- Now look-y here.
If I was to design a webcam for streaming,
this would be pretty much exactly spec for spec
what I would do.
At least on paper, at least.
So we're going to have to see how the experience compares.
It's the Elgato Facecam.
This is a very exciting product.
Elgato makes very solid products.
People always complain they're a little overpriced,
but really like their lights are comparable
to more professional lights with good color.
Their mics' pretty good.
Their sound panels.
Again, and with all with so overpriced
but it's like when you actually look at what they're doing,
they're accomplishing three different
sound treatment things.
And so I'm guessing it's the same with this.
It's a $200 webcam.
That's not too expensive,
but that's kind of on the high end of webcams,
especially a 1080p webcam,
but that's okay.
I prefer my webcam to be 1080p anyway.
Reason for that, it's a tiny sensor.
So if you try and fit that 8 million pixel count,
which is what 4K is,
those are tiny (beep) pixels
and the bigger your pixel,
the better it's probably going to be
especially for low light.
And when you stream you're often in low light
and so in my opinion,
for streaming, 1080p is better.
It's going on Twitch.
It can only be 1080p anyway.
Usually your little window is so small anyway.
For video conferencing, 1080p is plenty.
And the compression's insane.
So let's see what's in the box.
We've got this box inside a box.
We got some cables.
It's a long USB A to type C.
I actually tried out this webcam yesterday.
It seemed to only work with this cable.
I tried other USB-C cables because I was having issues.
It would only register with this one.
So that's an interesting thing we're going to have to
play around with a little bit more.
So the last thing in the box is an instruction manual.
Maybe I do need this cause I was having trouble
with it yesterday.
It's nice it comes with,
we'll get to that.
Little instruction guides, Quick Start.
It's pretty easy though.
Plug it in.
Use the app you want to use.
It's not one of those cameras you can use
in two apps at once which is normal,
although that would be nice,
especially for streaming devices.
I want cameras and capture cards that can be able
to be read in two apps at once.
That's a big selling feature for me.
The amount of times you need to record
in a different app than your streaming.
That's big.
That's big Elgato, you should know.
You should know.
AverMedia provides it.
All right.
Now to the prime time, baby.
A little baggy to protect it.
Here's the camera.
Though it comes to the private cover.
I seem to have left it at home.
It just goes on top.
It's a plastic brown, like a lens cap,
but it's nice.
So you don't have to worry about it turning on
and watching it without you knowing,
especially with that a big Russian farm of hackers
that just displayed webcams
and security cams on their websites 24/7,
that you can just go watch. It's pretty scary.
As you can see, it's actually a little bit bigger than,
I would expect most webcams to be.
It's got more depth and that's a good sign.
So this is the anchor one
fairly similar (beep), (beep), yup.
Specs, it does 1080p 60 as well.
It can also do lower resolutions,
lower frame rates, 1080p 30.
It might be better for you,
especially if it's a low light situation,
but on Twitch, usually it's 60.
As you can see,
this camera is just deeper
than what a typical webcam looks like.
That's a good thing.
We're going to talk a little bit about more
why it's so deep later,
but in terms of the rest of the body,
it's pretty standard.
It's got a monitor mount, which is fine,
but it also has a quarter 20 screw,
which is really nice.
So you could actually put it into a tripod
or into a different many, many, many camera accessories.
So depending on your situation, this is actually awesome.
You can put like a quick release plate
and snap it into a tripod.
This is, that's a great thing.
I find it very frustrating when you're trying to use a
webcam in a certain situation.
So that's a big plus.
It's padded.
So you don't have to worry about scratching your monitor,
which is a very good.
So the big selling features of this lens are that it's
paired down some of the features that are kind of
unnecessary on a webcam.
So most webcams have a little mic.
If you're using it primarily for video conferencing,
that's nice to have,
especially if the computer using doesn't have a mic,
but for a few reasons, the mic on a webcam generally sucks.
Not only is it like a tiny little mic,
sometimes there's like a dual array,
but it's so far away from the speaker that the sound quality
is never going to be good.
And so what they've done to cut costs is just forego the mic
and for streamers, I think that makes a lot of sense.
One of the first things you should buy as a streamer is
a decent mic because your audio is very important.
It's a lot easier to connect with someone
if their mics are good.
And so I think that's a smart choice.
It's a smart compromise to make.
In terms of what's actually in here,
it's the same sensor that's in the Dell UltraSharp webcam
that we unboxed or Alex' unboxed a couple of weeks ago.
So it's a good Sony sensor.
They advertise a bigger size than it is,
or at least the Dell one did.
And so it should be good and low light,
Sony's I mean, at the top of the sensor game these days.
So that's great.
But what I think is great is that it's a
24 millimeter equivalent f2.4 lens,
which is pretty ideal for streaming.
If I was to buy a prime lens for a camera,
I would buy like a 24 or 28 lens
and have it a bit further away from myself.
I've streamed with a 20 millimeter lens.
And it's, it's been it a little bit wide.
It kind of distorts your face a bit.
So I think 24 equivalent is kind of the sweet spot.
So I'm excited to see how this looks
and how this performs
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So I'm very excited to use this thing.
