using as a daily driver since June. It's less expensive but still costly enough to land in the premium range. Both cameras can also do 4K photos and 1080p @ 60 fps video.

Before I get into image quality, I should mention that the test photos I took for this review, except for those in the software section, were all captured using the standard Windows camera app. This usually wouldn't be worth mentioning, but the Opal C1 is intended for use with Macs and in tandem with its proprietary software. Still, it's essential to test it across both operating systems and with its out-of-the-box performance.

I should also mention that, while I took my Dell Ultrasharp photos at my desktop, I used a Windows laptop for the Opal C1. That's because the Opal C1 only has a USB-C to USB-C cable included with it, and my desktop currently can't accommodate that cable (yes, I'm looking into a new build). As such, the angles might be slightly different across shots.

Disclaimers aside, it's still pretty clear from the above photos that the Opal C1 boasts tremendous fidelity in what I would consider ideal light. I took these photos during mid-afternoon in my home office with most light sources activated. But even taking into account the slightly different angles of the shots I took, the Opal C1's photos show significantly fewer artifacts or distracting shadows. At the same time, the camera also makes my hair and skin look brighter without making them look uncanny.

Low Light Room

The Opal C1 and the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam performed more evenly in a lower light environment, where I closed my curtain and turned off all light sources aside from my screen. However, while the Opal C1 generally boasted higher quality, it compensated for the lower light by giving my hair and skin a somewhat upsetting pale, ghostly sheen. Photos taken in low light also have noticeable, dot-like artifacts throughout. Meanwhile, the Dell Ultrasharp photos have a smoother, less artifacted look, but conversely, they make my face look a little unnaturally warm and flushed.

Overexposed Room

When I saturated both the Opal C1 and the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam by pointing them at my window, the Opal C1 could not keep up. Although it portrayed the world outside my window with near-perfect accuracy, my face was covered in shadow, making it unusable under these conditions.

The Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, by contrast, put the focus on my face. While the world outside my window was blurred and the fidelity on my face was less than ideal, shots taken under these conditions were at least usable. If your desk is in front of a window, you could conceivably use the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam to take a call from it without too much issue.

Software on the Opal C1

Much of the Opal C1’s functionality is hidden behind its software suite, which includes features like bokeh (blurring the background— there’s more to it than that, but that’s what you’ll experience here), touch up and an Nvidia Broadcast-style camera lock that keeps you in the frame as you move. There’s a slider for each, so you can control the intensity of the effect, and they all work quite well, but there’s a catch.

The Opal C1 software only works with Mac, and requires a $4 per month subscription. The Opal C1 website does say that the software is “free for early customers,” although it’s unclear if it’s free for life. I’ve reached out to Opal for clarification and will update the review when I hear back.

Before I get into the UI and the specifics of using the different features, I want to briefly touch on the ideal light, low-light and overexposed photos I took using the software. Since the camera isn’t technically meant for Windows, I needed to rerun my typical tests on a Mac. What I experienced wasn’t too different, aside from software additions like Touch Up. However, the camera held up to high light levels much better on Mac, with its software, than on Windows. My face is fully visible in shots I took in front of a window, as is the world outside the window behind me. From the right angle, I even got a pleasant lens flare effect. 

Bokeh is probably the least impressive effect the software offers. Using it in my company’s office, I couldn’t tell much of a difference between the effect being on and off. If you sit on the software and A/B test for a while, you’ll eventually notice the slight fuzzing of the background, but even with the slider pushed relatively high, it’s a subtle difference.

Face Lock is more impressive, as it’s pretty responsive and the slider makes it very configurable. You can easily control the zoom on your face through slider intensity, and the camera follows you around about as well as Nvidia Broadcast and other options do. It never came across as wobbly or distracting, but if it did, it’s reassuring to know I could adjust its intensity through the slider.

Also, if Opal’s lifestyle brand ambitions weren’t clear enough, you can turn on a watermark with its logo in the C1’s software suite as well. Thankfully, this is easy enough to ignore. Also easy to ignore is the cute but very aggressive pixel filter you can apply to your footage.

Easily the most impressive feature in the Opal C1 software suite is its touch-up option. This uses an on-device neural network to edit your footage in real-time to remove blemishes, wrinkles and the like. The effect isn’t too dissimilar to what you might find naturally baked into a smartphone like the Google Pixel or iPhone, although it can slightly blur photos and create a little bit of an unnatural halo effect at higher intensities. Here are a few photos with it off, at default settings (around 19%) and nearly maxed out.

You’ll notice that my skin looks clearer and more blemish-free the higher the intensity, although the photo at 88% does have an uncanny, almost airbrushed quality to it. This brings to mind concerns about photos that don’t accurately reflect reality, although you can always turn off the Touch Up feature. Bokeh is such a mild effect that it and Face Lock alone might not be worth the subscription fee if you plan to ignore Touch Up.

It’s worth pointing out that smart Touch Up features often don’t handle darker skin well. While my complexion is very light, I video chatted with another Opal C1 user who has darker skin, and Touch Up did not negatively affect his experience with the camera.

Videos on the Opal C1

As a webcam, the Opal C1 is, of course, best viewed in motion. While photos make for great A/B comparison shots, I’ve also recorded a demonstration video showing how the camera fares in motion. The result? I really wish I bothered with makeup for this video because the Opal C1 does not lose any fidelity in motion. 

The footage looks crisp and clear, even in my somewhat shadowy shooting environment, and it’s easy to make out even minute details on my face (much to my chagrin). The ability to record in 1080p @ 60 fps also adds great versatility to the camera. However, the Mac-oriented ecosystem means this camera isn’t likely to attract gaming livestreamers, who would be the most likely to get use out of such a feature.

That said, I did record this video on a Windows machine and still walked away impressed, even if I was missing the Touch Up feature.

A test video also makes for a great demonstration of what Opal is calling this webcam’s “MicMesh.” In reality, it’s just an array of three omnidirectional beamforming microphones. The signal-to-noise ratio here is 59 dba, and the effect is something like what you might find on the best gaming headsets. While headsets usually come with one microphone as opposed to three, the reason the end result here is still similar is likely distance. On a gaming headset, that one microphone is usually placed next to your mouth, whereas the Opal C1 needs to capture audio from a few feet away.

It’s not a replacement for a dedicated desktop microphone, but if you’re planning to take casual calls, you won’t need to buy a separate microphone for use with the Opal C1. That’s a big plus over competitors like the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, which doesn’t have any microphone, as well as over other webcams in general, which typically have microphones that aren’t worth using. That latter point is why I didn’t mind too much when Dell’s webcam nixed microphones, but the Opal C1 is starting to make that decision seem like poor futureproofing.

Also, if used in tandem with the Opal C1 software, the MicMesh features noise cancellation, which further improves the professional applications of this webcam.

Build Quality of the Opal C1

I covered most of the Opal C1’s physical qualities, from its sturdy metal exterior to the minor scuffs that are likely just a result of me using a beta unit, when talking about its design. Still, I want to briefly touch on the webcam’s somewhat stingy cord length. While the USB-C to USB-C cable included with the webcam is conveniently pre-coiled on one end, the overall cord only extended to about 58 inches when I pulled it taut. That’s not horrible but doesn’t touch the 78 inches I got on the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam. On the bright side, the cable is removable, so you can substitute your own. 

Bottom Line

The Opal C1 webcam is undoubtedly a niche, expensive product, but it represents a bright new future for webcams. While many webcams are just pitched as sensors that you attach to a computer, the C1 is a device in its own right. That means it has a smartly-considered build, a robust and easy-to-use software suite, and most importantly, its own processor.

The result is something more akin to what you might find on a higher-end smartphone, which is encouraging to see. Despite being smaller than computers, smartphones have been boasting better cameras than laptops and desktops for far too long.

Much of what makes the Opal C1 look so good are the little calculations it performs to enhance your footage on the fly. Most of these end up improving the final result, but photos can sometimes veer into the uncanny, especially in unusual lighting conditions.

Using computational photography means that your footage might not fully reflect reality, which is why I’m hesitant to parrot the marketing claims that the C1 is like a DSLR, a type of camera that lives and dies on accuracy. Photographers and other video professionals will probably want something that produces a more neutral look. Still, the end result for more casual users means you’ll look “touched up” in calls, and if you don’t mind a bit of digital airbrushing, it is a relieving feeling to know that your camera is helping you not look like you just crawled out of bed when you log into your morning standup.

Ethics and usefulness of reflecting an “enhanced” reality that might not exist aside, that lack of appeal to video professionals does mean that the Opal C1 is a bit hard to recommend, given its $300 price point. It’s primarily intended for video calls, but unless you’re a CEO or in the middle of a particularly grueling job interview cycle, I don’t think most people on video calls will expect you to have quality on par with what you’ll find on the Opal C1.

In that case, you can probably get away with something less expensive. The Opal C1 is also meant mainly for Macs, limiting its appeal to game streamers, who would otherwise fill a happy niche between casual video callers and full-on film directors.

Still, Mac users often pride themselves on having sleek, expensive gadgets that feel like the best-of-the-best, even if there’s technically better but more complicated and expensive enthusiast gear (like DSLRs) out there. If that sounds like you, the Opal C1 would make a great get.

If you’re a bit more wallet-conscious or use Windows, go for the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam instead because it’s $100 cheaper and offers excellent 4K image quality without any platform limitations. The Opal C1 represents a reality where webcams have finally caught up to smartphones, and hopefully means we’ll see similar technology in less expensive products in the future. 

Coming to us from a Kickstarter project pitched by microphone kit company Movo, the Movo WebMic HD Pro aims to fill a previously underserved niche. Unfortunately, many Kickstarter projects often bite off more than they can chew, or at least make big promises that, for one of many possible reasons, never quite pan out. Promising to combine a high quality 1080p, 30 fps webcam with the form factor of a desktop condenser microphone, the WebMic HD Pro actually nails its technical promises, but that doesn’t mean it’s the perfect all-in-one device it claims to be.

Design

Looking at the Movo WebMic HD Pro, I feel like a wizard staring into my crystal ball. Like many Kickstarter projects, the design here is stark and unique, and also a big part of the appeal. It’s not common for webcams to come with microphones worth your time, but the WebMic HD Pro aims to change that by essentially taking a desktop condenser microphone and jamming a 1080p camera (or 4K if you pay a bit more and 720p if you pay a bit less) into the middle of it. It’s also got a built-in ring light that encircles the entire front end of the device. The stand is even supposed to double as a gimbal, to give you a steady shot when gripping it in your hand. The idea is to give you everything you need in one package, but doing so also comes with some major drawbacks, most of them having to do with shooting angles.

We’ll get into these in more detail as we proceed through the review, but putting your camera into a desktop microphone does mean you’re very likely to have some major nosecam going on if you just place it on your desk like a Blue Yeti or similar condenser microphone. You can avoid this either by using the included monitor mount, or by holding the camera’s gimbal. But despite claims to the contrary, you’re still going to have to contend with shakycam if you go for the gimbal (as you can see further down in the review). It’s also going to wear you out.

Alternatively, you can attach the entire microphone/camera orb to the top of your monitor, but it’s fairly bulky and makes your monitor look a little like you have the Eye of Sauron constantly staring down at you. More damning, though, is that to support that bulk, the included monitor mount works via a 1.5 inch long clamp, meaning it does not mix well with a thin bezel or curved-back monitors. The webcam orb also connects to the clamp via a screw, meaning that while you can freely tilt it up and down, the only way to rotate it is by slightly unscrewing it and then retightening it. That’s more adjustability than is available with the stand, though, which has pegs that prevent you from rotating the orb.

It does help that this screw-based system means you can attach the WebMic HD Pro to a boom arm or tripod, although at that point, you’re going against the all-in-one nature of the device.

Much of the camera’s controls are also on the back of the orb, which makes reaching them while it’s attached to the top of your monitor a bit tedious.

Of course, my first major concern when I saw this device was whether the camera’s placement would negatively impact audio, or whether the camera itself would be a fairly cheap sensor tacked on to a microphone as a gimmick. Despite my design concerns, I can report that neither of these quality concerns panned out.

Well-Lit Room

The WebMic HD Pro is a $200 webcam, but also one that packs a lot of value thanks to its included condenser microphone. As such, I wanted to test against both a dedicated $200 premium webcam like the Razer Kiyo Pro and a more consumer-friendly $79 webcam like the Logitech C920. Did the WebMic have to sacrifice on camera quality to both include a desktop microphone and meet its price point, or could it compete with more specialized webcams in the same price range?

The answer is that it falls in a sort of in-between area, but is high quality enough that whether you prefer it or the Kiyo Pro is still subjective. With my window’s curtain up and most lights in my home office turned on, its shots still weren’t quite as bright as the Kiyo Pro and also appeared slightly fuzzier. At the same time, it arguably has less of a “spotlight” effect on my face and more accurate color on both my sweater and background details.

It’s worth noting, though, that the WebMic sits unusually high when mounted to the top of a monitor, making for an unusual shooting angle.

The Logitech C920, meanwhile, looked fuzzier than either competitor and had unsettlingly cool color tones.

Low Light Room

Since we’re edging toward winter, shots taken in unlit rooms without the curtain drawn get especially dark – so dark that all the photos I took with the Logitech C920 were essentially unusable. It’s lucky for us, then, that both the WebMic HD Pro and the Razer Kiyo Pro come with options to make low-light shots easier.

The WebMic HD Pro actually takes a note from the original Kiyo’s playbook by integrating a ring light with 3 different lighting levels. The Razer Kiyo Pro, meanwhile, uses a light sensor originally designed for security cameras and attempts to correct lighting via firmware.

It’s arguable which of these works out better. The Razer Kiyo Pro has inarguably more detail but also paints my face with an eerie orange light that, due to the firmware-focused solution, I can’t easily adjust. Razer Synapse does have post-processing options available, although they’re not more robust than what you’ll find on OBS or other software, meaning any changes you can make won’t be specific to how the light sensor adjusts your image. Instead, they’ll just be general adjustments to contrast, white balance and the like.

Meanwhile, the WebMic HD Pro’s shots are fuzzier, but the camera has more adjustment available and photos have a cooler tone to their lighting. That cooler tone is more of a lateral move and isn’t strictly better than the orange tone on the Kiyo Pro, but the ring light having three different light levels is definitely an improvement. That said, the ring light’s highest setting is so bright that it turned my entire face into a sheet of white, making it effectively unusable. Still, the lowest setting is great if you don’t want to oversaturate your image, and the medium setting works as a last resort.

Overexposed Room

As always, I tested how the WebMic HD Pro handles being saturated with light by pointing it at my window. And while it rendered the world outside of my window as a nearly unbroken sheet of white, I was actually impressed by how well it lit up my face. Even without the ring light on, it covered my face in less shadow than both the Razer Kiyo Pro and the Logitech C920. With the ring light on, I was able to see my whole face without issue, although there wasn’t much differentiation between the different ring light levels. Still, that makes this a great option for anyone who likes to take calls in a bright environment.

Videos on the WebMic HD Pro

Video recording on the WebMic HD Pro works well, with a stable 1080p @ 30 fps image that never once stuttered in my test shoots. At this price point, I’d hope for a 60 fps option, but the ring light and microphone make up for the lack of this feature. This is, after all, not marketed at gamers (who might want 60 fps footage so their facecam matches the frame rate of their gameplay).

