Summary: This webcam is a bit of an odd case, with a giant LED light on the front. Unfortunately the LED light did exactly the opposite of what I expected it to.
Conclusion:
First thing is first – I ordered the camera from overseas but a different one showed up than what I expected. Fine, it works. I’ll try it before complaining to the seller. I found this camera on Amazon under the brand name “Lychee” so I’m just going to go with that as the brand name. It’s a bit of an odd looking camera, that’s for sure… Just by the way it looks, I knew it wouldn’t be the typical, normal product. That thing, that light on the front of the camera, that protrusion that looks like a giant camera flash? Well, I expected maybe it’s an LED light to illuminate dark spaces. And it is, but…
It isn’t a white LED light. It’s a green LED light. It’s a red LED light. It’s a purple LED light. Literally it’s EVERY color except white. The camera activates it automatically when it is plugged in, and it is dark enough in the room, so it is on even when the web cam is not operating. There seems to be no logic to it either: one moment it’s green, one moment it’s yellow, one moment it’s purple. I think it’s trying to correct for white balance from my room lighting, but it can’t figure out what the lighting should be when I put my hand in front of the camera (it turns purple), when I pull it away it turns blue, with my green shirt it turns red… I- I don’t know! There’s seriously no reason it should be like this! If it was just an LED light I could easily turn on and off I would have no problem with the look. In fact it would help a lot during video conferencing. But there’s no way to activate/disable it I can obviously find. If you can get over that weird LED light, the video quality is actually surprisingly good in the day time.
At night it blurs frames together a bit and occasionally skips a frame, but it’s not that bad. Video is bright even in poor light and there’s a decent amount of detail for a cheap webcam. People will be able to tell that you’re a person and not a potato (but you’ll be a blue people when that LED light decides to shine bright blue on you). Audio quality is acceptable, but not great. Voice is a bit muffled, but easy enough to understand. I wouldn’t call this webcam good enough for vlogging on Youtube, but it’s definitely good enough for video conferencing, Skype, etc if you can get over that weird LED that seems to activate itself at random.
Where to Buy Webcams
Amazon US || Amazon Canada || Amazon UK