Logitech recently released the follow up to their incredibly popular C920 Webcam called the C922.
and it's got some very notable features specifically 720P at 60 FPS and automatic background removal.
But are these features are big enough deal to wore an upgrade. We're gonna find out in this review.
As for review disclosures, NO THIS IS NOT A SPONSOR VIDEO, I bought this webcam myself and if you wanna check it out
There's a link down the description and it's an Amazon link which helped me to fund the purchase of future products to review.
So why don't we go over the specs of this camera which are certainly impressive.
First of all, you have got a 1080P at 30 FPS and 720P at 60 FPS and both uses h264 compression.
Another Flagship feature is the automatic background removal which uses Personify software to separate you from the background through image analysis.
So you don't necessarily after get a green screen.
Ofcourse we are gonna look at how well that works later.
First of all we talk about the build quality.
This definitely does feel like a quality product.
It's mostly plastic but it still
feels sturdy and all the hinges and joints moving very smoothly.
And there are actually three different hinges on here
here for adjustment 12 till the camera
up and down one on the body to latch it
onto your monitor and a third segment
that allows you to adjust the angle of
the bottom segment to fit flush with
your monitor and there's also a screw
mount on the bottom in case you wanted
to mount it to a tripod. Next let's talk
about the video quality which is
arguably the most important part. I found
the video quality to be quite excellent
especially for a webcam. At 1080p it's
surprisingly sharp and has very little
noise in normal lighting conditions and
it looks especially good if you turn up
the sharpness a little bit higher than
what comes default. Even in suboptimal
lighting conditions I found the noise to
be almost unnoticeable. Also unlike its
predecessor this webcam seems to be able
to easily hold a constant 30fps. Now it's
720p things get a little bit interesting.
The 60fps is nice but there are a couple
things I noticed about the video. At 60
FPS the video appears to be much less
sharp but not just as a consequence of
the lower resolution. Everything just
looks much more smooth doubt with a lot
less detail and this only happens at
720p and only when 60fps is enabled now
when it's 30.
I had to guess here it appears like the
camera is applying a very strong noise
reduction. This would make sense because
at 60fps that means it's half the
shutter speed therefore getting half the
amount of light into the camera which
means there would be double the amount
of image noise normally but the point of
noise reduction filters in any camera is
to reduce the image noise at the cost of
detail and that's what appears to be
happening here because there is a
noticeable lack of noise where they're
certainly should be.
However I found no way to remove this
effect even in excellent lighting and
cranking up the sharpness doesn't do
anything in this case because the detail
is already gone.
I appreciate the noise reduction but I
think it's very stupid to not be able to
disable it especially in cases where we
are able to provide adequate lighting.
and now I actually think the noise reduction
effect looks worse than what the noise
would be which really undermines the
video quality at 60fps. Now besides all
that another interesting thing I found
about this webcam is it's not just
limited to 1080p it actually does 2503 x
1536 resolution although at a reduced
framerate. The C922 also offers a lot
of customizability in the image settings
include standard settings such as
brightness contrast and sharpness but
unlike the razor stargazer which i
recently reviewed it does allow for
manual focus and the manual exposure
setting actually works and doesn't
unnecessarily drop the frame rate. Though
it does have a setting called low-light
compensation which will lower the frame
rate if it needs to to properly expose
the image so keep that in mind if you're
using 720p at 60 FPS you might want to
disable that or it will defeat the
purpose of using 60fps. Now let's talk
about the other big feature that the
C922 to has which is automatic
background removal this is very similar
feature to what the razor stargazer has
but it is implemented in a different way.
what the C922 actually use a
software called personify which analyzes
the image and use contrast and just
recognizing shapes to separate you from
the background
whereas the razor stargazer uses Intel's
REALSENSE to detect depth and separate
that way. Now I got a lot of mixed
results with this if you have a very
busy and messy background it's going to
have a lot of trouble i found it often
cutting off my arms especially if they
were moving in front of
thing and it also has the tendency to
insert a lot of stationery stuff from
the background and think it's part of
you
however in front of a more simple
background obviously it is significantly
improved it's still not great keeps
cutting off part of my head for example
but at least it can outline the general
shape of my body i should also note that
this feature only works at 720p and
below but the nice thing about the
personify software is it outputs the
process video to a virtual video device
so you can use it with any software
right out-of-the-box OBS exploit all of
those without that software needing to
implement new features to support it
my main issue with this background
removal is very similar to raise his
webcam the edges look jaggi they don't
look very good although it does appear
to have better anti-aliasing an intel
realsense with the razor but i would
like to see them at a feature that
allows us to adjust the mask settings so
for example we can change how the edges
look so the background removal is a nice
feature to have but it's still just
looks like a really crappy green screen
so i would actually think you're better
off just using a regular square webcam
view or if you really want background
removal just get a green screen
next let's quickly go over the
microphone which as you would expect
from a webcam it's not very good
it's not horrible if you have nothing
else and I actually think it is a little
bit better than the razor stargazer
microphone because it doesn't sound as
hollow let me give you a quick sample so
you can hear it
this is a microphone test for the c920
to hopefully it sounds pretty good we're
not too much background noise you guys
can decide for yourself so you can make
up your own decision but I would still
say if you want proper audio you're
gonna have to go with an external
microphone
finally I should mention that there are
actually two options for when you go to
buy this webcam there's the c920 to and
the c920 2x it's the same exact webcam
they just come with different things in
the box
the c920 to includes the webcam a
three-month xsplit premium license and a
mini tripod
where's the c920 2x does not include the
mini tripod but rather includes a
six-month xsplit premium license so
that's just something to keep in mind so
let's sum this up
overall I'm very happy with this webcam
and I very few negative things to say
about it
most importantly the video quality is
great even in relatively low life and
it's crystal clear especially if you
bump
the sharpness just a little bit and the
60fps frame rate at 720p is definitely a
good feature if that's something you're
looking for background removal is nice
but in my opinion it's not that good and
that feature alone isn't enough to
justify the purchase of the camera it
kind of works but only if you have the
ideal conditions to support it
such as a blank wall behind you I think
that really the main thing that needs to
be improved is the apparent noise
reduction filter they apply at 60fps
it's much too strong kills all the
sharpness in the video and just makes
the video look very strange
so I'd like to see some way to disable
it but besides that this is an awesome
webcam and is sure to be a classic for
years so why don't we give this guy
rating on my proprietary scale from
literally trash to literally treasure i
would put this at about $TIME in 8.5 or
wow this is a really good webcam as for
price it's not cheap at about a hundred
dollars but if you're looking for
quality this is definitely a good choice
so again if you want to check it out
there is a link in the description to
amazon so you can check it out there so
i hope you guys enjoyed this video and
i'm interested to hear what you think
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I'll see you next time have a good one.