Video quality is only half of the story here, though. Despite claims that this webcam’s stand doubles as a handheld gimbal, I was never able to achieve a comfortably still shot when shooting videos while holding the Webmic HD Pro. That’s a big problem since neither the desktop stand nor the monitor mount are without issues. This makes positioning the WebMic HD Pro a bit of a pick-your-poison situation: Either you use a mount that might not fit your monitor well and places the camera at an uncomfortably high angle, or you place it on your desk and deal with nose cam–or your hold it in your hand and deal with shaky cam. Unless you have a very specific type of thick bezel or a low-sitting monitor, none of these options are especially appealing.

Shooting video on the WebMic HD Pro is also a great way to inspect the audio quality, which brings us to…

Microphone Performance

Marketed as a desktop cardioid condenser microphone with a webcam built-in, there’s no reason to get the WebMic HD Pro unless the microphone performs better than what you might find built into more conventional webcams like the Logitech C920 or Microsoft Modern Webcam. And while it doesn’t quite reach the quality of dedicated microphones like the Blue Yeti, the WebMic HD Pro does live up to its promises by largely exceeding the microphones found in the rest of the webcam space.

I tested the WebMic’s microphone both on my desk and with it mounted to my monitor, and found that my voice never sounded echo-y, quiet or like it was clipping. This stayed true even as I adjusted the gain knob, which I ended up leaving at around 70%. The only advanced feature here is headphone monitoring, allowing you to plug a pair of headphones into a 3.5mm jack on the camera’s backside to hear its audio as it outputs. Don’t expect anything like an auto gain limiter, though.

I also didn’t find that my voice became quieter or lost quality when speaking into the center of the microphone, easing my worries that the webcam module’s placement would affect audio quality.

As for the quality itself, I found that it was somewhere between what you might find on one of the best gaming headsets and a middling dedicated microphone like the Razer Seiren V2 X. I tested it both against the Razer Seiren V2 X and my own personal Blue Yeti, and felt like I wasn’t quite hearing the full range of my voice’s treble and bass on the WebMic versus those other options. Unlike the Razer Seiren V2 X, though, this microphone recorded well both when mounted close to my mouth and when sitting on my desktop, so it does still have advantages over some dedicated microphones that might have higher potential, but require extra gear like a boom arm. At the same time, though, you might want a boom arm for this device given how awkward it can be to shoot video on it.

Movo hasn’t provided details on specs like sample rate and frequency response to the public. I’ve reached out to the company for comment and will update this review once I hear back.

Build Quality of the WebMic HD Pro

While I’ve already discussed the problems with how the WebMic HD Pro mounts to monitors as well as the shakiness present when using the gimbal, it’s worth reiterating that simply placing it on your desk like a standard desktop microphone will result in pretty severe nosecam. If you don’t mind your coworkers peering up your nostrils, have at it.

As for the body itself, despite the webcam’s unique orb shape, it’s hefty and feels sturdy. Everything here is plastic, but it rejects fingerprints well and doesn’t feel liable to break. You can even access the inside of the webcam orb by unscrewing 4 Phillip’s-head screws on the device’s backside.

The WebMic HD Pro also comes with a webcam cover, although it’s a separate piece not attached to the device, making it easy to lose. It also falls off easily, as it attaches by clinging to the camera bump’s thin, roughly 1cm lip. In this respect, it’s similar to the shutter-equipped C920s from Logitech. 

Finally, the included detachable USB C-A cable is generous, stretching up to 87 inches when I pulled it taut. That’s much longer than the 71 inch cord attached to my Logitech C920.

Special Features on the WebMic HD Pro

I’ve covered most of the WebMic HD Pro’s special features already, the most notable being its ring light and unique condenser microphone with built-in headphone monitoring and an included gain knob. But it’s also worth mentioning the selfie button, which simply pauses the device’s video output the instant you press it. This makes it easier to take photos, as you don’t need to worry about pressing an in-software camera button while also trying to pose. It’s a bit silly, but after trying it out a few times, it’s something I wish other cameras would adopt. The only issue is it’s placement on the back of the device, which can make it hard to reach if you have it mounted to a monitor. Note that it doesn’t disable video output, just freezes on a single frame.

Bottom Line

Quality wise, the WebMic HD Pro boasts both an impressively above average camera and microphone. But neither live up to what you’ll find on dedicated solutions and both are hampered by how difficult it is to mount the device in a way that doesn’t disrupt your shot. 

Let’s back up, though. Despite costing $200, the WebMic HD Pro’s camera doesn’t live up to something like the Razer Kiyo Pro, nor does its microphone reach the fidelity of something like the Blue Yeti. At the same time, the Kiyo Pro’s microphones are only serviceable for casual use and the Blue Yeti has no camera sensor. The WebMic HD Pro’s value, then, is more of a lateral move than a downgrade, trading away higher potential for greater versatility.

At the same time, its camera sensor is still far and away an improvement over what you’ll find on even leading sub-$100 webcams like the Logitech C920, and its microphone is perhaps the best I’ve heard on a webcam yet, even if it doesn’t quite reach the level of even middling dedicated microphones like the Razer Seiren V2 X.

It should be easy, then, to recommend this as a device for people who are willing to sacrifice some quality for a more-than-decent two-in-one solution. Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.

The WebMic HD Pro has an unusual body, and while that’s charming to a degree, it also makes it hard to mount. Using the included desktop stand means dealing with nosecam, while using the monitor clamp means either suffering from wobble and an unusually high shooting angle, or potentially covering up a portion of your screen (especially if you use a thin bezel display). The monitor clamp also doesn’t play nice with monitors that don’t have flat backs, further limiting who can use this device.

This means that, while the WebMic HD Pro is technically proficient, it’s difficult to suggest it to anyone who either doesn’t have a boom arm or some other way of elevating the device without using the included clamp. That’s an especially painful issue, given that such a solution goes against the device’s all-in-one nature.

Logitech's C920 has been around for almost a decade, yet it remains one of the Best Webcams in 2021, due to its budget price, high image quality and solid microphone. Back in 2020, the C920 was harder to find in stock than a giant pallet of toilet paper and was consequently marked up way above its MSRP. However, now you can find it and its siblings, the C922 and C920S, on sale.

Easy to mount on a laptop or monitor, the C920 series features a fantastic 78-degree field of view, making it the ideal choice for video conferencing if you want . Though not quite as accurate as those found on expensive competitors like the Dell UltraSharp Webcam, the C920's sensor offers great low light performance while capturing video in 1080p and stills at 15MP. Its built-in dual microphone is capable of capturing stereo audio while offering solid noise cancellation. 

The original Logitech C920 captures video at 30 fps while the nearly-identical C922 Pro ups the ante to 60 fps at 720p for streamers and throws in a tripod. The C920S is the same as the C920 but comes with a privacy shutter. The C920X is identical to the C920 but comes with a three-month trial of X-Split streaming software. This holiday season, we're tracking all the savings on Logitech C900 series webcams below.

Best Logitech C920 Deals 

The Microsoft Modern is one of the best webcams you can buy on a budget, beating out Logitech’s C920 with an arguably better picture and a definitively lower price. But with this discount, it’s an essential purchase for anyone looking to upgrade their webcam.

Right now, the Microsoft Modern Webcam is just $41.99 after a steep $28 price cut.

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As you can read in our Microsoft Modern Webcam review, provided you can look past the weirdly obvious name, this is a seriously good option for meetings and video calls with an impressive build quality.

It provides good fidelity across a range of lighting conditions and gives you the option to switch on HDR, which is incredibly rare amongst cameras at this price. Plus, you get the benefit of additional security thanks to the integrated privacy shutter and LED usage indicator.

So, what are you waiting for? If your laptop has the webcam equivalent of a potato or you need a cheap and high quality option for your PC build, this is the deal to get.

eMeet is one of those smaller companies that popped up during the pandemic to fill the newly-contested webcam space left behind as demand rose and the best webcams started going out of stock. Before now, it’s released three cameras, two of which are cheap Logitech c920 clones and one of which is a Logitech c920 clone with built-in speakers for conference calling. I’d actually previously looked at the company’s C960 camera and thought the quality wasn’t high enough to warrant a full review.

However, the eMeet Jupiter webcam changes that, not with quality but with a decidedly non-budget price that I feel compelled to question. This is a $199 device, putting it in firm competition with premium devices like the Razer Kiyo Pro and the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam. While it does have high-quality microphones and a built-in speaker that give it some conference call utility, its poor visual fidelity and bare-bones software hardly justifies its high price point, especially when it’s being sold as a premium webcam and not a budget speakerphone.

Well-Lit Room

eMeet Jupiter Webcam

Razer Kiyo Pro

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

As it costs $200, I tested the eMeet Jupiter Webcam against both the Razer Kiyo Pro and the Dell Ultrasharp webcams, premium devices from much more well-known brands that have the same price tag.

The sky was overcast on the day I tested, but even with my blinds open and most of my home office’s ambient light sources turned on, the Jupiter webcam’s picture was just as grainy, sharp, and overall cheap as on $30 devices I’ve seen from this company, like the eMeet c960. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Jupiter is repurposing sensors from these less-expensive devices and trying to justify its massive price inflation with its other, more audio-focused features. But while those are impressive (more on that later), I doubt they fully make up for the price difference between this webcam’s sensor and its price on their own.

The field of view on the Jupiter webcam is slightly wider than the competition’s, but the fidelity isn’t even in the same class. The artifacting is just too severe for it to be a serious visual fidelity contender in this price range, at least under what I’d consider to be optimal lighting conditions.

Low Light Room

eMeet Jupiter Webcam

Razer Kiyo Pro

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

While the Jupiter’s picture was closer to its name-brand rivals in low-light, it had trouble contending with premium features like the Razer Kiyo Pro’s light sensor. That particular camera barely showed any artifacting when I closed my blinds and turned off all ambient light sources except for my main desktop monitor. 

The Dell Ultrasharp Webcam did show more artifacting here than it did under normal conditions, but not to the same extent as the Jupiter. Both competing cameras also maintained more accurate colors and weren’t as overly sharp as the Jupiter.

Overexposed Room

eMeet Jupiter Webcam

Razer Kiyo Pro

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

The artifacting on the Jupiter webcam is least noticeable in heavy light, which I tested by pointing my webcam directly at my window. Unfortunately, not much else is noticeable, either. Its picture under these conditions was far from usable, although the Razer Kiyo pro also suffered from a similar issue. Still, the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam shows the kind of quality you can get under extremely bright conditions with other options at this price point.

To the Jupiter webcam’s credit, its ability to capture the view through my window is impressive, as it’s not uncommon for rivals to display windows as blank sheets of white. Unfortunately, that particular feature is more useful to a photographer than to someone buying a camera to video conference with.

Videos on the eMeet Jupiter Webcam

Still pictures don’t fully encompass what the eMeet Jupiter Webcam is capable of, nor does a lack of audio. This camera is being marketed both for conference calls and for working from home, so much of its capability comes from its 4 noise cancelling microphones. To that end, I’ve recorded a sample video using this webcam’s microphones for audio. 

The result? There’s no lag or stuttering, but the artifacting and unusual sharpness is still present on video. Still, the microphone quality is similar to what you’ll get from a good headset boom microphone. I could still hear noise from my fan and air conditioner in the background, so I’m skeptical as to how well the noise cancelling works, but since the webcam is partially marketed for conference calls, it’s good to know that you won’t need a separate microphone for casual calls when using it.

Build Quality of the eMeet Jupiter Webcam

The eMeet Jupiter is a hefty, sturdy device that looks a bit like a miniature camera from a cartoon or an old-fashioned camcorder. In other words, it’s a long rectangle with a lens on front. It’s a genuinely charming appearance that also makes sense, as that extra space makes room for the eMeet Jupiter’s built-in top firing speaker. Unfortunately, the downside of having such a large device is that it’s not very posable.

The Jupiter can’t tilt upwards, and can only tilt downwards at about a 45 degree angle. It can rotate side-to-side, but also only to about a 45 degree angle.

On the plus side, the Jupiter does come with a lens cover, although it’s not always the prettiest solution as it’s constantly dangling from the Jupiter on a string that’s permanently attached to the back of the device.

The monitor mount here is stable, which is important for such a large device, and I was able to securely connect it to both a curved back monitor and flat back monitor. And as usual, there’s a tripod screw hole on the mount’s bottom.

Finally, the Jupiter webcam comes with a detachable USB-C to USB-A cord that measured a generous 78 inches when I pulled it fully taut. By comparison, the Razer Kiyo Pro’s detachable USB-C to USB-A cable is only 58 inches.

Special Features of eMeet Jupiter Webcam

The eMeet webcam markets itself as having AI auto-framing, but in my experience, it’s just an auto-zoom function that’s sometimes a little too keen to adjust the zoom when it doesn’t need to. 

When it’s working best, the auto-zoom simply involves zooming the frame to place you inside it whenever you reach the far edge of its field of vision. If another subject appears out of view, it will also zoom out to show that subject. You can also manually adjust the framing in the eMeet Link app via four large arrow buttons. But, importantly, none of these features will work if the camera is already at its maximum field of view. They also won’t work if you don’t have the eMeet Link app open.

In other words, while the Jupiter will try its best to keep you on screen, you can only access its “AI” by artificially limiting the camera’s view in the first place. That would be fine if the AI were more robust— you can’t create footage beyond your maximum field of view anyway—

but the limited framing here makes it feel like a lot of sacrifice for little gain. Still, there is some use to be found here if you want to mostly stick to close ups but occasionally zoom out to include more people on a call or show off a subject in your background. Or, at least there would be if the feature always worked.

Unfortunately, when I tried using it in an actual call, the auto zoom functionality frequently made large adjustments with little rhyme or reason. It got pretty distracting, frequently zooming in or out despite no change on my end, and was hard to predict. My coworkers, safe to say, were confused. Still, it did zoom out to include my cat in the picture when she walked in the room, and zoomed back in when she left. This seemed deliberate, and not like a luckily-timed random adjustment.

In other words, don’t expect Nvidia Broadcast here. The camera will not be constantly making mild and controlled panning motions to keep you in its center.

The Jupiter Webcam also comes with a small selection of video filter and post-processing options, although they’re far from measuring up to what you’ll find even in freeware like OBS and Snap Camera. Auto exposure and auto white balance are helpful, but the included “cartoons” and “black and white” filters are less like fun bonuses and instead look more like your kid went wild with the tint setting on your TV.

Finally, there’s this camera’s other big selling point, which is its built-in 3W top firing speaker. Quality here is genuinely impressive for a webcam, with audio being comfortably listenable starting around 60% and carrying across roughly half of my 2-bedroom apartment at 100%. For what it’s worth, I did try listening to music on it, although it sounded tinny and echo-y. What you’re supposed to use this camera for is video conferencing, and to test that, I called some friends and listened to a few podcasts on it. I made it comfortably through each episode and all of my calls without missing a beat. 

Combine this with the decent microphone quality demonstrated in the sample video I posted further up in this review, and you have a workable all-in-one conference microphone and speaker system. I didn’t even experience echo when using both the microphone and the speaker at the same time.

