The Art of Choosing a Good Webcam: A Guide to Surpassing Your Expectations

When it comes to webcams, many people assume that the higher the price, the better the quality. However, this is not always the case. In fact, the anchor's experience with various webcams has shown him that you can't judge a book by its cover. One of his favorite webcams is an outstanding example of this. It's not the most expensive or glamorous camera, but it produces exceptional results.

The anchor's first webcam is a budget-friendly option that he's very pleased with. It may not have all the bells and whistles, but it takes whatever he throws at it and makes a great image out of it. The last camera we want to show you is the Ozbot Tiny. This 1080p version is less expensive than the 4K version, and the anchor finds that 1080p is more than enough for framing and zooming.

The Ozbot Tiny's image sensor and lens are mounted on a gimbal, which allows it to frame its subject in a unique way. The camera can also move electronically around the image, allowing for subtle adjustments to framing and focus. In addition, the Ozbot Tiny has two times optical zoom, although this is not entirely clear from the description.

The camera's gesture recognition feature is another interesting aspect of the Ozbot Tiny. When the anchor makes a specific gesture with his hand, the camera blinks a sequence of lights, indicating that it has centered on him. However, as the anchor noted, this feature can be somewhat distracting and may not be useful in most situations.

One of the key features of good webcams is their ability to handle poor lighting conditions. When using a webcam, you often find yourself dealing with harsh overhead lighting or lackluster ambient light. A great camera should be able to adjust to these conditions and produce a natural color rendition. The anchor has found that this is one of the most important factors when choosing a webcam.

Another crucial aspect of a good webcam is its ability to focus automatically. This feature can make a huge difference in image quality, as it allows the camera to quickly adjust its focus to ensure a sharp and clear picture. Most webcams handle autofocus quite well, although the anchor noted that some may require more fine-tuning than others.

The final aspect of a good webcam is its ability to follow the user's movement. This feature is most useful for presenters who need to move around while speaking or presenting. The Ozbot Tiny has this feature in spades, thanks to its motorized gimbal and ability to adjust its position automatically. When the anchor walks across the room, the camera follows him seamlessly, making it an ideal choice for lectures, presentations, and other situations where mobility is key.

However, when sitting at a desk, this feature becomes less useful, and the Ozbot Tiny's performance is similar to that of other webcams in its price range. When using the camera in this way, the anchor noted that 4K resolution may be more than necessary for framing and cropping, as the image sensor can produce high-quality results at lower resolutions.

Finally, it's worth noting that good webcams should also have a simple and foolproof mechanism for adjusting their focus or privacy settings. This feature is essential for maintaining user comfort and security when using a webcam in a public setting. In conclusion, the key to choosing a great webcam lies not in its price tag or resolution, but rather in its ability to handle poor lighting conditions, autofocus, and tracking capabilities.

A great camera will also have an auto-focus feature that can help to ensure sharp images. Most of these webcams do this well, although some may need more fine-tuning than others. Another aspect that's worth considering is the automatic tracking feature, which can be useful for presenters who don't move around much while speaking or presenting.

