- Webcams have always been an interesting topic
on this channel.
In fact, about a year ago, I made a video
about how you can improve various different aspects
of your webcam.
Things like your colors, your frame rate, the auto focus,
and that video has been super popular,
racking up almost a million views.
So, it's clear that you guys care about your camera quality.
In the years since making that video,
Logitech AverMedia and now Razer have all released pro
or at least premiumly priced webcams
specifically marketed to live streamers like you and me,
but the prices of around $200,
are they really worth the investment?
Well, in this video,
we're going to be comparing these cameras head to head
in various different lighting setups.
Talking about the pros and cons of each camera,
and hopefully ultimately helping you decide
are any of these options right
as your next live streaming camera.
(upbeat music)
So we have all three cameras set up,
the Logitech StreamCam
the Razer Kiyo Pro
and the AverMedia Live Streamer CAM 513.
They all on their default settings
completely set up as they were out of the box.
And with my typical lighting setup here for streaming
which is two Elgato Keylights,
one of my left set to about 30%
and the one at the right set to about 15% brightness.
So what do we see?
Well before talking about the colors or image differences,
let's just talk about the field of view or FOV
which is actually how wide of an angle
each of these cameras capture.
The Logitec StreamCam
has the narrowest field of view at 78 degrees,
AverMedia's CAM 513
has a nice wide field of view at 94 degrees,
and Razer's Kiyo Pro has an adjustable FOV
with three different options,
a linear 79 degrees, medium 86 degrees,
or a wide 104 degrees.
What's interesting about the adjustable FOV
on the Razer camera
is that it's not just a digital punch in light
you typically would see.
If you look particularly at the acoustic foam
that I have on the wall here,
when you swap between
the linear narrow field of view
and the wide 104 degree option,
you can see
that there starts to be some bowing, some curving
to that straight line
which is kind of how the GoPro works
as well when you're swapping between different FOVs.
This wall gives a bit of a fish eye effect
where around the edges,
you start to see some bowing to the image,
but you still look fairly close to the camera in the middle.
Especially when you swap to the AverMedia camera,
that does look like a very, very wide image
but it's keeping the straight lines here
and it's not using that fish eye effect.
So I do a pair
a little bit further away from the camera.
Field of view though is completely subjective.
So, some people like a narrow field of view
where you're the main focus,
some people like to have a super wide field of view
where they can show off loads of different things
in the background.
So it is a completely subjective metric.
So next let's look at the colors.
Now, I wouldn't say out of the box
any of these three cameras do a particularly great job
of accurately representing the colors
but thankfully all three of them
come with our own proprietary software
that you can use to customize things like the white balance
or the saturation
to try and get a more natural looking image.
The AverMedia CAM 513 is probably a little oversaturated
especially if you look at the colors
in my storage unit behind me,
they're really not that bright in real life.
And maybe that affects a bit on the skin tones.
I would say probably the Logitech StreamCam
has the opposite.
It's the opposite side of the spectrum.
It's a little bit washed out
and could do with a little bit of saturation.
So somewhere in the middle probably lies the best image.
Probably with the Razer,
that's the most natural colors looking at it.
But one thing I did notice about the Razer camera
is it is struggling with a little bit of flickering here
in some of these background lights.
Now these aren't expensive lights
but they have been flicker free
for all the other cameras that I've tested
and my main DSLR camera that I use for streaming.
So you can see it is struggling a little bit with flickers.
That's something to bear in mind
if you have some lights in your background.
But this is just one lighting setup.
So I did want to do a couple more tests
to see how these cameras deal with
less than ideal lighting conditions.
So, first of all, let's do all of our lights off.
So as you can see with no lights on, this is just the lights
coming from my monitors in front of me
as well as the background lights still being on.
All three cameras do struggle, especially the AverMedia
that's got a lot of noise in the image
that you can see there.
And that's because it's got the smallest sensor.
Whereas the StreamCam and the Kiyo Pro
do allow a little bit more lighting
and are doing their best to try and expose me correctly.
But as you can see, really with no lights,
all three of these cameras are going to struggle
as any camera is going to.
Now, I've opened all the shutters here
letting in as much natural light as I can,
still no lights on in front of me.
So it's just the computer monitors.
This really isn't an ideal setup
but you can see that especially the Razer camera
I think is doing a good job and the Logitech to be fair.
I exposing my face.
All three of them have the windows completely blown out
because it is just too bright back there
and not enough light on the subject that you want to light
but this was an important task
because I think a lot of beginners have a setup like this
where they're leaving their blinds open
and not lighting themselves properly.
Finally, I wanted to do a test
with both of my Elgato Keylights set to 100%.
Honestly blinding, I wouldn't recommend anybody
tries to stream for a long period of time
with lights on this brightly.
But I want to test
how these cameras dealt with a lot of light.
And I'd probably say that they've all done well
but I would give it to the Razer Kiyo Pro here
having the most natural colors.
But again, it's really highlighting
how much flickering is going on for those background lights.
Like I said, all three of these cameras
come with their own software for customizing
a certain aspects of the image.
So let's do a quick couple of minutes
with each camera to try and make it look
a little bit more balanced.