It’s a shame that this is being pushed as a premium webcam as opposed to a budget speakerphone.

Bottom Line

The eMeet Jupiter webcam is a budget camera sensor trumped up with a fancy name, a charming body, and a few conference call features in an attempt to justify a high price tag. Unfortunately, it can’t escape from its jank roots.

This camera’s fidelity is closer to what you’d expect from a $30 device than a $200 one, and its software is barebones with an auto-zoom function that’s prone to going off when it isn’t needed. 

The audio features are much more impressive here, which leads to the question of who this is for.

The marketing material eMeet sent me for this device shows the Jupiter being used as a typical webcam, plugged into a laptop and intended for use by a single person. For this use, it falls flat. 

However, plenty of the example use cases on the camera’s store pages show it being used as an all-in-one camera/microphone/speaker conference call device for whole rooms of people. This is a type of product we don’t typically review, but given that this camera seems to be using a low quality webcam sensor, I can’t imagine it has any clear advantage over just buying a conference speaker separately and using any other webcam for video.

In other words, there’s nothing about the camera part of this hardware that marks it as specifically being for conference calling. There’s no 360 degree capture here or the like. It’s just a bad webcam stapled onto a budget speakerphone.

Don’t be fooled by this camera’s price. It’s not as premium as the branding makes it out to be. To get some real bang for your two hundred well-earned bucks, go for the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam or Razer Kiyo Pro. 

Monoprice is a well-known American retailer for budget devices, and now its Workstream brand is taking on the best webcams. While the company’s been making boardroom and security focused PTZ cameras for a while now, consumer webcams is a new step for it. We’ve already reviewed the Workstream 1080p webcam, which we thought had potential but required a lot of work to achieve it due to its manual focus. If you want an autofocus alternative with a ring light and a higher max resolution, that’s where the Workstream 2K webcam comes into play.

At just $15 more than its 1080p counterpart, its $35 price is still well below standard FHD mainstays like the Logitech C920. Unfortunately, its quality and color accuracy don’t always reflect its high res specs, and its ring light doesn’t add much value over competitors without one.

Well-Lit Room

Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam

Logitech C920

Ausdom AW651 Webcam

Because of its low price and its ability to capture at 1440p, I compared the Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam against both the Logitech C920, a 1080p webcam, and the Ausdom AW651 Webcam, another low cost 1440p solution. 

What I got, unfortunately, was a blurry and overly warm picture that only made me look yellower with its ring light turned on. The field of view was also veering on being too much of a close up for comfort (the camera advertises a 70 degree viewing angle), although that’s not a big problem for a webcam. Oddly enough, my background also looks tilted in pictures I took with it, despite the camera having been securely attached to my monitor when I took them.

By comparison, the shots I took on the Logitech C920 and Ausdom AW651 both have much more natural colors. The Ausdom AW651 also has enough fidelity to actually look properly 1440p, whereas the Monoprice Workstream 2K webcam almost looks upscaled.

Low Light Room

Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam

Logitech C920

Ausdom AW651 Webcam

Unfortunately, the Monoprice Workstream 2k Webcam only got worse in dark conditions, which is especially problematic for a camera with a ring light on it.

Monoprice’s camera was still fuzzy and still produced unnatural color here, and turning on the ring light does little to alleviate these issues. Instead, it mostly just gave my face an unflattering spotlight effect, while leaving general visibility alone.

Meanwhile, the competing webcams maintained competitive visibility without a ring light, all while having stronger fidelity and color.

Overexposed Room

Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam

Logitech C920

Ausdom AW651 Webcam

Oversaturated light is where the Monoprice webcam’s ring light proved more useful, but it still didn’t outclass the ring light-less competition.

Still, with the Monoprice Workstream 2K’s ring light on medium brightness, you could make out the rough shape of my head even with the camera pointing directly at my window, which is impressive for a $35 device. High ring light settings didn’t make visibility appreciably better, though, and still produced an unflattering spotlight effect. Meanwhile, the camera’s unnatural color and fuzzy picture were still an issue.

To be fair, unnatural color was also a problem in this camera’s competitors, but visibility and fidelity remained higher.

Videos on the Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam

You’ll probably be using this camera for video calls more than selfies, so I’ve taken the liberty of including a sample video of me using the camera below. Unfortunately, videos I recorded with this camera suffered significant lag and stuttering, although I didn’t encounter this issue during live calls with my coworkers.

Otherwise, my experience with video was much the same as my experience with photos, at least visually. I did experience a hiccup with my audio, as the camera’s built-in microphones picked up a light buzz when I turned the ring light to its low setting. This buzz disappeared on higher settings. But even without the buzz, the camera’s built-in microphones produced generally echo-y sound.

Build Quality of the Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam

The Monoprice Workstream 2K Webcam tries its best to look fancier than it really is, coming in a silver drawstring bag and featuring patterned texturing along the side of its ring light. Unfortunately, the camera itself is stiff and its included plastic shutter is a separate piece held on via cheap adhesive.

On a positive note, this webcam’s monitor mount comes with feet and is stable on both my curved back and flat back monitors, which isn’t guaranteed at this price point. The monitor mount also has a tripod screw at the bottom if you’d rather set it up that way.

Where I ran into most of my problems was in positioning the camera itself. You can technically rotate it 360 degrees and tilt it 35 degrees both upwards and downwards, but it’s so stiff that I usually needed two hands to actually adjust it. That makes it impractical to adjust without taking it off your monitor, which cuts down on this feature’s usability.

This camera’s cord should be just long enough to reach most ports on most setups. When I pulled it fully taut, it measured 56.25 inches. By comparison, I measured the Logitech C920’s cable length at 72 inches when I pulled it fully taut.

Bottom Line

At $35, this webcam is dirt cheap, and does have the benefit of offering autofocus while its other Workstream cousin does not. Unfortunately, its 1440p picture often looks worse than what you’ll find on FHD alternatives, including that Workstream cousin.

While you’re definitely going to get a better picture from larger brands like Logitech, even other small companies like Ausdom have it outgunned. That company’s 1440p Ausdom AW651 embodies 2K much better than this webcam does, and while it might be far more expensive than this device, Ausdom’s similarly priced AW635 still gives the Workstream 2K Webcam a run for its money despite being FHD. The same can be said of Aukey’s 1080p webcam, and Angetube’s FHD contender in this price range even has a ring light.

With such fuzzy 1440p, there’s just not much reason to get this camera over other low cost alternatives.

Budget webcams continue to come out even with the best webcams coming back into stock. And while it’s common to find them coming from companies you’ve never heard of, Monoprice has now expanded its Workstream brand to include a few contenders of its own. These are priced to match other budget cameras, but come from the same name that’s been making reliable generic PTZ cameras for years now. 

The Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam in particular aims to take that mentality and apply it to the home office instead of the boardroom. The result? This webcam's not quite as easy to handle as more expensive contenders, but it can really shine if you know what you’re doing.

Well-Lit Room

Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam

Logitech C920

I tested the Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam against the Logitech C920, which is the classic torch bearer for 1080p webcams. Of course, with the Monoprice webcam costing $20, the two devices don’t make for an exact one-to-one comparison. The big difference between the two cameras is how they focus. While the Logitech C920 uses autofocus, the Workstream forces you to focus manually.

The most experience I have fiddling with manual focus is a photography class I took in high school. So while your experience may differ, I found it difficult to find the perfect middle ground with this camera. With my curtain up and ambient light sources in my office turned on, the picture on the Workstream webcam was always slightly fuzzy in some places and overly sharp in others, no matter how much I tuned its lens. On the plus side, colors were warmer in a generally more accurate way than on the Logitech C920, and the parts of the photos that weren’t fuzzy displayed plenty of detail. Unfortunately, that detail often wasn’t flattering and seemed to be more of a result of overly sharp focus than anything else. 

The Workstream webcam also captures a slightly wider field of view than the C920, although this comes with a fishbowl effect. Oddly enough, the Workstream 1080p’s website says it has a 70 degree field-of-view, but pictures I took with it seemed to exceed that.

Low Light Room

Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam

Logitech C920

When I lowered my curtain and turned off all ambient light sources in my home office aside from my monitor, the Monoprice Webcam suddenly started producing far more impressive images. I barely adjusted my focus after changing my lighting, but the fuzzy and overly sharp parts of the images started to balance out to reach what was mostly a happy medium across entire shots. Meanwhile, the warm colors and detail remained. All of this made for shots that, while still suffering from mild artifacting, generally looked to have higher fidelity than similar ones taken with the Logitech C920. The more expensive camera appeared fuzzy and cool by comparison. My guess is that dimming the room produced a general fuzzy effect across both cameras, making photos that looked overly sharp under heavier light look normal here.

Overexposed Room

Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam

Logitech C920

Performance in heavily lit conditions was a bit of a toss up between the two devices. While I was able to get a brighter picture with the Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam, the picture I got from the Logitech C920 was less fuzzy on my face while also less overly sharp around edges. Regardless, it’s impressive to see a $20 webcam in these conditions that doesn’t just bathe my face in shadow. It takes some work to find the right focus, but if you know what you’re doing, you can really push the camera beyond its budget under these conditions. Just look outside my window— I wouldn’t expect $20 to depict anything there other than a blinding sheet of white.

Videos on the Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam

While I’ve structured most of this review around photos, as those are easier to share alongside text, you’ll probably be buying this webcam for video calls. Its 1080p @ 30 fps quality held up during streaming for me, although I repeatedly encountered lag in recorded videos.

Video is what I can share, though, so we’ll have to settle for that. I shot a sample video of myself using this webcam in what I would consider my office’s standard lighting conditions, using the same focus settings I took my sample photos from earlier in this review with. While my picture generally mirrored the stills I took under those conditions, my video’s artifacting really amped up as I moved my head. I’m not quite sure why these issues didn’t show up in live calls.

Build Quality of the Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam

The Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam is a basic device that keeps most of its functionality physically connected to the camera as opposed to spreading it out through accessories, although it does come with an optional adhesive shutter, which doesn’t play nice with its manual focus lens.

That’s because, in order to adjust the Workstream 1080p’s focus, you need to rotate the ring that encircles its lens. Putting the shutter around the lens prevents you from doing that, and while it’s arguable that many people will only need to adjust their focus once (or at least only occasionally), that oversight points to an overall lack of thought with this unit’s design.

That lack of thought’s also present in this unit’s monitor mount, which lacks feet and was wobbly for me on both a monitor with a curved back and a monitor with a flat back. I had to be constantly careful not to accidentally knock it over when adjusting the camera’s focus or position, but there is a tripod screw on the mount if you’d rather avoid trying to connect it to your monitor altogether.

Speaking of camera position, the Workstream 1080p has generous upwards and downwards tilt, but that’s it. You can point the camera about 45 degrees upward and 180 degrees downward, but don’t expect to rotate it.

Finally, the Workstream 1080p’s USB Type-A cable is short but serviceable. I measured it at about 56 inches when I pulled it fully taut, which is much shorter than the Logitech C920’s 72-inch cord, but should still be able to reach most ports on most setups.

I should also mention this camera’s aesthetics, although there isn’t much to speak of. Parts of this webcam are encased in hard plastic, which makes it appear sturdy despite what otherwise seems like a cheap construction. There’s also an LED that turns on when it starts drawing power and another that turns on when it’s recording.

Bottom Line

The Monoprice Workstream 1080p Webcam is your typical budget contender, with compromises to its build, no software to speak of, and finicky special considerations like a manual focus. If you know what you’re doing and have the right lighting, you can achieve quality rivaling more expensive competition, but you’ll also have to jump through more hoops to get there.

That extra labor will get you a significant discount, though, since this camera only costs $20 at Monoprice and $25 at Amazon. That’s probably why it sold out in the time between when we ordered a unit for review and when it actually arrived. Still, if you like to toy around with your accessories and have a couple extra Hamiltons to spare, it’s worth keeping an eye out for restocks in the future.

Even the best webcams can’t always measure up to what you’ll find on smartphones and especially DSLRs, so why not just strap a smartphone-shaped DSLR style webcam to the top of your computer monitor? That’s the solution behind startup Opal’s new Opal C1, an upcoming $300 webcam with a purportedly DSLR level sensor (no mirrors or viewfinder though) made specifically with Macs in mind.

Opal’s made up of former Apple, Beats and Uber employees, although I doubt the C1’s going to be able to pick you up from the bar. Instead, it’s aiming to be “the first professional webcam,” which is a bit of a stretch given how much compression Zoom and Google Meet put on video calls anyway. The 4K you’ll find on the likes of the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is already a bit overkill for most users, even in professional settings. However, higher fidelity still does have its perks if you need to do more with your webcam than make video calls.

Currently in private, invite-only beta, the Opal C1 is essentially a big rectangle with a mirrorless 7.8mm 4K Sony sensor, a microchip capable of making “4 trillion operations per second,” and a large omnidirectional “MicMesh” for capturing high-quality, noise-canceled sound.

It’s not clear whether the chip is custom; however, as the website says, the camera both uses “Intel’s new 14nm VPU chip” but also something called the “Opal Trillium.” 

What is clear is that this webcam is made with Macs in mind. While you’re always free to use third-party software like Nvidia Broadcast, Opal’s own C1 software is “made exclusively for Mac.” This software is where you’ll find the camera’s ability to blur the background or use facial recognition to touch up and filter the image, so it’s a pretty hefty exclusion for PC users.

Still, this webcam aims for DSLR levels of picture, and at $300, it’s far less expensive than connecting a standalone DSLR to your computer. It also promises a 4K, 60 fps sensor with a 78-degree field of view, so it’s specced to keep up with existing webcam competition too. At the same time, with the compression that streaming and even video hosting services apply to devices, is it worth the extra $100 over the already high quality on devices like the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam and Razer Kiyo Pro?

I suppose we’ll have to wait to find out. The Opal C1 doesn’t have a public release date yet, but you can add your email to a reservation list for a chance to purchase a beta version.

The pandemic and the work-from-home culture that rose from it has seen plenty of new webcam manufacturers throwing their hats into the ring, hoping to capitalize on the hole left by stock shortages from big players like Logitech. While that hole’s since largely been filled and a lot of these companies have now retreated from the arena, one of the notable contenders that’s hoping to usurp the best webcams throne is a small company Ausdom.

While Ausdom was primarily known for wireless headphones before the pandemic struck, it’s since been releasing a continuous stream of webcams with surprisingly strong hardware for such a small company that’s so new to this space. Case in point, the Ausdom AW651. This is a 1440p camera with 1080p @ 60 fps and HDR support, plus it comes with its own tripod. All of this costs less than $90, and while it can’t quite escape from its budget jank, its core technology is impressively capable of keeping up with and even exceeding what you’ll find from bigger names.

Well-Lit Room 

Ausdom AW651 Webcam

Logitech C920

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

Since the Ausdom AW651 webcam maxes out at 1440p but costs about the same as mid-budget webcams like the Logitech C920, I decided to split the difference in my unit comparisons and compare it to both the Logitech C920, a 1080p webcam, and the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, a 4K webcam.