However, it's also important to note that facial recognition features like Windows Hello are not always necessary and should be considered with caution when choosing a webcam.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entrust me you need a better webcam than the one built into the lid of your laptop we all do i've brought along four that i've been using lately no particular science to my selection but there are four that appealed to me in the market and that i've been using in my own everyday work by looking at all of them and what they do well and not so well you're going to become an expert webcam buyer we're going to learn about their resolution how they handle color and light you've seen how bad that can be on your webcam i'm sure and some special tricks that each one does the first one i want to show you is this barrel shaped one this is the dell ultra sharp 4k it's the newest of the ones i have here as of top of 22. dell you don't think of them as a webcam or peripheral companies so much they make computers right but this one they're making a very big deal of is being exceedingly high quality and really aimed at the business crowd i can tell you the build quality of the thing is fantastic it's this lovely made from aluminum anodized metal work of art the dell camera is a 4k camera in terms of resolution we'll see how it uses that in a moment the sensor is big 8.3 megapixel it has 5x digital zoom and a field of view wide or narrow that can run the gamut because as you may have noticed it's automatically sort of framing and following me it tends to think a bit it kind of buffers its decision i'm too close it should zoom out there we go and if i move way off frame let's see what happens can it get me over there yeah not bad it's a little slow to get it once you realize its pacing is kind of leisurely you don't worry about it anymore but it's also not jerky which is great it's a nice smooth move that doesn't unduly grab someone's attention what it's doing is taking that 4k resolution and not necessarily sending that to zoom instead it's working inside that big 4k frame and finding the best hd subsection of it to center on it's cropping basically this is a digital zoom technique that all kinds of imaging devices do but the dell's using it to stay centered and properly framed around me as opposed to another camera we're gonna see that does that mechanically a couple other interesting features here that have to do with facial and sound recognition there is no microphone in this dell camera that's very unusual for a webcam on the other hand it does have support for windows hello which means you can log on to your windows computer just by looking at the thing once you set that up oh by the way of the four cameras i have here today that's the only one that doesn't work with a mac you might expect that from a huge maker of windows computers for privacy the dell's pretty old school the lens cap is a big old magnetic thing you just clip on the front or remove and when you're not using it you can store it on the back i'm a little afraid it's going to get lost okay so the dell has taught us our first key learning 4k is not about necessarily the same thing it means when you're watching a movie on television it's typically best used by a webcam to have a large image that it can work a piece of to get the best framing or to follow you as you move around in the overall image next up is the logitech brio and lots of you will know this camera this has kind of been the gold standard go-to quality webcam during the whole pandemic era it's a pandemic peripheral early on in the pandemic you couldn't find one of these things and if you did they were like marked up to two or three times their list price not the case anymore it's an impressive camera on paper also a 4k unit with a 13 megapixel sensor the largest one i'm showing today again 5x zoom but it's done digitally it doesn't have any moving lens elements like the dell it has hdr to really bring dark and light things together in the scene stereo microphones are built in which can also be used for noise canceling and it also supports that windows hello login trick for privacy it includes this really clunky clip-on plastic shutter that was just so bad i never used it in fact i lost it so i can't even show it to you in sum there's no particular trick that the logitech does it's my classic sort of standard solid good quality webcam with not any particular bells and whistles except 4k resolution i do find its images a little soft compared to the other three cameras all of which by the way are newer now looking just like the brio right next to it is the anker powerconf c300 conferencing camera you can tell they're going after the brio's market i mean the shape says i'm like a brio it's got an integrated little sliding shutter for privacy that i like a lot it's easy to flick back and forth now for its lower 130 list price you give up one thing right off the bat no 4k resolution this is a 1080 hd camera max now as a result it has a less powerful ability to reframe without losing resolution and getting pixelated when you only have 1080 to work with you have much less of a canvas if you will however it does have a little trick where it will notice if there are two people in the frame and reframe to get both heads in there i'm not getting that close to anybody during covid so i haven't tried it now anchor raves with their c300 has really good low light ability and really good color balancing techniques built in and i have found that's generally true this camera in my experience needs very little if any fussing with your lights to pull a good image out of almost wherever you're sitting and if you really want a wide angle camera this is the widest one i've got this will go to a full 115 degree field of view that's the widest any of these four can get to regardless of where they are in their various zooms the lesson that the anchor teaches us is that you can't judge a book by its cover it's not the highest price camera in fact it's the least expensive i've got here it's not the most glamorous name it's not 4k and yet it's an outstanding webcam that i find takes whatever i throw at it and makes a good image out of it and all bells and whistles aside that's really what i get from it and am quite pleased the last camera i want to show you is the osbot tiny this is a 1080 version they also have a 4k version but i've got the less expensive one and i find 1080 is ample for this camera because it doesn't need 4k for framing because if you'll notice the image sensor and the lens sit on a gimbal and that's how it does its framing plus it has 2x zoom i believe it's optical zoom but i'm not entirely sure so it does electromechanically what the other