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Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

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Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#101

Post by lloeki »

avian wrote: post #78
pembrook wrote: post #40

The reason you can’t buy a good webcam is the same reason you can’t buy a high quality monitor outside of LG’s unreliable apple collab. The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it. Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GR…

> Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GRT46782-WT” as an extra f-you to the user. That is also a strategy to prevent product comparisons and unbiased reviews. They quickly cycle through product names and sell a certain product no. only in a limited geographical area. Doesn't matter if a consumer org/magazine/someone on reddit/your friend/etc. does a review. The product will b…

It becomes even more unawesome when the same product identifier actually has different parts in it.

When looking for a nice display a couple of years ago I clearly remember reading about some that were promising yet getting confoundingly variable reports, until some tore their hardware apart and revealed that the internals were different.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#102

Post by gaudat »

I wonder why it is so hard to find a webcam with USB 3.0 interface that can do something better than 1080p 30fps YUV. I understand in video call applications the video stream is compressed to hell anyways, but I am just trying to make my computer able to take photos better than a 20 years old point and shoot. Now I am using a HDMI capture card with my mirrorless camera. It may seem overkill but the picture quality definitely blows any "webcam" out of the water.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#103

Post by pembrook »

muro wrote: post #75
pembrook wrote: post #40

The reason you can’t buy a good webcam is the same reason you can’t buy a high quality monitor outside of LG’s unreliable apple collab. The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it. Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GR…

Dell sells good monitors.

Dell used to have good offerings, but all they seem to push now is the same 27” not-quite-4K 3,840 x 2,160 panels everybody else does. Now even the 22" inch LG ultrafine that used to be 4069 x 2304 is bigger at 24" and a worse 3,840 x 2,160. The only good option for mac is the 27 ultrafine 5k.

27 4k a bad size & resolution for the current computer market. Windows scaling looks like crap, and MacOS has to do more resource intensive 1.5 scaling (as opposed to native or pixel doubling mode) to look okay on these.

M1 might make this a mute point going forward, but the fact is at 27 inches, 5k is the only monitor that will look as good as the screen on your laptop while actually giving you more real estate.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#104

Post by Eric_WVGG »

knazarov wrote: post #70

There is actually a good webcam now. It's AverMedia PW513. It has a Sony Exmor 4K sensor, and generally favorable reviews.

Also so-called “gamer” hardware. Like GPUs for scientific computing and high quality, actively cooled WiFi routers, it’s a weird and kind of tedious world to navigate but quality hardware is there if you know where to look.

https://www.razer.com/streaming-cameras/razer-kiyo/RZ19-0232...

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#106

Post by JosephRedfern »

makomk wrote: post #94
JosephRedfern wrote: post #11

A year ago, you could easily buy a good webcam for very little. The Logitech C920 is, to my eyes, superior to the MacBook Pro webcam, and offered at least semi-decent audio quality. Pre-pandemic, it could sometimes be had for £25 (~$35). Post pandemic, however, webcam prices seem to have at least tripled (if not quadrupled). As I type, the C920 is going for £140. I can understand this as a supply/demand thing, but su…

The Logitech C920 is a design from 9 years ago, with a sensor to match. You're missing out on a lot of sensor improvements over the years that give things like better low light performance - handy when using a camera for video indoors. It's also, unfortunately, close to the best webcam out there. Apple really don't seem to have brought the camera improvements from their iPhone range to their MacBooks, apparently thei…

Agreed. Sorry, I misread the original post -- I thought they were using current MBP cameras (rather than mics) as a benchmark. C920 is miles ahead of MacBook cameras, but as you say, nowhere near iPhone level of quality.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#107

Post by gaudat »

huhtenberg wrote: post #44
pembrook wrote: post #40

The reason you can’t buy a good webcam is the same reason you can’t buy a high quality monitor outside of LG’s unreliable apple collab. The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it. Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GR…

Take a look at Eizo (pun intended).

I think LG makes their own panels but Eizo doesn't? I think it's probably better buying a digital signage display from LG, Samsung or the likes.

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#109

Post by kohlerm »

What about using an action cam? Picture quality is quite good these days even for the cheaper chinese ones. Audio might not be too bad either. As others have said not sure whether audio with the webcam is so important. It will we relatively far away, which might not be ideal for sound quality .

Re: Why can’t you buy a good webcam?

#110

Post by varjag »

murkt wrote: post #79
milesvp wrote: post #69

This article sort of glosses over the actual cost of designing the hardware. You should be able to get 500 units made working through a factory. Though minimum qty for parts can be as high as 5000, usually factories can find most components in smaller qty for 2-5x the price, especially since they already have relationships with suppliers. At $25-$35 bill of materials for something retailing at $250-$300 you're only l…

> Though minimum qty for parts can be as high as 5000 It can be as high as 100 000. No stock anywhere. > $30k is pretty cheap from a capital expense if you're just talking about testing a market. Yep. That's what I thought before contacting SoC vendors. > It would be easy to spend $100k in billable hours to bring something as complicated as a webcam to market. I'm not in the USA, engineering hours are much cheaper in…

> It can be as high as 100 000. No stock anywhere.

There is always a way to obtain engineering samples/devkits. That's how the products in these 100,000 runs get to be.

> That's what I thought before contacting SoC vendors.

You don't buy from SoC vendors directly unless you're an enormous operation. Farnell, Mouser, DigiKey, Elfa.

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