While the Ausdom AW651 obviously doesn’t reach the level of fidelity as Dell’s $199 4K entrant, it still brings enough bright color and extra detail to the table to make the Logitech C920 look especially dull by comparison. That camera has a tendency to make its subjects look a little cooler in real life, whereas the Ausdom is much more color accurate. The jump to 1440p is a bit more subtle, although you’ll notice that shots I took with the Ausdom AW651 look a bit more crisp and have much greater contrast in areas like my eyes. Images can perhaps get slightly too sharp, though, adding unrealistic harsh edges to certain parts of my face or hair. That’s a common issue with webcams from lesser known companies, but it’s not as prevalent here as on previous, more budget Ausdom models.

You can also make out my background a little better in shots taken with the Ausdom, although it’s still a little blurry compared to my face.

Low Light Room

Ausdom AW651 Webcam

Logitech C920

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

Overexposed Room

Ausdom AW651 Webcam

Logitech C920

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

The Ausdom AW651 webcam is not especially great in saturated light, but it’s arguably usable. When I pointed it at my window to try to expose it to as much light as possible, it gave my skin an overly warm orange tint and produced a blurry image. By contrast, the Logitech C920 is not nearly as blurry and is more accurate under these conditions, but bathes my face in shadow. Neither are ideal, but in a pinch, you can see more of my face with the Ausdom AW651. It won’t be as pretty as the bits of my face you can make out on the Logitech webcam, but I think video calls are one instance where quantity might beat quality.

Of course, the Dell Ultrasharp webcam continues to look great here. That’s to be expected, since premium webcams are consistently stronger than mid-budget ones under saturated light. Typically, when a webcam in the Ausdom AW651’s price range performs well under these conditions, that’s more of a bonus than an expected feature.

Videos on the Ausdom AW651 Webcam 

I’ve centered my review around photo examples, as it’s easier to share them than video, but you’re probably interested in the Ausdom AW651 for video more than anything else. That’s why I’ve included two sample videos below, both of which also include audio recorded with the webcam’s built-in microphone. The first video was shot at 1440p at 30 fps, while the second was shot at 1080p at 60 fps. 

That ability to shoot 1080p @ 60 fps footage is unique for this price range, as you frequently have to go for premium webcams like the Elgato Facecam or Razer Kiyo Pro for features like that. The 60 fps holds up here, although the lower fidelity compared to more premium devices means it might not be as noticeable. 

I also recorded my sample videos with the webcam’s built-in stereo microphones, which produced crisp and clear audio that nonetheless did have a slight buzz in its background at all times. That’s a bit disappointing, as these microphones are labelled as noise-cancelling, but simply having the audio fidelity they do is already above and beyond for this price range.

Video Sample @ 1440p

Video Sample @ 1080p

Build Quality of the Ausdom AW651 Webcam

The Ausdom AW651 is highly configurable, from its many points of articulation to its sliding camera shutter to its included tripod. The tripod itself is a little flimsy and the camera has an arguably extraneous button, but it otherwise does almost anything you could want it to do. 

That means it mounts securely to monitors (I tested it on two different displays), rotates a full 360 degrees, tilts down 180 degrees and can tilt upwards up to about 30 degrees. That upward tilt limit is a little disappointing, but it’s also unlikely that you’ll find yourself in a situation where you’ll need more to point your camera more than 30 degrees up anyway.

The sliding shutter is a little stiff but is thick enough to easily block the lens. The camera’s back also has an “M” button on it for switching the frame rate between 30 and 60 fps when recording at 1080p, which is a feature I’d rather control through software. Putting it on the device itself just means I could accidentally press the button without realizing it.

The tripod that comes with the webcam is a nice touch, although it’s prone to flopping over under the webcam’s weight. You can fix this by tightening the peg that screws into the webcam more and stretching the legs out as far as they’ll go, but you lose configurability by doing so. 

The webcam’s USB-A cable is attached to it, so you’ll want to make sure not to break it. It’s a long 79 inches when pulled fully taut, though, which is more length than the Logitech C920’s 72 inch cord.

Special Features on the Ausdom AW651 Webcam 

The Ausdom AW651’s weakest point is easily its software, since it actually doesn’t have unique software of its own and instead simply uses the common freeware program Amcap. While Amcap is decently powerful, it’s very much not user friendly, and since it’s not made especially for this webcam, there’s no reason to use it over other capture software.

If you do want to use Amcap, you’ll need to make sure you choose “Full HD Webcam” from the “Devices” menu to actually change your Ausdom webcam’s settings. You’ll then be able to manipulate resolution, frame rate, exposure and the like through a series of plain windows. It’s not an especially easy to navigate system, probably because it has to support all kinds of webcams rather than being made especially for one particular camera. These settings windows also have unintuitive names. For instance, to adjust resolution, you’ll need to navigate to options, and then to “Video Capture Pin.” Meanwhile, you’ll adjust settings like zoom and exposure in “Options -> Video Capture Filter.”

You can also save photos straight from Amcap, but while the software says it can save in multiple formats, I was only ever able to capture photos in .bmp format.

If this all sounds like too much to you, you can also adjust the camera’s resolution and frame rate in the Windows camera app, which also lets you take photos and videos. That’s actually what the manual directs you to do if you’re using Windows 10, as it only recommends Amcap to Windows XP/Vista/7/8 users. Unfortunately, the Windows Camera app doesn’t provide the level of fine control that Amcap does, and the camera’s website only ever tells you to use Amcap. Still, Windows Camera is the solution I opted for in most of my testing.

That said, if you do want that level of fine control but want a touch more user friendliness, there are Amcap alternatives. For instance, OBS offers a more user friendly approach to freeware, Snapchat’s Snap Camera comes with the company’s signature filters, and Nvidia Broadcast adds plenty of features to your device assuming that your computer can handle it.

With software like this, though, I can understand why Ausdom would put a dedicated button for adjusting frame rate onto the camera itself. Even if that solution feels like a band-aid rather than a cure.

Bottom Line

With an $89 MSRP and selling for an effective $79 at Amazon right now, the Ausdom AW651 webcam offers a lot of features not normally seen in its price range. HDR capture, 1080p @ 60 fps footage and a max 1440p frame rate are individually all features that I’d expect to be paying over $90 for, and yet this camera offers them all together. You’ll have to put up with a bit of jank in order to access all these features, which is common in lesser-known manufacturers, but fidelity is high enough under most lighting conditions that the camera still feels like a steal regardless.

The most noticeable annoyance here is the software, which is a generic freeware solution that’s far from user-friendly. There’s alternatives both online and built into Windows for getting around this probelm, but if that kind of thing intimidates you, you might want to go with a device from a bigger player like Logitech or Microsoft.

But if you’re willing to give the little guy a chance, you’ll find that the Ausdom AW651’s hardware can easily go toe-to-toe with the household names at a fraction of the cost.

Webcams were a bit of a stagnant space before the pandemic shifted much of the world to a work-from-home setup. In 2020, the Logitech C920 was still the best webcam in the mid-budget range despite being almost a decade old. The pandemic’s since seen a lot of companies launch new webcams to try to fill the world’s rising demand, but while we’ve seen contenders from the likes of Dell and Elgato knock premium giants like the Logitech Brio 4K off their thrones, we’ve yet to see a definitive improvement on the Logitech C920. Until now, with the release of the Microsoft Modern Webcam.

The name alone feels like it’s taking potshots at Logitech, even if it uses the same naming scheme as Microsoft’s recent keyboards and mice. At $70 and boasting HDR and a 78 degree field of view, this 1080p @ 30 fps camera does everything the C920 does, but thanks to recent innovations, it does it better and cheaper.

Well-Lit Room 

Microsoft Modern Webcam

Logitech C920

The Microsoft Modern Webcam produced clear, rich color and detailed texture when I tested it at mid-day in my home office under what I would consider to be ideal lighting conditions (with my lamp turned on next to me and light shining in from the window to my left). This is in contrast to the Logitech C920’s picture, which is slightly blurry and has an unnaturally cool tone to it. You’ll also notice that background elements are more detailed and colorful in pictures taken with the Microsoft webcam, but without distracting from my face. 

Low Light Room 

Microsoft Modern Webcam

Logitech C920

When I closed my blinds and turned off all light sources in my home office except for my monitor, the Microsoft Modern Webcam was noticeably darker and blurrier than in ideal light. This is to be expected, and we saw the same effect on the Logitech C920. 

Where Microsoft’s camera differed was its priorities. Color remained rich and natural on the Microsoft Modern webcam, but the shot as a whole was overall dark. The bottom left corner in particular is hard to make out, although my face is easy enough to see. Meanwhile, the Logitech C920 retained its generally cool coloring, but this had the side effect of making the image as a whole appear brighter. While this meant my face looked blurry and a little paler than in real life, areas that were bathed in shadow on Microsoft’s webcam were easier to see here.

Overexposed Room 

Microsoft Modern Webcam

Logitech C920

When I saturated the Microsoft Modern Webcam with light by pointing it towards my window, it produced a much brighter, much more visible shot than the Logitech C920. While my window is somewhat obscured by glare, which isn’t uncommon even in higher price ranges, my face and background are all fully visible and only a little brighter than in real life. Meanwhile, the shot I took with the Logitech C920 is bathed in shadow and borderline unusable. That’s not uncommon even on premium webcams, which makes the Microsoft Modern Webcam’s fidelity under these conditions even more impressive. You could comfortably take a video call under these conditions. 

Videos on the Microsoft Modern Webcam 

Speaking of video calls, they are of course the intended use case for this camera. My experience capturing video was much the same as my experience with photos, and I’ve included a sample video below to show it off. I also recorded the audio for the sample video with the Microsoft Modern Webcam’s built-in microphone. Echo was present, like with most webcam microphones, but I also thought my voice was crisp and clear. 

Build Quality of the Microsoft Modern Webcam 

The Microsoft Modern Webcam is a small all-in-one package with no detachable cables or accessories. This makes it ideal for travel and for use with smaller devices like laptops, but it also leaves it feeling cheap and flimsy in places.

This camera does have a slightly premium feel at first blush, thanks to its sliding camera cover and reflective front plastic. But once you notice that the cover is made of foam and that the monitor mount lacks feet, that premium feeling starts to wear off.

The monitor mount is perhaps my biggest point of contention with this camera, as I couldn’t get it to securely attach to my main monitor. Instead, it would like to occasionally lean slightly forward, as that monitor (the non Quantum Dot version of this MSI Optix display) has a slight bump on its back. While the camera was still usable like this, it left me feeling slightly nervous and frequently making mild adjustments to the mount. However, when I tried attaching it to my secondary monitor, which has a flat back, I was able to get it to fit securely. On the plus side, the mount has a tripod screw on the bottom if you’d rather not bother trying to make it fit on your display.

The webcam’s USB-A cable is attached to the device, which isn’t uncommon for this price range. But that means you better not break it, because it cannot be replaced. It measures 61 inches when pulled fully taut, which is shorter than the Logitech C920’s (also attached) 72 inch cable, but is long enough to reach about every port on my desktop.

Microsoft’s webcam also isn’t too flexible, since it’s only point of articulation is a tilt that lets it move vertically either 45 degrees upwards or downwards. You won’t be rotating or swiveling this device. The Logitech C920 is in the same boat, but we have seen budget webcams from the likes of Ausdom with more configurability, and it would be nice to see big companies catching up at this point.

Like with most webcams, an LED turns on when you’re recording with the Microsoft Modern Webcam. In a classy touch, it surrounds the actual camera lens here.

Special Features on the Microsoft Modern Webcam 

This webcam is built to be largely plug and play, but you can do some light configuration with the downloadable Microsoft Accessory Center App.

The big draw here is the ability to turn on HDR recording, a rare feature for a camera in this price range. But you also have sliders to control settings like brightness and contrast, plus a toggle for a “retouch” mode that attempts to brighten up your footage for you live. I found the results were always a little washed out for me, but it’s there if you want it. You can also choose to turn off auto white balance or auto flicker reduction and pick from a list of premade settings (although the only flicker reduction settings are 50 Hz and 60 Hz). Exposure gets a similar treatment, with the ability to turn off auto exposure and instead move a manual slider. 

There’s also a toggle to turn off the microphone on the software level. In an odd move, the microphone is turned off by default, as it doesn’t meet Microsoft Teams certification. Surprisingly honest, given that Microsoft makes this device. Despite that caveat, I actually found that the audio I recorded on the built-in microphone was crisp and clear, if prone to echo. It’s not going to beat a dedicated microphone or headset, but it’s as good as any laptop microphone.

Also, despite this camera being made by Microsoft, it does not feature an IR sensor and thus will not work with Windows Hello. That’s not expected for an external webcam in this price range, but it’s another funny omission given how big that feature is for Microsoft.

Bottom Line

Time has caught up to the Logitech C920, and the Microsoft Modern Webcam easily knocks it off its golden throne. The Microsoft Modern Webcam  needed a few sacrifices to reach this price, but it excels in fidelity across a number of lighting conditions. Sure, the software is light and the build comes across as cheap and a little stiff and unconfigurable, but those same complaints could also be lodged against the Logitech C920. But unlike the Logitech C920, this camera is $70, is readily available and doesn’t make every shot look just a little washed out. It was also made this decade.

It’s also got HDR recording, plus it can at least tilt up and down and has a privacy shutter. Its monitor mount is a little fiddly and it’s arguable whether its default recording settings can handle extreme darkness as well as the C920, but everywhere else, this is the clear winner.

About ten years ago, Intel began to tap into emerging markets like wearables, AR/VR applications, smartphones/tablets, and smart cameras for robotics in a bid to fuel its further growth. Few of the company's newly established businesses were a success, so in the recent year Intel pulled the plug on its smartphone, wearables, AR/VR, and some other efforts. This week the time came for its RealSense camera and computer vision business.  

In a bid to concentrate on its core businesses, such as developing and selling CPUs and SoCs for servers and client PCs as well as other applications, Intel decided to shut down its RealSense smart camera and computer vision business, the company confirmed to CRN. People, technologies, and IP developed by the company for RealSense products will be transitioned to better serve the company's new core businesses.  

"We are winding down our RealSense business and transitioning our computer vision talent, technology and products to focus on advancing innovative technologies that better support our core businesses and IDM 2.0 strategy," an Intel statement published by CRN reads. "We will continue to meet our commitments to our current customers and are working with our employees and customers to ensure a smooth transition." 

Intel established its RealSense business unit in 2014 ~ 2015 with the aim to develop computer vision technologies for a wide range of applications, from PCs to robots. The company has developed a pretty wide range of RealSense-branded products, including stereoscopic cameras, RGB cameras, a LiDAR, vision processor ASICs, and a number of other units. The company also uses RealSense for its drones.

While Intel had put rather significant efforts into its RealSense products and enabling hardware and software, the lineup has always remained a family of niche products aimed at emerging developers of applications that need computer vision. While computer vision technologies are gaining importance these days, large companies like automakers tend to develop their own technologies, whereas smaller makers do not need high volumes, whereas Intel is all about making products in high volumes. 

It remains to be seen how Intel uses technologies developed for its RealSense products going forward. Perhaps, Intel will be able to use some of the IP for its MobileEye division that develops self-driving cars and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), but at this point we can only speculate about Intel's intentions.

