QuickCam Pro for Notebooks / QuickCam Orbit AF
Pro Rating: 
(4 / 5)
Orbit Rating:
(4.5 / 5)
Logitech has an excellent offering for webcams. I’m going to be talking about two of the QuickCams, one for the desktop and one for notebooks.
I’ll start with the Orbit AF. The Orbit is a webcam designed for the desktop. It’s really too big to travel well unless you’re going to put it in your checked luggage and make sure it’s wrapped up really well. It has a larger base and the camera head itself is much larger than travel cams. That said, remember it was designed for the desktop so don’t hold its size against it. However, even having a larger base doesn’t mean it takes up a lot of space. Mine has been sitting on my desk for a couple months now and it’s perfectly out of the way.
Aside from the graphics of this cam, which are excellent, it’s got one feature that none of the other do...it has a motorized pan engine. And not only that, it uses the pan engine to track you if you move from one side of the lens to the other. So simple things like moving from side to side, or bending over to pick something or, or standing up for a second will keep you in the middle of the frame. It’s amazing really. It actually does a pretty good job of tracking you. Of course, if you move really fast, or get up and walk off it can’t follow you. I mean after all, it’s not a laser-guidance system from Star Wars. But in the course of normal movement while talking on a webcam, it tracks you really well. This is the one feature I was interested in when I got this camera and I’m very pleased with how well it performs.
This camera, like all the others, provides excellent low-light capabilities and a built-in mic. And like all the others they work great. The camera detects the amount of light and adjusts appropriately. It also does auto-focus really well.
The Orbit also has some overlays and filters. These are completely different from Microsoft’s offering. For one thing, they’ve got these cartoon overlays that actually turn you into a different character that moves like you do. So you can be a dinosaur or a shark, or even a little stick figure. The camera analyzes your face, and then tracks the different parts and transfers that movement to the image. So if you wink your eye, the shark will wink its eye, etc. However, having now explained the feature, I just say that it doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped. You have to move really slowly and it doesn’t pick up all of your movements. In fact, the sensitivity seems to depend largely on the type of overlay you choose. The stick man for instance works better than the shark. So while it’s a cool idea, I think it still needs some work. I’ll really look forward to seeing how this progresses throughout the different versions in the future. The other overlays work great though. You can wear shades, hats, etc and they’re done really well.
The camera paired easily with all my IM apps. It also come with HD capabilities. This is excellent for me because I do all of my videos in Camtasia, which now renders HD screencasts. So with this camera I no longer should have a loss of quality between my HD screencast output and the video I’ve got tied with it.
The QuickCam Pro also carries all of the video and sound features of the Orbit so I’m not going to re-review them here. I’m just going to discuss differences. The low-light, built-in mic, and overlays are all the same. For starters, this is a notebook camera, which means that it’s meant to travel. It comes with a nice travel case to protect it while in transit, but it’s not a hard case so it might still be possible to crush it if you’re not careful. It’s a sturdy case though, so that scenario is unlikely. The mounting system for this camera is more of a clamp-style setup, which I like a lot less than the magnetic system used by the MS LifeCam Show. Still, I took this camera with me to Seattle and it traveled just fine. It wasn’t as compact as my LifeCam Show, but it’s respectable in this area.
This camera doesn’t have a pan motor, but it does use some smart centering technology to adjust the internal pan to keep you in the center of the video. Minor corrections are handled very well, but because it doesn’t have a motor it can’t follow you for major movements like bending over. I was very pleased with its ability to keep me in the middle of the capture when I just happened to lean to one side or the other.
The Bottom Line: So those are the two Logitech offerings I’ve looked at. And of course, they have more. The biggest things Logitech brings to the table over MS are the HD video capture, and the motorized pan motor. These are both really good cameras and when it comes to choosing a vendor, it really will come down to personal preference. All the offerings this year have excellent video and sound so you won’t get a bad camera no matter which way you go.