cameras here try to do digitally moving around in the image it just moves its sensor around and speaking of that it does that sometimes in response to gestures for example to frame it up and get it named right at me i put my hand up just like this open hand and it blinks a certain sequence of lights and now i know it's centered right on me now let's say i want to zoom in you make this little l sign right here and boom now i'm zoomed all the way in you want to zoom out you do that again and i'm all the way back out kind of slick here's the problem kind of useless in what meeting are you going to sit there and say i got to recenter my camera and do this you know what's going to happen yeah brian you got a comment oh no i was just gesturing to my camera okay dork or if you want to zoom in for a minute and do this it's either going to be really distracting or in italy it's a dirty joke so i don't see where the gesture stuff is really going to make any difference i prefer to use the osbot app and i can do all the same stuff and a lot more and no one sees me doing this stuff on camera now watch how aggressively the ozbot can follow me if i'll get out of my chair here on the set and just move around and you'll see it does what no other camera here can do because it has that motorized gimbal it can follow me all over the room no other camera here is doing that even the dell quickly runs out of pan room within its 4k sensor while the osbot can follow you like around a stage if you're lecturing or something that gives it a unique ability but when you're sitting at your desk this ability is not useful so it's not meaningfully different than the dell for the average sit-down presentation but if you're walking around there's nothing like it for that and when you want privacy out of the osbot it's a very positive physical thing nothing to lose you just reach out and turn the sensor down you just aim it down straight down at itself and it turns itself off so in sum the most important feature i think in a webcam is its ability to even out bad lighting look for that and for an hdr feature to get there 4k is probably best for cropping and framing not to literally send 4k quality out over the internet cameras that follow you all over mostly useful if you're doing a ted talk or a lecture a little zoom goes a long way and you typically only use it when you're setting up your camera and finally your webcam is probably aimed at you all day get one that has a simple foolproof privacy mechanism okay so what we learned here is that image quality is the most important thing about a webcam and you can't judge it on specs let alone on brand you just have to buy these cameras from some place where you can return them and try it out but a great camera is going to do two things it's going to be able to handle whatever light you've got and adjust to it really well and it's going to be able to get the color rendition nice and natural that's the biggest single thing the auto focus is a close second and most of these handle that very well and then third is going to be things like automatic tracking most of us don't move around in our seat that much and going a little further down the list might be things like being able to log in with windows hello facial recognition so unfortunately the key here is you've got to try cameras to know how good they are but the key other learning is you don't have to spend a lot of money necessarily and you don't necessarily need 4k resolution eithertrust me you need a better webcam than the one built into the lid of your laptop we all do i've brought along four that i've been using lately no particular science to my selection but there are four that appealed to me in the market and that i've been using in my own everyday work by looking at all of them and what they do well and not so well you're going to become an expert webcam buyer we're going to learn about their resolution how they handle color and light you've seen how bad that can be on your webcam i'm sure and some special tricks that each one does the first one i want to show you is this barrel shaped one this is the dell ultra sharp 4k it's the newest of the ones i have here as of top of 22. dell you don't think of them as a webcam or peripheral companies so much they make computers right but this one they're making a very big deal of is being exceedingly high quality and really aimed at the business crowd i can tell you the build quality of the thing is fantastic it's this lovely made from aluminum anodized metal work of art the dell camera is a 4k camera in terms of resolution we'll see how it uses that in a moment the sensor is big 8.3 megapixel it has 5x digital zoom and a field of view wide or narrow that can run the gamut because as you may have noticed it's automatically sort of framing and following me it tends to think a bit it kind of buffers its decision i'm too close it should zoom out there we go and if i move way off frame let's see what happens can it get me over there yeah not bad it's a little slow to get it once you realize its pacing is kind of leisurely you don't worry about it anymore but it's also not jerky which is great it's a nice smooth move that doesn't unduly grab someone's attention what it's doing is taking that 4k resolution and not necessarily sending that to zoom instead it's working inside that big 4k frame and finding the best hd subsection of it to center on it's cropping basically this is a digital zoom technique that all kinds of imaging devices do but the dell's using it to stay centered and properly framed around me as opposed to another camera we're gonna see that does that mechanically a couple other interesting features here that have to do with facial and sound recognition there is no microphone in this dell camera that's very unusual for a webcam on the other hand it does have support for windows hello which means you can log on to your windows computer just by looking at the thing once you set that up oh by the way of the four cameras i have here today that's the only one that doesn't work with a mac you might expect that from a huge maker of windows computers for privacy the dell's pretty old school the lens cap is a big old magnetic thing you just clip on the front or remove and when you're not using it you can store it on the back i'm a little afraid it's going to get lost okay so the dell has taught us our first key learning 4k is not about necessarily the same thing it means when you're watching a movie on television it's typically best used by a webcam to have a large image that it can work a piece of to get the best framing or to follow you as you move around in the overall image next up is the logitech brio and lots of you will know this camera this has kind