It has all the essentials covered as well, including solid video quality and a surprisingly good mic (though it lacks features you might be used to from the mic in your laptop or headset, like noise cancellation), as well as a lightweight utility to control the camera position and zoom in software. Instead of a cover, you can tilt the camera down, so you don’t have to worry about losing a cap. The design is great as well, with a magnetic attachment to the mount and a large LED that not only tells you if it’s on, but that indicates if it’s currently focused on anything. It also has limited gesture controls - to control face lock for tracking and to zoom - which come in handy. That means it can cover you over 180 degrees without requiring zooming out until you’re just a tiny head in the frame. Though it’s larger overall than most webcams, it’s smaller than it looks and it’s worth the extra bulk for the built-in gimbal that lets it tilt and rotate to track you.
The 1080p Obsbot Tiny, a refined version of the Obsbot Tail that began life as a Kickstarter a couple of years ago with a different focus, replaces the Anker PowerConf 300 as my pick for the peripatetic. You can zoom digitally, but as with any 1080p webcam, that gets ugly fast. It also has a 110-degree field of view, which is kind of wide for your usual webconferencing. Other trade-offs for the price: a captive USB-A cable and nonremovable mount. The build feels about what you’d expect for a cheap webcam, plasticky but not fragile, and the mount supports tilt and swivel. The mic performs noise cancellation, but you can’t turn it off or adjust it, and I heard quite a bit of popping and tinniness on my end. It’s got a built-in mic, though the audio is disappointing.
It doesn’t currently work with MacOS Monterey, so I couldn’t test that, but the company promises an update to support the latest version of the OS within the next couple of months. It also allows you to save presets for all the adjustable settings. For instance, the manual white balance actually works well along a continuum rather than just giving you a choice between too pink or too green. Nexigo’s software isn’t pretty, but some of it’s a lot more functional than much of what I’ve used. Scaled down to typical laptop viewing size, it looks good.
There you can see noise and softness, though it’s no worse than most 1080p webcams under $100.
There’s only so much you can do with the image quality on a basic 1080p 30fps webcam, but the Nexigo still delivers better video quality than many 720p laptop webcams, with relatively solid white balance and autoexposure, even across various lighting conditions. Don’t expect great 1080p picture quality at full-size viewing or in low light, though. (It’s the Creative Live Cam Sync 1080p V2, which remains a fine choice for Windows at an attractive $35 to $40.) It also supports Macs, something the camera it replaces doesn’t.
But I was quite surprised at how good this basic webcam is for just $40, much of which has to do with the software. I had my doubts about this at first: There are so many small, unfamiliar brands on Amazon that it takes a lot more than a 4-plus star review to pique my interest.