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I bought a £37 webcam from Amazon, the VSport Webcam 1080P with Microphone, Autofocus 5 Megapixel Full HD Computer Camera
it was awful, hardly any colour and shoddy. So I immediately sent it back and Amazon refunded me even before I'd posted it at the post-office (for free)
I then bought the Fusion5 Full HD Webcam with Microphone for £42 and it is really good. Great HD picture and well made.
Morale of the story: the bottom end of the market is a variable feast with no-name manufacturers either making something really great, or a pile of toss. And they all hang in on the lower price point EG £30.
As soon as you climb off the bottom rung, or take a named-brand (Logitech) and get above £50, I think you can be confident.
Quite why amateur webcam-ers spend £100 is beyond me. If you film for a living, then maybe, but even then I'd buy a Go-Pro.
it was awful, hardly any colour and shoddy. So I immediately sent it back and Amazon refunded me even before I'd posted it at the post-office (for free)
I then bought the Fusion5 Full HD Webcam with Microphone for £42 and it is really good. Great HD picture and well made.
Morale of the story: the bottom end of the market is a variable feast with no-name manufacturers either making something really great, or a pile of toss. And they all hang in on the lower price point EG £30.
As soon as you climb off the bottom rung, or take a named-brand (Logitech) and get above £50, I think you can be confident.
Quite why amateur webcam-ers spend £100 is beyond me. If you film for a living, then maybe, but even then I'd buy a Go-Pro.
Scrump said:
I recently bought a Logitech c270i from Argos for £25 and it is fine for Teams calls from home office. It is an improvement on the laptop built in webcam according to my colleagues.
I have never tried a more expensive webcam to know what I am missing.
The c270i is now £54 on AmazonI have never tried a more expensive webcam to know what I am missing.
And even though its still listed at £25 with Argos, it's sold out everywhere
damn you SARS-CoV-2
Edited by The_Doc on Tuesday 14th July 15:46
The_Doc said:
Scrump said:
I recently bought a Logitech c270i from Argos for £25 and it is fine for Teams calls from home office. It is an improvement on the laptop built in webcam according to my colleagues.
I have never tried a more expensive webcam to know what I am missing.
The c270i is now £54 on AmazonI have never tried a more expensive webcam to know what I am missing.
And even though its still listed at £25 with Argos, it's sold out everywhere
damn you SARS-CoV-2
Edited by The_Doc on Tuesday 14th July 15:46
ash73 said:
Biggest difference is lighting, rather than the camera.
https://blog.flock.com/6-tips-for-proper-workspace...
You're absolutely right, I see some horrendous non-efforts in making onscreen appearance acceptable.https://blog.flock.com/6-tips-for-proper-workspace...
One chap last week was sat at his patio, which was good for the first 40 mins, lots of light, but by the end of the meeting he was in pitch black.
I bought a little 4K GoPro clone off Amazon, which can also work as a webcam. It's OK, nowhere near the quality of an actual GoPro, but for £40 I'm not complaining.
When it's not doing webcam duties I've been strapping it to the underneath of my car to see which bushes need replacing
When it's not doing webcam duties I've been strapping it to the underneath of my car to see which bushes need replacing
I use a webcam a lot. I have used both the Logitech c270i and the 930e in both my home office and a meeting room in our office. Though the c270i is fine for occasional use, I believe the 930 is much better, and justifies the cost. The primary difference being the picture quality, light balance, and field of view. In the office, the 930 has a wider aspect, meaning that most people in the meeting room can be seen at once. At home (where I am closer to the camera), the 270 is too close (mounted to one of my monitors), so my head is much bigger in the screen, where as the 930 is much more natural.
As a result, we have demoted the c270 to a spare, and replaced with a 930e, and bought more for other staff members.
We saw exactly the same with a client meeting room, and they have subsequently moved to a 930e and are very happy. I have also heard similar reports elsewhere.
So for us, the additional cost of the 930e has been well worth it and (as long as they remain available) we will continue to buy these for work use.
At the start of lockdown, when everybody had sold out, we managed to pick up 2 further 930e's from ebay for £40 each. May be worth a look, though I did check a few weeks later, and they were selling for silly money.
As a result, we have demoted the c270 to a spare, and replaced with a 930e, and bought more for other staff members.
We saw exactly the same with a client meeting room, and they have subsequently moved to a 930e and are very happy. I have also heard similar reports elsewhere.
So for us, the additional cost of the 930e has been well worth it and (as long as they remain available) we will continue to buy these for work use.
At the start of lockdown, when everybody had sold out, we managed to pick up 2 further 930e's from ebay for £40 each. May be worth a look, though I did check a few weeks later, and they were selling for silly money.
Having been unable to find any webcams on sale at the start of lockdown, I've been using DroidCam on my phone instead. It uses the phone as a wireless camera and mic linked to an app running on the PC. Basic version is free but I liked it so much I paid the fiver or so for the full version which lets me zoom and rotate the image. It's a bit more faff than a webcam as you have to open the software on both phone and PC every time, and I had to buy a clamp to hold the phone, but it cost next to nothing and gives me a better picture quality than any home user webcam I've used
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