Strengths: Autofocus, RightLight 2, RightSound, Size, Carl Zeiss Lens, Fast Microcontroller, Pouch, Desktop Stand.
Summary: AUTOFOCUS: Very good feature. Logitech is the only webcam manufacturer that produce Autofocus webcam. It's really good at detecting which area to focus on. The only down side is that if you want manual focus you have to adjust it digitally meaning using the sidebar in the computer. This can be a good or bad thing depending on preferences.
CARL ZEISS LENS: This is a truly nice feature of this camera because this lens is usually place on much more expensive camera. Combine this with the autofocus feature and you will get ultra crisp picture and video
RIGHTLIGHT: This is Logitech's own software. It's really nice to have because it boost the light without a light source and it gets it pretty well. I think if they have this feature in a digital camera, it would be really nice. The only down side is that it uses your computer's CPU and the CPU of the webcam to do so, so video would be slightly slower if you have a slow computer
RIGHTSOUND: Again Logitech's own software. Very Nice. My parents said that they can hear me perfectly even better than my cellphone voice when using this webcam mic. I didn't notice any slow down of my computer when using this feature unlike the RightLight 2 technology.
SIZE: This is a perfect size camera. It's ultra small and very nice looking. The icon picture might make it look large, but in reality, it's really small and compact.
DESKTOP STAND: This is perfect because you do not have to clip the camera to the top of my LCD notebook. Plus I get to move the camera around freely without moving my LCD screen.
FPS: Yet another benefit of this camera. I had a cheap 25 bucks camera and the fps on that is horrible. I would get 15fps on 640x480 resolution. But with this camera now, I can get a clean 30fps at that resolution. I would get 20fps at 800x600 resolution and 15fps at 960x720(I think this is right) resolution, which is considered HD video. I would also get 5fps at 1600x1200. But that is still really good because it's like getting 5fps on a 2MP camera which is very good considering it's a webcam. Note that all the result was obtained by using a 1.3GHz ULV Pentium M Processor with RightLight turned off. That is to show you that all the video processing is on the webcam instead of on your computer's CPU.
POUCH: The pouch is very essential to me because I carry my laptop around everywhere and if I don't have an extra pouch for this camera, I would have to buy one, or otherwise the camera would get all scratched up.
OVERALL: Very good camera, just a bit expensive. I think the price will go down soon. It's just a tad expensive I would say, but again it's quality webcam that you are paying for. Also the USB wire is a bit short for me, but then again it's a notebook webcam and a short USB wire is expected. Another thing I don't like is the lack of GNU/Linux support. This webcam would be perfect for me if it had support for GNU/Linux because I dual boot between GNU/Linux and Window XP and whenever I want to use the webcam I have to use XP. Also the Avatar software is mediocre. But Again you cannot expect too much from video detection and sensing.
Reviewed by: tonybaritone on 02-Nov-07Rating:
Strengths: This is a small gem. I agree with everything in Levi*'s previous review. This is a camera that *works* and yields an outsanding picture under nearly all lighting conditions. The autofocus works.
Summary: There's a development with this camera (and two of its siblings) and Skype. With Skype 3.6, now in beta, this camera, and Logitech's qc1150 or later driver, you will get 640x480 video at very high frame rates on free Skype calls. The results are simply stunning. The frame rates are high enough that you can follow the words on your correspondent's lips.
If you really want to see to whom you're speaking, this, and the 9000 Pro, are clearly the way to go. A few extra dollars spent on quality hardware will soon be forgotten, once you see how well everything works with this.
One more piece of advice: Follow the installation instructions to the letter.
Reviewed by: panhao on 04-Dec-07Rating:
Strengths: Size, picture quality, audio quality
Summary: This is probably one of very few 2MP laptop webcam currently available. Carl Zeiss lense and auto focus makes it have the best video quality. Auto focus is very handy and should be a standard for future webcams. Audio works very well too. The noise is minimized. However since this primarily works with laptop, I don't know why Logitech didn't make it horizontal. A vertical webcam looks clumsy on laptops.