I recently purchased the Amcrest 1080p Webcam for use with my online teaching.
I first of all would like to say I was very impressed with the speed of receiving my webcam and the refund to my paypal account. I ordered the camera Tuesday evening after signing up for the program Monday night from seeing an ad on instagram. I was a little skeptical at first, but I thought “why not?” I’m very glad I decided to sign up.
This is my second webcam, I bought my first a few months ago to use with my Mac Pro 3,1 for teaching online piano and music theory lessons.
My inital reactions to the camera are overall positive. I was impressed by the very small box size. Everything looked good out of the box. The cable length was adequate to get to my USB hub from it’s place on top of my monitor. I liked the fact that there was a female tripod adapter included in the bracket. That was a very nice touch. I don’t have a tripod around right now (I misplaced the one I used to have) but I like having the option to mount it to one in the future.
I also liked the fact that I could permanently attach the privacy cover on to the camera via a peel off adhesive strip. This is far superior to the privacy cover I got with the first webcam I bought which just rests on top of the webcam and could easily fall off. I don’t even use that one anymore because it just seemed like a cheap piece of plastic that didn’t fit well and perhaps was an afterthought to the design process. The adhesive is a much better idea and was easy to apply.
I’m using this camera as a replacement for my iPhoneX that was running camo studio to give me a front facing camera shot in OBS. I stream into Zoom via the “virtual camera output” feature. When I selected the new webcam as a new source in OBS for a few of my different scenes I immediately noticed a much better picture quality on the webcam display then I had gotten while using my iphone without a significgant impact on my processing power. I have been having issues where all of my processors are maxed out when running all of the apps I need to have open for my online lesson experiences. By using this cam instead of using the iPhone I now no longer have to have camo studio open and have freed up another 5-10% of processing power. Also the picture is far superior so this is a big win here. I also like the fact that there are two curved arcs on either side of the lens that light up when the camera is in use. This lets me know it’s on and working yet is not visually distracting so again a big win here. I use a Shure SM7 microphone to pick up my voice so I did not try out the microphone feature.
My only negative feedback is that I wish that it could rotate side to side as well as pivot up and down. The other camera I have rotates at the base and that allows a little bit more freedom and precision in setting up the exact angle and shot you might want. However after trying a couple of different positions on my monitor I fould one that worked and didn’t have a need to adjust the camera once I got it where I wanted. All of my students noticed a difference in the quality of my video so that was also a big plus.
So far I am very happy with the quality and performance of this web cam. The price is also very reasonable. It was about $36.00 on amazon
Chris Codish 