I actually got rid of
my Sydney camera that I was using for streaming.
I've been kind of looking for a cheap alternative
for a while.
And so I'm excited to see if this can do
what I want it to do.
It's got eight elements in the lens and each element has a
double layer of reflective coating.
So there shouldn't be issues with weird glare
or a lens flaring, which I think is really good,
especially in a studio environment where there's
bright lights in every weird direction.
We've had webcams where there's just unusable lens flare,
and it kind of just sucks.
And so let's see what it looks like.
My impressions right off the bat is that it's having a
little bit of trouble with the white balance.
It's not, I'm not really giving it a fair shot
just because it's facing a blue wall.
So let's give it a bit more of a neutral background and see
if that does a little bit better.
It's still really contrast-y.
See it's really red.
And that's actually what I noticed yesterday is that the
skin tones are kind of a little bit off and over warm.
So let's see if I can change it a little bit.
So I think I'd want like a slightly cooler tone.
So it's nice. You can be able to do this.
There's the Elgato camera hub software where you can
actually do more fine tuning,
but as of the time of the shooting this video,
it's not out.
So I'd be very excited to see exactly what kind
of fine controls because I think I could fix
the color issues a little bit more
and make it look pretty good.
Because the overall look is very good. It's very clear.
It looks like a webcam, but sharper and a little cleaner.
I was hoping for a little bit of
a more noticeable jump in clarity,
especially because they advertise that it's a
422 uncompressed video going to the computer.
Whereas most cameras are compressing the video,
which adds processing time.
So there's theoretically less lag
and it's supposed to be higher quality video.
That's a huge deal.
Especially if you're a streamer using a green screen,
having the extra color information
allows it to be a cleaner key.
And so that's a huge deal.
If that's the kind of streaming you want to do.
In terms of color, it's hard,
this isn't the ideal webcam setup.
I find generally flatter lighting is more
giving a webcam a better shot because
you're kind of seeing the edge of the set
as well as like a bunch of different lights.
It's just probably going to struggle a little bit.
I think again,
I could probably fix it a little bit
if I had more manual controls,
but unfortunately today I cannot.
But this is,
this is not a bad webcam.
Like I said, I took it home yesterday.
I was having crazy connectivity issues.
And so your mileage may vary.
We aren't having those issues today,
but basically while I was streaming every like 30 seconds,
every 20 seconds, I mean, I'll just give the editor a clip.
He can make like a five second super cut of my frustration.
♪ Technical difficulties on that first second. ♪
Again
this one's...
♪ For tonight, I chose the wrong. ♪
Oh no.
(beep)
(David laughing)
There's not this room is not that exciting.
I mean, I'll show you guys the view,
the view is pretty cool.
Oh my God. (beep)
No, nothing.
It's not even showing up anymore.
But this, this isn't bad.
It's totally usable.
Again. What cams are in a weird spot where
they kind of have to cap out at $200,
I mean, $200 isn't cheap, it's expensive for a webcam,
but when you compare it to a mirrorless or a Sydney camera
or something else, it's a it's cheap alternative.
But if you were to make this more expensive,
you would have to just sell it as a camera.
I mean, once you're into $500 range,
you're just buying a point and shoot at that point,
or you can buy like an eight, 5,000 like,
or like that series of camera and really do a lot better.
And so what I'm finding is,
skin tone is a little bit off.
It's having a little bit of trouble.
The autofocus seems to be pretty good.
Although for a f2.4,
I'm finding that the bokeh's not particularly attractive,
the field of view is pretty good.
It's 82 degree field of view, which is pretty nice.
So you could actually get in pretty close
and the autofocus is tracking me pretty good.
The optimized distance is 12 inches to 47 inches,
which is pretty close to where you would be
when you were streaming or like video conferencing.
But let's compare it to, what's built into this laptop.
This is what this camera looks like.
You can see, has a lot of trouble with the highlights.
It's a really struggling with my skin tone.
It's trying to bring up the blocks too much.
And so it's just weird colors, weird.
Like my face is just like yellow, red blob.
It's not very attractive.
It's very grainy.
It's not very clear.
I would not recommend using this at all.
Yeah.
Overall, this is a pretty good option.
I mean, in my head every time I look at a new fancy webcam,
I hope that it's going to be like competitive with a much
more expensive camera.
And that's kind of an unrealistic expectation,
but this is pretty good.
The question remains,
is it worth 200 of your hard earned dollars? Maybe.
As of today, because we don't have the software.
I say that the Razor Kiyo Pro is probably a better buck
option out of the box.
However, maybe with the proprietary software,
this one with the fine tuning,
you can kind of get it to a better spot.
I think the uncompressed video,
if you're someone that wants to use a green screen,
that's a huge deal.
That's a lot better, like a lot better trust me.
And so this is a pretty good option on the market.
It's definitely worth checking out,
just like it's worth checking out
our other short circuit videos.
There's a whole arrangement.
There's a beautiful videos for all of you.
I present you a sandwich of videos.
Thank you for watching.
Why don't you like, subscribe, comment.
If you want this or you don't
or what webcam you're currently using, why not?
Bye!