Elgato is most well-known for its stream decks and capture cards, but following the release of its Wave series of microphones last year, it’s now moving deeper into the streaming hardware space with the Elgato Facecam. Like the name implies, this is a webcam that aims to become the best webcam for livestreaming. It’s got 1080p @ 60 fps recording, plus unique features like a fixed focus 24mm lens and an app that tells you what your ISO levels are while you stream. But with that specificity of audience comes a lack of features like HDR or 4K, which streamers tend to ignore anyway since platforms like Twitch don’t support them.

Still, at $199, it’s priced to compete with rivals like the Razer Kiyo Pro and Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, which do have those features (HDR in the Kiyo Pro’s case, and both HDR and 4K for the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam). Can it stand out enough to justify itself against that kind of competition, or does Elgato still need to work out its first time jitters as a webcam manufacturer? 

Well-Lit Room

At a $199 price point, the Elgato Facecam is equal in price to the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam and Razer Kiyo Pro, so those two cameras formed the basis of my comparisons for this review. Although the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam can capture images at 4K, I used its 1080p mode for these tests, to give a more even comparison with the Elgato Facecam.

You’ll also notice that the angles on the test shots are slightly different between the Elgato Facecam and its competitors. This is because I took the Elgato facecam shots on a laptop, as performance wasn’t consistent on my desktop. We’ll talk about this later, when discussing the Elgato Facecam's build and software.

The sky was gray on the day I took my test shots, so I wasn’t able to get what I’d call ideal lighting. Nonetheless, with my office in what I’d consider normal conditions, the Elgato Facecam performed well. Color is accurate and texture is detailed enough to really make me consider getting a haircut soon. Background elements also don’t look fuzzy, and while the lighting is brighter than it was in real-life, this only helps the picture. The only exception is my window, which is rendered as a blinding white sheet of light.

By comparison, my face is bathed in shadow on shots taken with the Razer Kiyo Pro, and has a more even balance between light and shadow on the Dell Ultrasharp webcam. While I think the Kiyo Pro goes a little overboard on shadow, there is merit to the Dell’s approach. In particular, my face doesn’t look artificially lit , the mild shadow adds some mood to shots that could be desirable if only for accuracy, and you can make out some details outside the window.

In general, though, all 3 cameras performed well under normal conditions. 

Low Light Room

Unfortunately, I can’t say that the Elgato Facecam performed well under low light conditions. With my curtains drawn and all light sources turned off except for my computer monitor, the Facecam (set to default settings via its software) depicted me with a reddish, “greasy pizza slice” sheen. Not exactly the vibe I want to be giving off to my coworkers or streaming audience. On the plus side, artifacts were minimal.

The Razer Kiyo Pro was a little dark for my tastes, while the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam produced much brighter photos. They’re maybe a little too artificial looking for me, but this lighting is still probably the best balance of the three.

Overexposed Room

I also tested the Elgato Facecam in saturated lighting, which I did by picking it up and pointing it towards my office window. The saturated effect wasn’t as strong as I usually like since it was overcast on the day I tested, but as you can see from the Razer Kiyo Pro, it’s still too much for most webcams to handle. However, the Elgato Facecam and Dell Ultrasharp webcam both excelled here.

The Dell Ultrasharp came out just a touch more impressive, since it was able to capture a good bit of the world outside my window rather than rendering most of it as a blinding white void, a la the Elgato Facecam. But both cameras showed a detailed enough look at my face that I could comfortably make video calls in this lighting.

Videos on the Elgato Facecam 

The sacrifices I make for these reviews. Maybe it’s a scuffed makeup job or a bad hair day or the weird angle due to shooting with the laptop, but I really do not like how I look on video recorded with the Elgato facecam. Detail is high— maybe a little too high— but my face again looks much redder than I was seeing in the mirror. The light from my window is also bouncing off half my face, which is new for one of these reviews.

Fortunately, much of these issues can be fixed by adjusting settings like saturation in the Camera Hub software that comes with the Elgato Facecam. The default settings the software applies even tend to look pretty flattering, and these are the settings I’ve been using for the photos you’ve seen so far in this review, since you can take photos directly from the Camera Hub software. But you can’t shoot video from Camera Hub, which means I had to use the Windows Camera app for my footage.

The Windows Camera app likes to make its own adjustments that override much of the changes made in Camera Hub, which means you lose out on that post-processing when shooting video with it. I could have used another app to record video, but at that point, the inconvenience of having to find a new recording method is already impacting the Elgato Facecam’s score. Elgato is aware of this issue, though.

“We are looking into building a feature into the firmware that would allow for a sort of ‘settings lock,’” an Elgato representative told me over email. “So 3rd party applications can’t change Facecam’s settings.”

On the plus side, this issue should not affect streaming software like OBS. I was able to make live adjustments to the Elgato Facecam’s settings with the Camera Hub app while I had OBS open, and they carried over to my video input on OBS with no interference. That makes sense, as OBS shouldn’t override Camera Hub’s settings.

Compared to the Logitech C920 

At $199, the Elgato Facecam is a premium device with premium features, like being able to record in 1080p @ 60 fps. Still, I want to take a brief aside to compare it to the Logitech C920, a popular $70 1080p webcam that lacks those features but might be enough for casual users. 

The Logitech C920’s image quality definitely isn’t as high as what you’ll get from the Elgato Facecam, especially in normal and saturated lighting conditions. Low light also has plenty of artifacts that aren’t in the Elgato’s shots, although it’s arguable that the contrast and saturation are more flattering. In general, though, the Logitech C920 does tend to make shots appear cooler than in real-life, which can give you a not always desirable pale look.

Still, when you take into consideration that streaming platforms will compress images anyway, the C920 might still be enough for you, so long as you don’t need 60 fps recording.

Build Quality of the Elgato Facecam 

The Elgato Facecam is large and its plastic case feels a little cheap for the price, but its ability to tilt and swivel with almost complete freedom makes up for this a little. It still feels top heavy when mounting, though, and like the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam, it does not have any built-in microphones. It’s also picky about which ports you can plug it into.

The Elgato Facecam is, essentially, a big 3 x 1.5 x 2 inch box that you can either screw a tripod directly into or mount on your monitor via the included, much smaller mount. The mount offers the ability to tilt the camera up and down, as well as technically gives you the ability to swivel it from side to side. I say “technically” because you can only swivel your camera by partially unscrewing or tightening it. This isn’t unique to the Elgato Facecam, but it always feels precarious to me regardless of the webcam in question.

The Elgato Facecam is bound to feel a little precarious on your monitor no matter what you do, though, since it’s so large and the monitor mount lacks feet. The monitor mount does have a fairly wide surface area as it’s about 2.5 inches wide, but was still more wobbly than I’d like from a $199 purchase.

The Elgato Facecam is unique in that it only connects via USB 3.0. That’s not a restriction I’ve faced on other webcams, and did present a headache to me when reviewing it. The Elgato Facecam wouldn’t respond to my desktop’s front USB 3.0 ports, and would only work with the USB 3.1 ports on its back. Even then, I had some difficulty accessing full software functionality, leading me to test this camera on a laptop instead, where it worked perfectly. I did build my desktop in 2016, so it’s due for an upgrade (shame about parts availability right now), but it’s worth noting how picky the Facecam can be.

Still, the included USB-C to USB-A cable at least gives you a lot of room to stretch it to any port on your device, since it measured about 80 inches long when I pulled it fully taut. 

Special Features on the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

The Elgato Facecam is, if you can’t tell by the name, focused on fidelity and livestreaming. To that end, it offers 1080p @ 60 fps recording and a light though somewhat buggy software suite for customizing your camera’s output. Aside from that, you’re not getting HDR or 4K, although the camera does uniquely have flash memory that allows it to store 1 profile’s worth of your favorite settings onboard. It also doesn’t have autofocus, instead opting for a fixed focus lens that’s optimized to clearly depict subjects within 3 to 5 feet of the device.

The Elgato Facecam's Camera Hub software essentially functions as a series of sliders that you can use to adjust zoom, contrast, exposure, white balance, and the like. That’s not an uncommon setup, but there’s not a lot of guidance as to what all these settings mean. This camera’s key demographic should be well-versed in most of that already, but after seeing the user-friendly but still powerful Dell Ultrasharp Webcam software, this does feel like a step back. The software also lacks any settings presets like “vivid” or “warm,” which are common on other cameras and might help make it more user-friendly.

Of note is the ISO box that live updates with new information to help you fine tune your white balance for your lighting. It’s another feature aimed at experts, but it does make manually adjusting the picture to fit your shooting space a bit easier.

However, on my desktop, I encountered a frequent bug where the automatic exposure option would render my image in almost pure black. I didn’t experience this on my laptop, and because I wanted to test for the most part under default settings, I did most of my testing there. Again, this could be limited to my device, but it’s worth noting.

As for the camera’s fixed focus, I found that none of my subjects appeared to be out of focus in any of my shots, whether they were close to or far away from the webcam. However, that also tends not to be an issue on the autofocus webcams I’ve tested around this price point. And given that autofocus is inherently more versatile than fixed focus, I’d say that the 1 to 2 second wait for the autofocus to catch up to changes in the camera’s field of view is worth it for most people. However, if you find yourself frequently moving back and forth along your shooting area or bringing new objects onto screen, fixed focus might be preferable for you.

Bottom Line

The Elgato Facecam is a very directed device, and it’s likely that its core audience is going to love it. Its image quality is high, its software might be light but its live ISO information feed will be key to power users, and its fixed focus will be useful to people with lots of physical business on screen. But for everyone else, this is an expensive device with a light load of features, and it might not work perfectly on your computer out of the box.

Personally, I had a lot of trouble with this webcam’s USB 3.0 requirements and its software, although I’m hesitant to diagnose that as an issue everyone will face. Still, I’m not sure why USB 3.0 is a requirement given that other 1080p @ 60 fps webcams like the Razer Kiyo Pro get by without it. If you’ve got an older device, expect this camera not to work with every port on your machine.

And even with a USB 3.1 connection, this camera’s software would also break for me occasionally. Again, that could be an issue specifically with my desktop, since I didn’t have this issue on my laptop. But even when it worked perfectly, Elgato’s Camera Hub software didn’t offer a lot in terms of customization. You have the typical contrast and saturation sliders, plus a digital zoom, but a lack of presets or explanations makes adjusting these settings less user friendly than it could otherwise be. There’s also no HDR or 4K, which is worth noting since the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam has both of these features plus 1080p @ 60fps recording at the same price point. The Razer Kiyo Pro also manages to make HDR work at this price point while retaining 1080p @ 60fps recording.

Image quality is still high across most scenarios, though, and there are niche features to appeal specifically to certain types of livestreamers. For everyone else, though, there are more feature-full alternatives that have the same image quality and price elsewhere.

Words like “Ultra,” “Hyper,” and “Super” are pretty common in the tech world, but the products bearing those adjectives don’t always live up to those kinds of expectations. The Dell Ultrasharp webcam is an easy exception to that rule. Even though this is Dell’s first external camera, this 4K, HDR, 60 fps-capable shooter has the most crisp quality I’ve seen in a webcam yet. It’s also got a sleek aluminum body and easy-to-use software that opens up even more customization and features, like AI auto-framing and Windows Hello compatibility. And while it’s expensive at $199, it covers so many use cases and has such a high quality lens that it’s an easy leader among even the best webcams.

Well-Lit Room

 Dell Ultrasharp Webcam 

Razer Kiyo Pro 

At $199, the Dell Ultrasharp webcam matches cameras like the Logitech Brio 4K and Razer Kiyo Pro in price. It also comes equipped with a 4K Sony Starvis CMOS sensor, which is similar to the Kiyo Pro’s own Sony Starvis CMOS sensor. Because of these similarities, I compared the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam to the Razer Kiyo Pro in my practical testing. To show the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam at its best, I focused largely on 4K photos (the Kiyo Pro maxes out at 1080p), but I show off some 1080p shots later on in this review.

In my home office during the afternoon with my curtain up, I found that the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam on default settings produced a much brighter shot that tended to paint my face in a more flattering light and show off more background detail. My face maybe looks slightly yellow here, but the image is sharper than the competition’s. It’s also got more quality than the Razer webcam, as expected from a 4K vs 1080 image, although neither camera showed noticeable artifacting.

Low Light Room 

Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

Razer Kiyo Pro

One of the Razer Kiyo Pro’s major selling points is its light sensor that automatically adjusts images to look their best regardless of a shooting environment’s lighting. Despite that, when I removed all light sources from my home office aside from my computer monitor, the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam produced a much more legible image than the Kiyo Pro.

While the Dell’s image looks maybe a little too artificial, which gives my face a pale sheen, it also doesn’t lose quality and is easily bright enough that I would feel comfortable making business calls with it. Meanwhile, the Kiyo Pro maybe looks more true to life, but leaves most of the photo bathed in shadow. That might be helpful for spooking my coworkers, but not for getting work done.

Overexposed Room

Dell Ultrasharp

Webcam Razer Kiyo Pro

The Dell Ultrasharp webcam impressed me most when I saturated it with light by pointing it directly at my window. Most webcams tend to cover my face in shadow and render the window itself as a pure sheet of white under these conditions, but the Dell Ultrasharp webcam did neither. Instead, you can see fine details of both the world outside my window and my face, which is great news for anyone who works in a bright office or has their desk in front of a window.

The Razer Kiyo Pro, meanwhile, focused mostly on the buildings outside my window, leaving my face covered in shadow and thus making the camera unusable for video calls under these conditions.

1080P Performance 

Up to this point, all the photos I’ve shown off from the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam were taken in 4K. Still, most video call and streaming services don’t support 4K footage. It’s good news, then, that the camera still looks great at 1080p. The only major difference here is that, under what I would consider to be ideal shooting conditions, my face looks a bit yellower than I would like. Still, you can fine tune the camera’s postprocessing in the Dell Peripheral Manager software (which I discuss further into this review) to help eliminate issues like this.

Alternate Fields of View

All of the photos I’ve shown off in this review so far have been taken at the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam’s highest field of view, which is 90 degrees. You can adjust the camera to take photos at 78 degrees and 65 degrees if you prefer close-ups, though. This is easy to do in the Dell Peripheral Manager app, and I’ve shown examples of each above.

Logitech C920 Comparisons

While the Dell Ultrasharp webcam is well above the Logitech C920’s $79 price point, I’m including photos taken on the Logitech C920 below, as it has been our current top recommendation for webcams since we started covering them, and is the point of comparison for most of our reviews.

These photos were taken at 1080p in ideal, dim and saturated lighting conditions. You’ll notice that my face looks a touch pale in the ideal and dim photos, which is a common issue with the C920. The ideal and dim photos also don’t appear that different, which is a point in the C920’s favor, although the bright photo renders my face in complete shadow.

Videos on the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

1080p Demo

4K Demo

As the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is built largely for streaming and video conferencing rather selfies, I’ve also included examples of videos shot on the webcam below. These videos show off 1080p @ 60 fps footage as well as 4K @ 30 fps footage. Both videos were shot with HDR enabled.

Locally, I didn’t notice much of a difference between recording footage and taking photos, but it’s worth noting that the camera’s quality might exceed your streaming platform of choice. When using the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam to video conference with my coworkers over Google Meet, they couldn’t notice much of a difference between it and the $79 Logitech C920 I usually call in on. This was due to Google’s video compression more than anything else, as my local feed still looked as sharp as ever. Still, if all you’re doing is calling into morning meetings, it’s worth keeping in mind that you might get some diminishing returns by splurging on this camera.

