In the event you’re a giant consumer of Elgato’s streaming-focused equipment, it’s going to most likely be laborious to beat the Facecam Professional for a webcam in that ecosystem. It is designed to be intently built-in with these equipment, on each Home windows and Mac, delivering as much as 4K 60fps and a better-than-usual 1080p 60fps. It additionally gives a versatile quantity of management over the digital camera settings. It hasn’t bumped my 4K favourite, the Insta360 Hyperlink down our checklist of greatest webcams, however it’s a powerful runner-up for streamers and individuals who file their screens with a picture-in-picture self view, comparable to in coaching or prerecorded displays.

Sadly, it is also priced just like the Insta360 at $300, which appears to be the going charge for webcams on this class. However you are paying for higher high quality, higher flexibility and a extra refined characteristic set than you’d get with a less expensive choice. That does not imply you will not be pleased with a cheaper mannequin, but when your picture issues, it is likely to be well worth the funding. Like its 1080p sibling, the Facecam, the Professional does not have a built-in mic, however that is sensible given its target market makes use of headsets or exterior mics.

Elgato Facecam Professional

$300 at Elgato

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Like

• Elgato Hub software program has a strong set of digital camera controls
• In Home windows, the app tells you if the digital camera’s in use elsewhere and what’s utilizing it
• You may set zoom and focus presets within the app and save present settings to the digital camera

Do not Like

• Costly
• Annoying autofocus
• Autoexposure may use high-quality tuning
• Comparatively massive
• No lens cowl

Elgato pitches its Facecams as the one webcams that work with uncooked recordsdata, however that is a little bit deceptive. It does the sign processing within the digital camera quite than additional down the imaging pipeline in your system, just like uncooked recordsdata shot on telephones. However webcams and telephones have far smaller tonal ranges, and with out the computational magic carried out earlier than it will get to what you consider as “uncooked,” the output may be fairly ugly and laborious to work with. 

Elgato says it mainly performs any 4K to 1080p downsampling on the identical time for sharper outcomes, at the very least in OBS and related apps. I do not see any distinction between its 1080p sharpness and that of different good 4K webcams, such because the Insta360 Hyperlink. However like these, its 1080p is unquestionably sharper than a straight 1080p digital camera and its zoomed-to-head-and-shoulders photographs look higher.

As a result of extra of the processing takes place within the digital camera, you have got much more management over the settings — notably ISO sensitivity and metering within the Elgato Digicam Hub software program — than you usually get. The metering at the very least makes the publicity much more predictable and correct.

Picture high quality — publicity, white steadiness and noise — are fairly good as effectively, even in dim circumstances. Simply do not zoom in too shut in low gentle. Zooming in below good gentle nonetheless reveals softness from the digital zoom processing. 

And although you may choose spot metering, it is at all times the middle spot, which suggests for those who transfer your head round loads and you have got a contrasting background (like my pasty pores and skin and black chair) it’s going to modify publicity when you don’t need it to. It must be metered off your face. Heart-weighted metering offers you extra latitude, because it’s basically a much bigger spot, however that may overcompensate.

Its autofocus, nevertheless, isn’t nice. It is correct however too aggressive, making an attempt to regulate when it does not must. The result’s a variety of pointless and distracting pulsing.

In good gentle, the Elgato additionally has a few of the greatest background masking I’ve seen. It makes use of the identical engine that is in Nvidia Broadcast software program, and it sometimes appears to even do a greater job, with much less of the annoying waffling across the edges. It does restrict you to 10 nonetheless backgrounds (your personal) in addition to blur. 

You employ the Facecam Professional by way of the Elgato Digital Digicam, which behaved considerably glitchily, at the very least with OBS. Generally it labored, typically it simply gave me a frozen body. But it surely’s additionally smarter than Broadcast at figuring out when the system has freed up the digital camera. And actually, it is the one webcam app I can keep in mind that tells you which ones utility has the lock on it — that is one thing all of them ought to be capable to do. 

Elgato Digicam Hub additionally allows you to save as much as 4 zoom presets, they usually’re sensible sufficient to be linked to the sector of view, so a given zoom offers the identical view in 4K and 1080p. That is as a result of it is at all times working in 4K. There is no auto-framing, although, which I discover tends to be meh in fastened webcams (versus the robotic monitoring fashions). You may set as much as three focus presets, too, which it categorizes as Close to, Mid and Far. 

The Digicam Hub software program is healthier designed than lots of the apps I’ve seen, however it’s most likely not preferrred for individuals who simply need to go all-auto, set it and neglect it. They is likely to be overwhelmed by all of the choices. It is nonetheless a little bit too glitchy, although, or at the very least delicate to specific mixtures of settings, which it retains to itself.

I do just like the Facecam Professional much more than the Facecam, however I want it had been a little bit smarter for the cash. These smarts can incessantly be fastened — or at the very least tweaked — by way of firmware and software program updates, so it might enhance over time.

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