Here’s the problem. We have two young kids at home, and we live in the city in a townhouse that isn’t exactly large. With that comes a lot of “shared space”—also known as partially controlled chaos. The room that we have colloquially named the “office” is hardly a dedicated work space. I couldn’t survive without the blur background function in Zoom and Teams. The closet is a storage space, and in addition to our standing desk, which is typically filled with laptops, monitors, laptop stands, and various peripherals I’m testing, we also have some nonwork items throughout the room. Some of those include a play kitchen, bins of toy food, an entire crate of Duplos, a modular play couch, and an ssortment of other pokey things that hurt to step on.
Moving isn’t an option—at least, not an easy one. I could certainly close the blinds, but that’s also where my 5-year-old displays his Lego creations. And doing so also leaves me exclusively with terrible track lighting on the ceiling—which, again, is behind me. It’s a mixed-use room, and I’m sure some of you can relate to the limitations that creates.
I’m back to buying a webcam. After all, an external webcam doesn’t have to stuff all its parts into a tiny camera module that’s squeezed into the top bezel of a screen. Maybe it’s wrong to expect much from these tiny laptop cameras in the first place. I gathered every possible webcam I could find. There are tons of options out there, ranging from cheap 1080p cameras up to spending hundreds of dollars on 4K options with AI features. But I was less concerned with specs like resolution, megapixels, aperture, and field of view, and simply found myself wanting to improve the dismal situation I faced in my office.
Lights, Camera, Action
Insta360 Link 2C (left); Insta360 Link 2C Pro (right)
Photograph: Luke Larsen
Nearly all of the dozen webcams I tried out looked great while under ideal lighting. I spent some time working in a different room next to a window, and the upgrade to an external camera felt significant. With all that light to work with, the higher-end cameras with a larger 1/1.3-inch image sensor handled the situations beautifully. It didn’t need to blow out the direct natural light to get details in my face, showing a wider dynamic range of shadows and highlights. Having more natural light in the room improved just about every webcam I tried, but they also better showcased just how powerful some of these higher-end cameras really are, such as the Insta360 Link 2C Pro or Obsbot Tiny 3. These are the scenarios most webcams are tested in, leaving them all looking more or less adequate.