Build Quality of the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

The Dell Ultrasharp webcam has a sleek, cylindrical, all aluminum body that looks great and feels hefty in the hand, plus genuinely useful build features like an 80 inch cable and a magnetic webcam cover. But in search of a luxury feel, it does make a few missteps.

Visually, though, this webcam is a treat to look at. Its aluminum body is a pleasant dark gray and doesn’t track fingerprints, plus its cylindrical shape makes it look more like something you’d find on a film set.

It’s also got a good deal of convenience features, like separate, magnetically attachable mounts for tripods and monitors. The monitor mount also has a hole in its back to let the camera’s USB cable through, which itself pleasantly attaches by fitting snugly into an indent in the camera’s body.

That visual appeal might have negatively affected the build, however. Unlike most monitor mounts, this webcam’s monitor mount doesn’t have any feet on it, which means it can feel loose on your display. I was able to get what felt like a tight fit after some frustrating adjusting, but it took longer than I liked and still left me a little mildly stressed out that the camera might fall. For such an expensive piece of equipment, that’s a problem.

The way the camera’s mounts magnetically attach to it also doesn’t let the camera swivel, which means you’ll only be able to adjust its position by tilting it up and down. Tilt is, at least, generous, covering up to about 45 degrees.

There’s also the issue of how many separate parts you’ll need to keep track of with this device. The camera body, monitor mount, tripod mount and shutter all make for 4 pieces total, which is a bit annoying given that many webcams simply place a tripod hole into the monitor mount, keep the mount attached at all times, and incorporate a shutter internally. It may feel less premium, but it’s more convenient.

The Dell Ultrasharp webcam also lacks a built-in microphone, although most webcam microphones are so low quality that I’m hesitant to hold the lack of one against it.

Special Features on the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam

The Dell Ultrasharp webcam’s productivity software, Dell Peripheral Manager, is where a lot of this camera’s magic happens. Aside from being where you’ll adjust the camera’s capture resolution (720p, 1080p or 4K) and its field-of-view (65 degrees, 75 degrees and 90 degrees), it’s also where you’ll access a lot of its special features. 

These include HDR, AI auto-framing, digital zoom, anti flicker (50Hz and 60Hz), plus the ability to adjust your camera to capture footage at 24, 30 or 60 fps. There’s also two toggle switches for focus and white balance, which let you choose to either adjust these settings manually or let the camera do it automatically. You can also change brightness, sharpness, contrast and saturation in the app or choose between 4 postprocessing presets. Any customizations you make can also be saved as a new preset.

That’s a lot, and I haven’t even discussed convenience features like being able to record video right from the app, place a framing grid over your webcam footage preview and start a 3-2-1 countdown before footage starts recording. Honestly, the only thing that feels like it’s missing is the ability to take photos straight from the app as well, although any adjustments you make here carry over to the standard Windows camera app with no issue.

All of these features are available through an easy-to-navigate series of drop-down menus on the app’s left side, and you can instantly track how your changes affect your camera’s footage in a quick-to-update camera feed preview that takes up the rest of the app. I didn’t notice any lag while using this app, although sometimes the camera preview will need to briefly refresh after making a lot of changes or spending too much time away from the program. But all of the features worked without issue, and explainers built into the app (which you can reveal by mousing over “i” icons) made it easy to understand what exactly they affected.

Some of this camera’s special features aren’t compatible with each other, although that’s not unique to this app. Specifically, you can’t record 60 fps footage at 4K or when AI auto-framing is on.

The Dell Ultrasharp webcam is also the first webcam I’ve tested that has an IR camera for Windows Hello compatibility. This worked flawlessly upon testing. You can also set laptops to prioritize the Dell Ultrasharp webcam over internal options in this app, too.

Bottom Line

The Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is an easy new champion in the realm of premium webcams, making the Razer Kiyo Pro and Logitech StreamCam difficult choices to justify and packing comparable core features to the Logitech Brio 4K plus some nice bonuses like AI auto-framing.

With HDR, 4K @ 30 fps and 1080p @ 60 fps capabilities, it’s got pretty much everything you could want without wandering into the realm of DSLRs. You control all of these options with a convenient and easy-to-control app that has ample mouse-over explanations for those who want them.

The body could use some work, though. The titl is generous, but there’s no swivel, and the monitor mount sacrifices some usability in pursuit of aesthetics. Also, there’s no microphone.

All in all, though, if you’re looking for a 4K or 60fps camera, the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is the best I’ve reviewed yet.

The pandemic may be easing in many places, and the best webcams may mostly be back in stock, but that’s not stopping Lenovo from releasing two new 1080p webcams to cash in on the work from home trend. Of course, with mainstays like the Logitech C920 easily available again, these cameras are going to need plenty of special features to compete. However, the Lenovo LC50 Monitor Webcam and MC50 Monitor Webcam are both so special that they’re unlikely to have very broad appeal.

Both of these webcams shoot at 1080p @ 30 fps, have a 4x digital zoom and come with two built-in noise cancelling microphones. They also both use autofocus and have a 90 degree field of view. But that’s all normal. It’s in how they’re built where you start to see just how these webcams stand out, both from each other and the competition.

First, both webcams have privacy shutters, a standard feature for Lenovo’s laptop webcams, but less common on standalone cameras. They also both have fairly generous tilt and swivel functionality. They tilt 30 degrees up and down and swivel 45 degrees side to side. They also each have lights that turn on when they’re recording (which Lenovo touts as a unique feature but is actually a fairly common inclusion). What’s special is in how these cameras physically attach to your monitor.

The LC50 connects to monitors magnetically, while the MC50 uses a special rail system that can be locked with an external key to keep your webcam from being stolen. But while these features provide extra utility, they also severely limit which monitors you can use these webcams with. Magnets definitely won’t attach to any of the monitors in my home office, and the MC50’s rail has to have a Lenovo monitor to attach to. 

There’s also the question of how useful locking your webcam to your monitor is in preventing theft. I suppose stealing a whole monitor from the office might be more conspicuous than just stealing a webcam?

Regardless, it’s encouraging to see companies experimenting with a method of mounting external webcams that doesn’t require the typical, always clumsy feet method. Lenovo expects to launch the LC50 Monitor webcam for $79 starting this September, and the MC50 Monitor webcam for $99 sometime in Q3 of this year.

Last year at this time, webcams were in such high demand and short supply that it was nearly impossible to find the best webcam and clear industry leader, Logitech's C920, in stock for anything less than scalper prices. That's when we started to see a slew of cameras from lesser-known brands such as Ausdom, whose AF640 we tested and found to be very similar in quality to the C920. 

The Ausdom AF640 has a similar design to the C920 with a form factor that makes it easy to mount on a monitor and rotate, along with a high-quality, built-in microphone. Like the C920, the AF640 records in 1080p, 30 fps, but it actually has a wider field of view (90 degrees versus 78 degrees) and its mic was unquestionably better in our tests. When we took the same pictures with both webcams, we noted that the difference were slight, though colors on the C920 were a bit more vibrant and images were just a bit more detailed.

Fast forward to spring 2021 and, with shortages improving, you can now snag a Logitech C920 for less than $80 and, at its regular price, score an Ausdom AF640 for $39. However, in an amazing early Prime Day sale, you can now score the AF640 for just $8.99 at Amazon after you apply the coupon code YJB57BK9 or just check the redeem button.

If you need a webcam, whether it's for your primary PC, as a spare or for a Raspberry Pi project, $8.99 is a hard price to resist. As you can see in the comparison images below, the quality is really good.

For more Prime Day savings, check out our Prime Day live blog and lists of the best Prime Day gaming PC and laptop deals, best Prime Day SSD deals, best Prime Day Monitor Deals, Best Prime Day Dell Gaming deals and the best Prime Day hardware deals overall. Our sister site, TechRadar, has a broader list of Amazon Prime Day deals that includes product categories we don't typically cover such as smart home devices, TVs and phones.

Anker’s new $130 PowerConf C300 webcam is part of a new initiative from the charger company to break into productivity gear. Labeled under the Anker Work brand, this camera is clearly aimed at professionals looking to buy the best webcams for video conferences. That means it packs a detailed 1080p sensor with multiple field of view options including 78 degrees, 90 degrees and 115 degrees, plus plenty of advanced features like AI framing, HDR and 60 FPS recording.

That’s a level of customizability that’s usually reserved for more expensive, enthusiast shooters like the Razer Kiyo Pro. But while the Anker’s visual fidelity didn’t quite live up to those $200 Kiyo Pro’s, probably because it doesn’t have the Kiyo’s powerful sensor, its strong suite of features still make a strong argument for spending slightly more on it than you would on a more casual but proven camera like the Logitech C920.

Regarding those features, the Anker PowerConf C300 comes with 4 shooting modes, including Personal, Meeting, Streaming and Custom. Personal and Meeting modes both use a “flexible angle” that adjusts the field of view and image framing based on your head movement and placement, although the former tends to be more zoomed-in while the latter is more zoomed out. Streaming mode, meanwhile, locks the camera at a 90-degree field of view and turns on 60 fps recording, while custom mode lets you set your own field of view and frame rate combinations in addition to getting the option to toggle on the HDR and Anti-Flicker settings.

In practical use, I found that most Streaming mode and Meeting mode photos tended to look identical, so for the below tests, I stuck to taking photos in Personal and Meeting modes. I did not include Custom mode in my tests, as I do not have an HDR monitor to test with.

Well-Lit Room

Anker PowerConf C300 Personal Mode

Anker PowerConf C300 Meeting Mode

Logitech C920

In terms of image fidelity, the Anker PowerConf C300 was roughly on par in a well-lit room with the Logitech C920, which is our leading mid-range 1080p webcam. However, perhaps reflecting its slightly higher price and more extended feature set, the Anker PowerConf C300 was much more accurate when it came to colors.

While the Logitech tends to give me a cooler color temperature than in real life, color in photos taken with the Anker came across as far more neutral and natural. This also extended to background elements, which tend to get washed out when using the Logitech.

Low-Light Room

Anker PowerConf C300 Personal Mode

Anker PowerConf C300 Meeting Mode

Logitech C920

When I drew my curtain and turned off all light sources in my office except for my computer monitor, I found that the difference between the Anker and Logitech webcams was, well, night and day. While the Anker now portrayed me with a cooler but still accurate color tone, its fidelity remained largely unchanged.

Meanwhile, the Logitech C920 introduced significant grain to its photos, especially on background elements. The Logitech’s color temperature also got even cooler than before, which made me look sickly.

Overexposed Room

Anker PowerConf C300 Personal Mode

Anker PowerConf C300 Meeting Mode

Logitech C920

I also took shots with the Anker PowerConf C300 and Logitech C920 pointing towards my window, to test how they work in an overexposed environment. While this is an over exaggeration of most user setups, it can help shed light on how a webcam might work under heavy light saturation.

The Logitech was, unfortunately, mostly unusable. While it did catch a glimpse of the buildings outside my window, which is impressive given that many webcams instead render windows as pure sheets of white, my face is bathed in too much shadow for me to want to call anyone under these conditions.

The Anker, however, again retained most of its fidelity in these conditions. The edges of my head were tinged by light in shots I took with it, but none of my face was hidden by excessive shadow. And while photos did suffer from a “white sheet” effect, putting the emphasis on the face is the right choice here. Even background elements appeared without issue, arguably looking better than in more neutrally lit shots.

Build Quality of the Anker PowerConf C300

Build quality is where it feels like the Anker PowerConf C300 stumbles most, although its emphasis on versatility extends to its build as well. That means you can tilt it forward 180 degrees, plus swivel it a full 360 degrees. For placement, the monitor mount fits snugly and has the typical hole for connecting a tripod on the bottom. It also connects using a detachable USB-C cable and has an optional privacy cover, but it’s here that the camera starts to show its weaknesses.

The first, and less egregious, problem is that the webcam only includes a USB-C to USB-C cable in the box. If you want to connect over USB Type-A, you have to use a small adapter that you’re likely to lose. It’s a small price to pay for USB-C functionality and can be easily resolved with your own USB-C to USB-A cable, but small and easily lost parts are still worth bringing up. Which takes us to the removable privacy slider.

The privacy slider is a detachable and purely physical switch, which means there’s no hardware level shut-off here, and you get two in the box. While that sounds like a nice gesture, it’s a testament to how easy it is to make one of these unusable. That’s because the slider attaches using glue. This introduced a few problems, the most dramatic one being that you probably won’t want to take the slider on and off a lot. Doing so can weaken the adhesive, and it’s not like it’s easy to find a place to store the slider in the meantime without leaving the glue open to the air. While this doesn’t present a major issue if you plan to use it all the time, I personally think the slider’s kind of ugly, and wouldn’t want it on at all times. Additionally, if we’re not meant to remove it frequently, why make it detachable instead of building it into the device?

There’s also the question of whether the glue will leave residue on your device, although I haven’t found this to be the case with my unit. It can be tricky to pry the slider off, though, which I suppose makes me happy that I have long fingernails.

As for the slider itself, it does its job well when attached securely, although its thin plastic has me worried about the slide rail’s durability over time. I’m also worried that the glue could break down over time, although this didn’t happen to me in the few days I used this camera while writing this review.

There’s also no guiding marks for where the slider should go on the webcam, so it’s easy to make a mistake when installing it, and adjusting it could weaken the glue.

The Anker PowerConf C300’s cord measured a little over 59 inches when pulled fully taut, which was long enough to easily reach all of my desktop’s USB ports.Logitech says the C920 has having a nearly-identical 60-inch cord, but as you can see in the picture above, its cord is noticeably longer than the PowerConf C300’s. When I pulled it taut and measured it with some measuring tape, it hit 70 inches, making it nearly a foot longer.

The PowerConf C300 also has built-in dual microphones that produce loud audio but also tended to give my voice a somewhat warbly effect that hurt clarity.

Special Features on the Anker PowerConf C300

The Anker PowerConf C300’s guide gives you instructions for downloading the free AnkerWork app, which is how you’ll access the camera’s different preset recording modes, adjust settings like brightness and saturation and set up a custom recording mode with HDR, anti-flicker, and/or 60FPS support.

The user interface is simple and light, although it’s a bit annoying to me that I need to scroll down a long list to see all the different ways a recording preset will affect my shot. I would have preferred a layout that puts as much information on my screen at once as possible. But the biggest problem here is lag, which makes the image setting section (where you can adjust photo settings like brightness or sharpness) near unusable.

Every time you press a button or move a slider in the AnkerWork app, you’re going to need to wait at least a second while it applies your changes to the camera. This is obnoxious but not insurmountable when turning HDR or Anti-Flicker on or off. But for image settings, it makes it difficult for you to select a specific number, move by small increments, or test out different settings. That’s because the lag starts as soon as you click on the slider and move your mouse, and can last as long as 5 seconds. You won’t get to see where your slider ended up until after the lag ends. There’s buttons to move the slider by increments of 1 for fine tuning, which helps with this somewhat, but using them takes agonizingly long thanks to each button press triggering even more lag.