So even with a tiny bit of tweaking,
we can improve the colors quite a bit.
And that's even before applying alerts or anything like that
to really fiddle around with the color correction.
So, just straight out of the camera
and the camera software that comes with,
you can make a few changes to make quite a big difference.
One thing I do want to mention
is that the Razer Kiyo Pro software
has the option to enable something called HDR
or higher dynamic range.
When you enable that option,
it does lower your frame rate down from 60 FPS to 30 FPS.
But for me, it also makes a big difference
to the polarizing of the lights behind.
So this is with HDR enabled, the high dynamic range,
and it does capture more detail in the blacks
and if you open the windows, the whites as well.
But I wanted to point out
how much worse it makes the flickering of my storage unit.
You can see reflecting of the YouTube award there.
So, definitely something to bear in mind
with this Razer camera
is that you might get some flickering
if you have some background colored lights.
The light strip at the back here,
if I get the right side is an Elgato light strip
which is designed to be flicker free
and that doesn't seem to have any issues with flickering.
So maybe it's just the lights that I have,
but like I said
I've tested so many different cameras with these lights
and they've never had an issue with flickering
until using the Razer camera.
So something to bear in mind.
All three of these cameras have auto focus
which is typically something I recommend disabling
and setting your focus manually
so that you don't get too much
of that focus hunting where sort of warps
to try and find the right focus.
I haven't noticed any massive issues with that,
but if I had to mention one camera
that does suffer with that the most it is the Razer one.
I did notice on a few occasions,
it's so fun for focus around my face.
So I'd still probably recommend disabling auto focus
on all three cameras
and just setting it to whatever distance away
you sit at.
Hey, future beat here just noticed
whilst watching this with his back that the AverMedia camera
doesn't really seem to snap focus to the mug
and back to my face.
It always holds the focus on my face
which is a good thing and a bad thing
just depending on how often
you're going to want to hold things up
in front of the camera for your stream.
But just thought I'd mention it
since I didn't notice it while I was recording live
and had all three webcams next to each other.
One difference between these three cameras
is that the Logitech StreamCam and Razer Kiyo Pro
can capture up to 1080P at 60FPS.
whereas the AverMedia Live Streamer CAM 513
can capture at 4k and 30 FPS.
But I actually prefer the decision by Logitech and Razer
to use a 1080P sensor and that's for two reasons,
when you're capturing a 4k resolution
on such a small sensor like webcams have,
that's a lot of pixels to cram in
and the actual individual pixel size ends up being so small.
Whereas with a 1080P sensor, the pixel size can be bigger
and that will improve the low light performance
like we saw when we tested
without either of the key lights on
when we saw so much noise in the AverMedia image.
The second benefit though
is just on how much more work
your PC will have to do to process a 4k image
versus a 1080P image.
And since most of us are streaming now on single PC setups
you want to try and minimize
the impact that anything especially a webcam can have
on your live stream.
So unless you're wanting to do some digital puncheons
where you're trying to retain as much quality as you can
on a 4k camera.
I would recommend sticking to a 1080P signal
because most of the time
we're having our cameras relatively small on our streams
and not that many people
are trying to stream in 4k just yet.
Two nice advantages
that the Razer Kiyo Pro and the AverMedia CAM 513
have over the Logitech streamer CAM
is to have privacy shutters.
If you ever want to put a lens cap on
to stop any prying eyes from watching you,
and secondly, they have detachable USBC to USBA cables
which is a nice advantage
because you might want to move these cameras
further away from your streaming PC and use a longer cable.
You can just hot swap in a different cable
or if you want to use USBC to USBC
you also have that option just to buy a different cable.
Whereas the Logitech StreamCam has a fixed USBC cable.
So, you're stuck to having to use USBC
which not everybody has
and you can't swap that out for a longer cable.
One nice benefit that all three of these cameras have
which you'd expect on premium priced,
where it comes like these
is they can all be mounted onto your monitor
like I have to now,
but they also have options of a thread
to attach it to a tripod
if you want to use something like the Elgato Multi Mount
to get a different angle,
they can all be attached to tripods like that.
So all three of these cameras really have that use case.
If you prefer the wider FOV
then you're probably going to look at the AverMedia
or the Razer cameras.
It depends if you like that fish eye kind of look
for the wide FOV on the Razer camera
versus the more further distance look
that you get with the AverMedia camera.
But really with the colors and things like that,
you can spend a lot of time
in OBS as well as their proprietary software
to make sure you can fix the color.
So I wouldn't worry too much
about the differences in colors,
because I do think they're all fixable.
Hopefully this video has been helpful in that regard anyway
in deciding which of these cameras to get, if any
or if you should save further
or just save some money and buy something cheaper.
Do get that thumbs up if it has been helpful
and I'll catch you guys in the next video...
Actually I'll catch you guys
in the live stream. Peace.
(upbeat music)
- Appropriate context and hot tubs
do fall under that criteria.
However, what has not-
- I've just realized
that I've got this plane back at 1.5 times speed 'cause-
- I was going to say (indistinct)-
- I'm one of those people
that watches everything in (indistinct) speed.
But if you listen to this podcast at one time speed
there's something wrong with you.
We speak to silly.