of been the gold standard go-to quality webcam during the whole pandemic era it's a pandemic peripheral early on in the pandemic you couldn't find one of these things and if you did they were like marked up to two or three times their list price not the case anymore it's an impressive camera on paper also a 4k unit with a 13 megapixel sensor the largest one i'm showing today again 5x zoom but it's done digitally it doesn't have any moving lens elements like the dell it has hdr to really bring dark and light things together in the scene stereo microphones are built in which can also be used for noise canceling and it also supports that windows hello login trick for privacy it includes this really clunky clip-on plastic shutter that was just so bad i never used it in fact i lost it so i can't even show it to you in sum there's no particular trick that the logitech does it's my classic sort of standard solid good quality webcam with not any particular bells and whistles except 4k resolution i do find its images a little soft compared to the other three cameras all of which by the way are newer now looking just like the brio right next to it is the anker powerconf c300 conferencing camera you can tell they're going after the brio's market i mean the shape says i'm like a brio it's got an integrated little sliding shutter for privacy that i like a lot it's easy to flick back and forth now for its lower 130 list price you give up one thing right off the bat no 4k resolution this is a 1080 hd camera max now as a result it has a less powerful ability to reframe without losing resolution and getting pixelated when you only have 1080 to work with you have much less of a canvas if you will however it does have a little trick where it will notice if there are two people in the frame and reframe to get both heads in there i'm not getting that close to anybody during covid so i haven't tried it now anchor raves with their c300 has really good low light ability and really good color balancing techniques built in and i have found that's generally true this camera in my experience needs very little if any fussing with your lights to pull a good image out of almost wherever you're sitting and if you really want a wide angle camera this is the widest one i've got this will go to a full 115 degree field of view that's the widest any of these four can get to regardless of where they are in their various zooms the lesson that the anchor teaches us is that you can't judge a book by its cover it's not the highest price camera in fact it's the least expensive i've got here it's not the most glamorous name it's not 4k and yet it's an outstanding webcam that i find takes whatever i throw at it and makes a good image out of it and all bells and whistles aside that's really what i get from it and am quite pleased the last camera i want to show you is the osbot tiny this is a 1080 version they also have a 4k version but i've got the less expensive one and i find 1080 is ample for this camera because it doesn't need 4k for framing because if you'll notice the image sensor and the lens sit on a gimbal and that's how it does its framing plus it has 2x zoom i believe it's optical zoom but i'm not entirely sure so it does electromechanically what the other cameras here try to do digitally moving around in the image it just moves its sensor around and speaking of that it does that sometimes in response to gestures for example to frame it up and get it named right at me i put my hand up just like this open hand and it blinks a certain sequence of lights and now i know it's centered right on me now let's say i want to zoom in you make this little l sign right here and boom now i'm zoomed all the way in you want to zoom out you do that again and i'm all the way back out kind of slick here's the problem kind of useless in what meeting are you going to sit there and say i got to recenter my camera and do this you know what's going to happen yeah brian you got a comment oh no i was just gesturing to my camera okay dork or if you want to zoom in for a minute and do this it's either going to be really distracting or in italy it's a dirty joke so i don't see where the gesture stuff is really going to make any difference i prefer to use the osbot app and i can do all the same stuff and a lot more and no one sees me doing this stuff on camera now watch how aggressively the ozbot can follow me if i'll get out of my chair here on the set and just move around and you'll see it does what no other camera here can do because it has that motorized gimbal it can follow me all over the room no other camera here is doing that even the dell quickly runs out of pan room within its 4k sensor while the osbot can follow you like around a stage if you're lecturing or something that gives it a unique ability but when you're sitting at your desk this ability is not useful so it's not meaningfully different than the dell for the average sit-down presentation but if you're walking around there's nothing like it for that and when you want privacy out of the osbot it's a very positive physical thing nothing to lose you just reach out and turn the sensor down you just aim it down straight down at itself and it turns itself off so in sum the most important feature i think in a webcam is its ability to even out bad lighting look for that and for an hdr feature to get there 4k is probably best for cropping and framing not to literally send 4k quality out over the internet cameras that follow you all over mostly useful if you're doing a ted talk or a lecture a little zoom goes a long way and you typically only use it when you're setting up your camera and finally your webcam is probably aimed at you all day get one that has a simple foolproof privacy mechanism okay so what we learned here is that image quality is the most important thing about a webcam and you can't judge it on specs let alone on brand you just have to buy these cameras from some place where you can return them and try it out but a great camera is going to do two things it's going to be able to handle whatever light you've got and adjust to it really well and it's going to be able to get the color rendition nice and natural that's the biggest single thing the auto focus is a close second and most of these handle that very well and then third is going to be things like automatic tracking most of us don't move around in our seat that much and going a little further down the list might be things like being able to log in with windows hello facial recognition so unfortunately the key here is you've got to try cameras to know how good they are but the key other learning is you don't have to spend a lot of money necessarily and you don't necessarily need 4k resolution either\n"