Compare this to the user interface and snappy response times for the software for the Razer Kiyo Pro, which also supports HDR and 60fps shots, and it’s easy to see there’s a lot of room for improvement here. A large firmware update and software pitch did hit as I was finishing this review, which helped reduce lag times in most instances, but they are still present and still make the image menu almost intolerable to use.

As for the HDR and Anti-Flicker support, turning them on is as simple as flipping a toggle (and waiting for the lag), although the former is only available when recording at 30 fps. I wasn’t able to test HDR as I don’t have an HDR monitor, but turning it on even on my non-HDR setup still made images appear slightly brighter and richer.

As for 60 fps recording, it works smoothly once you click the toggle on. A 20 second video recorded at 60 fps also only took up 45.5 MB on my hard drive, which was only 0.5 MB larger than a 30 fps video of the same length. You can also stream at 60 fps, which I had no issue doing on a private YouTube stream.

Anker’s auto frame and solo frame options can be a little trickier to see the benefits of. While they automatically zoom in to put the focus on your face as soon as you turn them on, you really have to move a lot to see the frame actually adjust to follow you.

Bottom Line

The Anker PowerConf C300 has consistent fidelity and enough premium features to more than justify its $130 price tag, even if the implementation for those features needs some work. Regardless of lighting conditions, it always had color accurate shots with no visible artifacting in my testing. And on top of that, its multiple fields of view and auto framing options made taking those shots in the best conditions possible easy.

60 FPS and HDR recording are also boons at this price point, as they’d usually require you to upgrade to something like the $199 Razer Kiyo Pro. They work well here, although the PowerConf C300’s picture quality doesn’t match those premium webcams and the software for accessing those features can frequently be unbearably laggy.

Still, if you want a webcam that can do more than your typical casual shooter but don’t need to go full premium, the Anker PowerConf C300 is an easy choice.

The Konftel Cam 10 is a new monitor mounted webcam from Konftel, a company that typically specializes in business level conference equipment like room microphones and desk-mounted cameras with high fields of view. While the Cam 10 is still positioned as a business webcam, it’s clear that the goal here is to grab the more casual market that’s sprung up during the pandemic.

With a 1080p @ 30 fps resolution and generally high quality photos, the Konftel Cam 10 is gunning for the best webcams, including the Logitech C920. But with its only special features being a simple privacy slider and a 90 degree field of view, can it justify its $30 - $40 higher price point?

Well-Lit Room

In mid-day with my office’s typical lighting sources (a few monitors, a lamp to the left of my desk, and cabinet lighting behind me) turned on, the Konftel Cam 10’s sensor was color accurate and only a little fuzzy, but seemed to miss the mark when it came to shadows. In every photo I took, my right eye (your left) was bathed in shadow, which made me look like a cool comic book character more than the tech reporter I actually am. I don’t mind the change, but there’s no denying that it’s a little silly.

You can see a similar effect in my Logitech C920 photos, though it’s not as pronounced, as my iris and pupil are still distinguishable.

The Konftel Cam 10’s wide angle lens does mean you can see more of my background, and the lighting on background elements is a little less harsh than on the Logitech C920. This might be useful for some, although I really only need the focus to be on my face in most of my calls.

When it comes to facial detail, the Logitech C920 just barely seems to come out on top. However, it also tends to lean colder on color temperature, while the Konftel Cam 10 takes a more neutral approach.

Low-Light Room

When I closed my office’s blind and turned off all light sources except for my main monitor, the Konftel Cam 10 was the clear winner. Not only does it retain its wide lens, greater background detail, and more neutral color temperature, it also renders my face with about the same level of detail as it did in a brighter room. In fact, the issue with covering my eye in shadow seems to be gone.

Meanwhile, the Logitech makes me look much paler than I actually am (an accomplishment), and its photos take on a much fuzzier look than they did in more ideal lighting.

The Konftel Cam 10 is the clear winner here.

Overexposed Room

While this is an extreme test, I also took photos with both the Konftel Cam 10 and Logitech C920 in overexposed conditions. This was to get an idea of how well they both handle in overly lit environments — for instance, a lot of cameras will render windows as pure white squares, and it’s typically a good sign when they don’t.

Unfortunately, both cameras here only captured a little bit of the world outside my window. But that doesn’t mean they performed poorly. My face is clearly visible in both shots, a test that not every camera passes. In a pinch, I’d even say that they’re usable in these lighting conditions.

As for which one has higher quality shots, it’s hard to tell. The Logitech photos look slightly sharper to my eyes, but they also tend to hide more of my face in shadow. The Konftel camera’s wider-angle lens gives the sensor more diverse lighting to work with, which might explain why the shadows don’t seem as harsh in its photos, although they are definitely still present.

Build Quality of the Konftel Cam 10

The Konftel Cam 10 has a barebones construction that leaves it feeling solid and sturdy in the hand but also incapable of much customization. For instance, it can’t swivel from side to side and can only tilt about 5 degrees downward.

Its monitor mount fit snugly to my screen, and like most webcams, it also has an LED that turns on when recording and a hole on the bottom to screw in a tripod.

Cord length, while shorter than the Logitech C920, proved long enough for me to easily attach the Konftel Cam 10 to pretty much any port on my desktop. It hit 60 inches exactly when fully stretched out, which is where my measuring tape maxes out.

Special Features of the Konftel Cam 10

The Konftel Cam 10 doesn’t come with many unique build features, but it does have a simple privacy cover that you can slide in or out using a switch on top of the webcam. This isn’t a hardware level shut-off, and while the cover’s material seems to be pretty flimsy, it did its job with no issue. Any photos I took with the cover on showed up as pure black.

The Konftel Cam 10 also has digital zoom and simple frame flipping available in the free downloadable Konftel Camera Control app, but there’s a catch. None of the settings I adjusted in the Konftel app would apply in the Windows camera app, which is the easiest and most typical way to take static shots on a PC webcam. Google Hangouts would pick up the Konftel app's adjustments, so video calls will work fine, but Konftel suggested I visit a web-based camera viewer and manually save the site's display image with a right click for static shots. Additionally, many of the app’s features, like ePTZ frame adjustment, aren’t accessible with the Cam 10.

While not a special feature, the Konftel Cam 10 also has dual microphones built-in. Audio is tinny and quiet, yet prone to peaking as well. That’s not unusual for a webcam microphone, but you’re probably going to want to use one of the best headsets or best external microphones instead.

Bottom Line

In my office’s normal lighting, it was hard to see the Konftel Cam 10’s niche. Its quality was, at best, only comparable to the Logitech C920. And while the Logitech C920 is at the top of our best webcams list, it’s also $79 (currently marked down to $69 at time of writing). The Konftel Cam 10, meanwhile, has an MSRP of $130 and tends to cost between $100 - $130 at most stores. That’s a pretty hefty price jump for what I’d generously call a lateral move.

However, the Konftel Cam 10 also proved far more consistent across lighting conditions, especially in low-light. And while its built-in privacy shutter looks a little flimsy, it works well and does give the Konftel Cam 10 at least one unique feature.

If you work from a dark area or are worried about privacy, but want an otherwise consistent performer with quality matching leaders like Logitech, the Konftel Cam 10 might be for you. Just know that you’re going to be paying a premium for a fairly light feature load.

Have a fear of being spied on? Then look out because the Eyecam is an eye-opening, open-source, Raspberry Pi-powered camera that eerily resembles a human eye. Half pet, half unused concept from David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, this fleshy camera from Germany’s Saarland University is less of a Best Webcams contender and more of an art piece that highlights the surveillance we open ourselves up to when attaching sensors to personal devices.

“Imagine Eyecam waking up on its own,” the camera’s reveal video says. “Imagine bonding with Eyecam,” the video continues as a man pets the camera. “Imagine Eyecam becoming emotional,” the video eventually says, as the camera scowls.

The goal here, according to Eyecam creator Marc Teyssier, is to “broaden the discourse on sensing technologies and spark speculations on aestheticism and functions.”

That’s a lot of big words, but Teyssier’s website goes into deeper detail about the problems traditional cameras present by capturing data but not conveying emotion,. It also discusses the societal consequences of surrounding ourselves with sensing devices “up to the point where we become unaware of their presence.”

Well, Eyecam certainly does a good job of making me feel aware of it.

Kidding aside, Eyecam has a good point here. The idea of being spied on by a real human eye terrifies me, but keeping my webcam plugged in at all times without even putting a cover over it doesn’t (hackers, forget you read that).

Still, despite being branded as a “design fiction prototype,” you can totally build an Eyecam of your own right now, if for some reason you want to turn your monitor into a cyclops. All the software and .stl files for the Eyecam are free on Teyssier’s Github. You’ll need a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino Nano, a small camera and a 3D printer. You’ll also need plenty of gumption, since Teyssier’s build tutorial isn’t quite finished yet.

Redragon’s engineers have a reputation among the Tom’s Hardware staff for being budget wizards, offering some of the best wireless mouse and best wireless keyboard options for cheap. But their summoning circle might have been somewhat incomplete with the Redragon GW800 Hitman webcam. At an asking price of $45, there’s definitely some confidence at play here in giving this camera a Razer-like name in “Hitman.” But despite a 1080p resolution, only about half of this assassin’s headshots turned out to be worth sharing.

There truly must have been dark magic at work here, because while this camera impresses in dim rooms, it suffers when brought into the light, making it hard for this discount shooter to compete with the best webcams like the 1080p Logitech c920, despite its lower cost. 

Well-Lit Room 

Redragon GW800 Hitman 

Logitech C920 

The Redragon HW800 Hitman’s black magic isn’t quite apparent in ideal lighting conditions,so it might not make the best first impression. While there’s very little grain apparent in the shots taken with the Redragon cam, my background appears darker than you’d expect, given that I have an open window right next to me, Additionally, my face appears like someone applied a smoothing brush to it in Photoshop. There’s also artifacting on my hair, teeth and fingers. Oddly enough, however, background elements seem to have deep, rich colors.

Meanwhile, the Logitech C920, which we consider the best webcam for most, shows my room properly lit and my face in full detail without any smoothing or artifacting. You lose out on some background image quality, but your background usually isn’t where you want people to focus when using a webcam.

Low-Light Room

Redragon GW800 Hitman

Logitech C920

In lower light, with my curtains drawn and all external light sources turned off except for my computer monitor, the HW800 Hitman stood on more even ground with the Logitech C920. Most of the artifacting from the previous round of shots is gone, and a lot of detail has returned to my face. The background still has a cool, dim tone, but that’s reflective of what I was seeing in real life.

By contrast, in the images taken with the Logitech C920, my room looks far more well-lit than what I saw with my own eyes, and I lost some detail on my face. You can see the individual strands of my hair well enough (I miss haircuts), but blur wasn’t uncommon across the photos I took in the dim room. 

The C920 also introduced grain across my background, which normally wouldn’t be too much of a problem if my face stood out more. With there also being lesser image quality on my face though, the background grain became far more noticeable. The shots I took with the C920 still weren’t bad, but they weren’t twice as good as the HW800 Hitman’s, like the price suggests.

Overexposed Room

Redragon GW800 Hitman

Logitech C920

I also tested the Redragon GW800 Hitman in an overexposed environment, where I point my camera directly at my window. I don’t normally expect high quality photos here but, rather, use it as an opportunity to test the camera’s priorities when exposed to heavy light. What I got with the HW800 Hitman was almost the exact opposite of what I saw on the C920.

A lot of webcams tend to shroud my face in darkness in this test, as well as depict the world outside my window as a big white blur. The HW800 Hitman did only the former, while the C920 did only the latter.

Being able to render so much of my background when shooting out of a window is impressive; although, a filming environment like this would still be useless if you’re planning to telecommute or stream with the HW800 Hitman. The C920’s priorities are better-placed in this scenario; although, your coworkers might be curious why you’re streaming from what looks like the inside of a white void.

Build Quality of the Redragon GW800 Hitman

Build quality is where the Redragon GW800 Hitman impresses most, but its design has issues too. 

The plastic casing feels lightweight, and there are some unnecessary additions to the visual design that impact what would otherwise be a sleek image. Still, its mount is plenty configurable, its cord is long and the faux wood paneling on its metal front plate does a great job of making it look more expensive than it actually is.

While the HW800 Hitman’s cord doesn’t quite reach the lengths of the Logitech C920, it does hit about 60 inches when pulled taut, which was more than enough for me to plug it into pretty much any port on my computer. That’s not a luxury I’ve had on every webcam I’ve reviewed, and it went a long way toward building some goodwill.

As for the camera itself, almost every aspect of its design comes across as professional, but there are a few superfluous design elements that don’t mesh with everything else. That logo’s a touch extreme for me, even if I do love the rectangular body and the faux wooden lining on the metal front plate. 

There are also two LEDs in the bottom-right corner, one that’s on as long as the camera is plugged in (even when your computer is asleep) and one that only turns on when recording. I’m not sure the always-on LED is necessary, and I can see it getting annoying.

All of that could possibly be forgiven in light of the Hitman’s HW800 mobility, however. The camera itself can swivel a full 360 degrees and tilt up to 45 degrees downward. Combine that with the flexible monitor mount, and you can make for some pretty wacky shooting setups.

The monitor mount attaches snugly to the top of any monitor and also has a tripod screw slot on the bottom. Further, Redragon includes a small, foldable lip on the HW800 Hitman’s lower section that lets you easily stand the camera upright when folded completely outwards. 

This makes shooting on a table or from your desk easy and can be a boon for streamers who want to show their hands or equipment when playing. You can achieve the same effect by buying a small webcam tripod, but it can be difficult to find one that’s tall enough for every desk.

Special Features on the Redragon GW800 Hitman

The Redragon GW800 Hitman lacks special features, instead focusing purely on its mount and 1080p resolution camera. It does include a built-in microphone, which performed about as well as what you’ll find on the Logitech C920. That’s not a ringing endorsement; the microphone is prone to picking up background noise, peaks easily and tends to produce fuzzy audio. That’s not uncommon, even for webcams above $100 price, but I’d recommend using a separate microphone with the HW800 Hitman (check out our best gaming microphones page for recommendations). 

Video tended to produce the same kind of fidelity as in my above photos, but the framerate kept up with sudden movements and the artifacting was less noticeable in motion.

The HW800 Hitman also comes with a small microfiber cloth for cleaning its lens, which is a nice touch.

Bottom Line

The Redragon GW800 Hitman promises a mostly sleek image, and, in many aspects, it delivers. Its picture quality in low light is arguably better than our leading 1080p webcam, the Logitech C920, and that’s not an easy task. It’s also easy to shoot from a variety of angles with the HW800 Hitman, thanks to a flexible mount and plenty of tilting and swivel options. Plus, it tends to have little grain on its shots, which is uncommon for its $45 price.

Still, image quality lacks under what I would normally consider ideal lighting conditions and is prone to artifacting and smoothed out texture. It also completely encases my face in shadow under heavy light, which points to a problem with environments that aren’t dark in general. This is to be expected from a budget camera, but it’s a shame that Redragon couldn’t live up to its budget wizard reputation.

The quality here is still better than what we’ve found on other 1080p webcams in this price range, including some that have made our best webcams list. Colors are richer than that of the Amcrest 1080p, and there’s no fish-eye effect, like what I found on the PQ Labs webcam. The Aukey 1080p webcam generally has higher fidelity than the HW800 Hitman but also has a wide angle that might show off too much background for some.

If you work from a somewhat dark room or just need a lot of potential shooting angles, the Redragon GW800 might be a solid choice for you. Just don’t expect it to feel like it cost $80.

When it comes to the best webcams available right now, the Razer Kiyo ranks highly for its quality, built-in light and thoughtful design. And now, with this discount, there’s another reason why it's great.

For a limited time at Walmart, the Razer Kiyo is just $87, which makes it all the more appealing for anyone looking for an all-in-one option for streaming or a feature packed webcam that will make you look great on Zoom calls.

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Our own Andrew Freedman wrote a Razer Kiyo review for Laptop Mag when it launched back in 2017, and it is impressive to see how much it holds up even after a few years.

Capable of 720p at 60FPS or a FHD resolution at 30, the compact design makes this a versatile piece of kit that will slot into your setup no matter how big or small (helped by the universal screw mount for tripods on the bottom.

And of course, to stop any fuzziness of the imagery, the LED ring light keeps the picture bright and colorful.

Of course, there is a Razer Kiyo Pro available for those who can spring the two hundred bucks for it. But if you need something on the cheap that is good for streaming, the standard Kiyo offers great value for money.

Having all your telecommuting equipment in one dedicated device is an enticing promise, which is probably why ring-light equipped webcams like the Razer Kiyo exist. But as someone who still attends work meetings with a headset, even the best webcams still leave me wanting a separate microphone. That leaves demand for a proper all-in-one device, which is at least one reason why the Movo WebMic HD Pro Kickstarter hit its $15,000 goal in less than three hours when it launched earlier today.

Coming from audio equipment and smartphone recording accessory maker Movo, the WebMic HD Pro is essentially a cardioid condenser microphone (think the Blue Yeti or Razer Seiren) with a built-in 1080p @ 30 fps camera and halo ring light. There’s also a detachable stand that’s supposed to double as a handheld grip for more stable video, plus a clamp for attaching it to a monitor or laptop. 

We don't often cover Kickstarter projects, because they’re just too volatile and prone to making promises that are too big. But Movo’s a well-known company--a video journalism course I took at Columbia actually provided me with some Movo gear as part of the tuition. And given how necessary good recording equipment is right now, having a product that takes down the technical demand of managing multiple devices is appealing.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have our concerns. Chief among them: We can’t imagine it’s easy to get the most flattering angles and the best audio at the same time with this device. Normally, flattering video angles tend to come from above (hence the 'Facebook angle' meme) while the best audio comes from a microphone that’s closer to your mouth. That means you’ll probably need to compromise between the two with the WebMic HD Pro, and even in Movo’s promotional images, you see a lot of sample use cases that would result in what we lovingly call the 'nose cam' effect, which is when a webcam is placed in a way that it shoots up your nostrils.

There’s also a lack of special features on the camera itself. There are 5 options listed on the Kickstarter, though all of them only capture footage at 30 fps, only two capture in 4K, and only two have the ring light. One option even only has the microphone, which seems to go so against the concept of the device that it almost shows a lack of confidence in it.

Finally, Movo doesn’t specialize in cameras themselves, so much as camera accessories, so we worry about video quality and low-light performance.

Still, the price is right. The 1080p WebMic HD Pro with the ring light, microphone and camera currently starts at $89 to “super early bird” backers, which is the same price as the similar Razer Kiyo, but will also get you that microphone functionality. That’s listed as 47% off the normal price, which would put its typical cost closer to $168, which is still great value given the device’s supposed functionality.

It’s also likely that this is one Kickstarter project that will come to fruition since Movo is such a well-known brand. In fact, because the Kickstarter project’s goal was so low, it was most likely put out to gauge interest in and promote the WebMic HD rather than actually fund it. With that in mind, it’s not too surprising to see a promised June delivery date.

Webcams that can capture footage at 1080p and 60 frames per second can be expensive, like  the $170 Logitech StreamCam or $200 Razer Kiyo Pro. There’s good reason for that, since 60 fps is a niche feature that’s best paired alongside video game footage. Unless you’re a game streamer, you probably won’t need it. But game streaming is also getting more accessible than ever from a technical standpoint, which is why budget 60 fps cameras like AverMedia’s new PW315 webcam are so enticing.

Coming in at $119, the AverMedia is still more expensive than 30 fps alternatives, but it does veer much closer to casual-use cameras like the Logitech C920 than other, more professional-focused 60 fps options. It also works well across lighting scenarios and comes with some cute though only somewhat useful post processing software. However, the camera’s image quality seems to have taken a hit along with its price.

Well-Lit Room 

Logitech C920 

Razer Kiyo Pro 

AverMedia PW315 Webcam 

I tested the AverMedia PW315 in a well-lit room alongside both the $79 Logitech C920 and the $200 Razer Kiyo Pro, and it’s in this scenario where the camera disappointed me most. While its 95-degree lens captured more of my background than either competitor (and without the fish eye effect present on the Kiyo Pro’s wide angle options), the AverMedia was the only camera to show grain in my room’s standard, most optimal lighting conditions. While photos taken with it look OK shrunken down or from a distance, zooming in shows heavy pixelation, to such a degree that I’d forgive you for thinking you’re looking at a 720p picture. 

That’s a shame, because the AverMedia webcam is also one of the few webcams I’ve tested to have almost perfect color accuracy out of the box. Unlike the C920, my skin doesn’t look cooler than usual, and unlike the Kiyo Pro, it doesn’t look warmer either. But then again, lower image quality tends to make everyone look better.

Low Light Room 

Logitech C920 

Razer Kiyo Pro

AverMedia PW315 Webcam 

I also tested the AverMedia PW315 in mid-day with my curtains drawn, my door shut and all artificial light sources turned off except for my monitor. The result? It looked better! Unlike the Logitech C920, which introduces some blur and takes a slight hit to image quality in low light, the AverMedia’s picture quality looks relatively unchanged. But in addition, my face looks brighter despite having fewer light sources, and colors look even more pleasing to the eye than before.

By contrast, the Razer Kiyo Pro presents a more true-to-life picture that better resembles what the light in my room actually looked like to my naked eyes when taking shots. Picture quality is still far ahead of either competitor, but if you want your dark rooms to look more well-lit than they actually are, the AverMedia seems to do that well.

It’s a shame that its grain persisted here, too.

Overexposed Room 

Logitech C920 webcam 

Razer Kiyo Pro Webcam

AverMedia PW315 Webcam 

Finally, I tested the AverMedia PW315 in an overexposed room, where I pointed my camera directly at my window. I normally don’t expect accurate shots from this situation, and instead use it to see how well each camera responds to heavily lit situations. For instance, you can see some of the Kiyo Pro’s light sensor technology at work in its overexposed shot, as it shows more of the world outside my window than any other camera here, albeit at the expense of seeing my face..

The AverMedia shocked me, however, by being the only of the three cameras to accurately show my face in overexposed conditions. As with my low light photos, I arguably look better here. By contrast, I have so much shadow covering my face in the Logitech and Razer photos that I almost appear demonic.

Yes, the AverMedia’s grain is still present in these shots, but it doesn’t really matter. It was the only camera to give me anything usable in such heavy light.

Build Quality of the AverMedia PW315 

The AverMedia PW315 has a thin, cylindrical design that feels lightweight and inexpensive but offers plenty of customizability when it comes to camera placement. The camera can tilt both up and down and swivel 360 degrees. There’s a hole on the bottom of its monitor mount to attach it to a tripod, and it fits snugly whether placing it on a monitor or a tripod. Its USB Type-A cord is 56.5 inches long, which also gave me plenty of room to attach it to either a front or rear port on my desktop. 

The AverMedia PW315 also had a built-in sliding privacy shutter, plus dual microphones that tend to produce loud but tinny and echo-filled audio.

As with most webcams, there’s also an LED that lights up on the AverMedia PW315 when it’s recording.

Special Features on the AverMedia PW315 

The AverMedia PW315 webcam is a color accurate webcam that’s resilient to both high and low light environments but suffers in quality more than I’d expect from its $119 price point. But special features is where this webcam makes its best argument for itself. Unlike most 60 fps webcams, which range from $50-80 more expensive than the AverMedia PW315, this camera can capture high frame rate footage on a budget. 

And to the PW315’s credit, those claims held out in my testing. When I navigated to OBS, turned on 60 fps recording, and took a video, I could easily see the clear uptick in frame rate without even trying. The video also only took up 20 more MB on my hard drive than a normal 30 fps video, and the extra frames helped counterbalance the lack of image quality, since the camera’s footage tended to look best in motion.

The AverMedia PW315’s other special feature is compatibility with AverMedia’s CamEngine software. You can use CamEngine to adjust your photos’ brightness, gamma and other settings, though most of these functions are available in other software like OBS and produce similar results there as well. 

But a facet of CamEngine that’s unique to the AverMedia PW315 is the ability to turn on AI framing, which attempts to follow you around as you move similar to the auto frame feature in Nvidia Broadcast. It’s an impressive utility, but I found it to be too slow and chunky for regular use. Slightly more useful is the ability to adjust the frame and zoom manually, although it’s possible to easily end up with negative space in your photos if you’re not careful. 

CamEngine also has a number of cute, Snapchat-esque virtual masks you can place over your face. The face tracking works surprisingly well here, even following you when you turn your head to the side, although there’s no real reason to use this over Snapchat’s free and more versatile software. 

Bottom Line 

AverMedia’s well known for its capture cards, and with products like the AverMedia PW315, it’s clear that the company has ambitions of moving beyond components and into peripherals, though that’s a far more crowded space. It’s going to have to step up image quality if it wants to compete with the best webcams.

There are some unique positives to the AverMedia PW315. It’s one of the cheaper 1080p @ 60 fps webcams from a known manufacturer on the market, and it’s resilient to both low light and overexposed environments. Its software also gives it a touch more customizability than your typical webcam, although much of its usability is perfunctory.

But its images are also grainy and heavily pixelated. It’s a problem for a $119 camera to have such drastically lower quality than a $79 competitor, especially when its 60 fps selling point is so niche. If you’re looking for a good casual use webcam and are confident with your room’s lighting, you can do better for cheaper. Meanwhile, if you want to stream at 60 fps, it might be worth spending the extra $80 on something like the Razer Kiyo Pro or Logitech Brio 4K to give your audience a more pleasant viewing experience. 

AverMedia is known for its capture cards and streaming peripherals, but that hasn’t stopped the company from branching out into more mainstream products during the pandemic. While classic mainstays like the Logitech C920 are starting to come back into stock, the webcam market has exploded with new competitors during the telecommuting boom, making it an ideal time for companies like AverMedia to expand their audience to the casual crowd.

At $79.99, the new 1080p @ 30fps AverMedia PW310P costs as much as more well-known competitors. While it offers some extra utility through a free app and a slightly more adjustable physical build, its image quality is lacking compared to the best webcams. 

 Well-Lit Room

Logitech C920

AverMedia PW310 Webcam 

I tested the AverMedia PW310P at midday in my home office with what I would consider my normal lighting arrangement. What I got was a slightly blurry image with harsh shadows that hid much of my shot’s detail. Colors were accurate enough, neither too cold nor too warm, although the sharp way that the webcam responded to my lighting hid much of them. However, while my face and body had less detail in shots taken with the AverMedia PW310, I noticed that certain background elements that appeared washed out in the Logitech C920 were more clear on AverMedia’s webcam. Take a look at my Charmander plush by the window.

The 78 degree viewing angle, meanwhile, accentuated my face but still showed enough of my background to get my nerd cred across. 

Low Light Room 

Logitech C920 

AverMedia PW310P Webcam 

I also tested the AverMedia PW310P in a low light environment, where I lowered my curtain around midday, shut my door and turned off all light sources except for my computer monitor. Here, it looked to me like I lost quality and introduced more blur to my photos, but also gained a more consistently lit, less overly sharp image. My Logitech C920 compensated for the low light more than the PW310P, leaving the AverMedia photo looking dim by comparison. However, that true-to-life shot might be more preferable for some. Again, while my face had less detail, certain background elements looked less washed out on AverMedia’s webcam than on the Logitech.

Overexposed Room 

Logitech C920 webcam 

AverMedia PW310 Webcam 

Finally, I tested the AverMedia webcam in overexposed conditions, where I pointed the webcam directly at my window. I don’t expect perfect accuracy from these shots, but it is a helpful way to see how a camera might adjust to heavy light saturation.

Unfortunately, the AverMedia’s shots were unusable here. While I was impressed by how much of the world outside my window I could see- many webcams simply display a sheet of white in these conditions, my face was completely bathed in shadow. Meanwhile, while the Logitech C920 didn’t perfectly preserve my facial details, you can still see more than the silhouettes of my facial features.

Build Quality of the AverMedia PW310 

The AverMedia PW310P has a basic, unpretentious design that offers plenty of camera placement options despite feeling inexpensive in the hand. The camera can tilt up and down as well as swivel a complete 360 degrees. There’s a built-in sliding privacy shutter, plus a hole on the monitor mount so that you can place the webcam on either a monitor or a tripod. It will fit snugly on either. 

The PW310P’s USB Type-A cord is longer than 60 inches, so you’ll also have plenty of length to connect it to just about any port on your device.  

Like most webcams, the AverMedia PW310P also has an LED on its front that lights up to indicate when it’s recording. The webcam’s dual microphone also produces a loud and clear though somewhat echoey sound profile that should work just fine for casual meetings.

Special Features 

Like its big brother, the $119 AverMedia PW315 webcam, the AverMedia PW310 can also access AverMedia’s free CamEngine software. 

Here, you’ll find standard post processing effects that are available in other free programs like OBS and XSplit, such as adjusting the camera’s brightness and contrast. Unfortunately, unlike with the AverMedia PW315, the PW310P does not have an AI Framing feature here, which would have allowed it to automatically adjust your camera’s frame and zoom similar to Nvidia Broadcast. It does retain the cute, Snapchat-esque virtual masks that are also an option on the PW315. These followed my face well, even when I turned to the side, but the small selection has me wondering why I would use CamEngine over Snapchat’s more versatile and also free software. 

Bottom Line 

The AverMedia PW310P would make a perfect budget webcam, if it were actually priced to be budget. Its image quality isn’t quite up to that of long-time mainstays like the Logitech C920, but it’s also nothing to be embarrassed of in calls. Its ability to swivel 360 degrees also puts it above the C920 in maneuverability, and it even has a decent microphone, which is rare for a webcam.

It’s a shame, then, that it’s priced at $79.99. While it mostly stands up to the C920, that drop in image quality is still plenty noticeable. Certain background elements might look clearer on the PW310P, but the face is what matters in video calls, which is the priority use case for this camera’s casual audience. Meanwhile, the CamEngine software doesn’t give you anything on the PW310P that you won’t find (better) elsewhere.

If the PW310P were even $15 cheaper, it would be easier to recommend. I’ve certainly cautiously approved of worse cameras in that price range. But with C920 stock stabilizing as we get deeper into 2021, there’s little reason to buy a PW310P over Logitech’s more tried-and-true 1080p staple.