Review on 📷 Enhanced Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF by Kelly Noonan

Pros: Lens rotates and tilts to automatically track your face; innovative design places the lens at eye level; excellent low light performance; Built-in microphone. Cons: Face tracking can be temperamental; loud mechanical movements. Verdict: The innovative design and mechanical face-tracking features make this top-of-the-line webcam a real talking point. This unusual webcam is sure to draw attention - literally. The Logitech QuickCam Orbit's camera lens automatically rotates and tilts to follow your face automatically. The design is cool too, with a thin 9-inch robotic arm-like extension separating the camera lens from the base, an impression reinforced by the whirring sound of the mechanism as the lens follows your moving head. Under the guise of the HAL 9000 QuickCam Orbit, it's a premium webcam with three video resolutions: 160x120, 320x240, and 640x480. It has a built-in microphone and supports USB 2.0 and 1.1. The main drawback? The face tracking function can be difficult in some lighting conditions. While it's hard to deny the visual appeal of a product that looks like a prop from a sci-fi movie, this futuristic design has a practical side: it can elevate the camera. The lens is closer to eye level. The height is roughly where the other person's eyes should be, which can make talking to your video-based IMs more comfortable. There are no buttons or switches on the webcam itself. The software does everything including adjusting video settings, adjusting audio levels for the built-in microphone, and taking photos. Logitech offers a basic set of video settings including brightness, contrast, gamma and color saturation. You can manually adjust the exposure and white balance, or let the program automatically adjust the settings for you. There's also a 3x digital zoom which, like the digital zoom on a standard digital camera, simply zooms in on the image, increasing pixelation. To fully appreciate this product, you need to separate its innovative face tracking, pan and tilt capabilities from its standard webcam capabilities. As a static webcam, the Orbit performs like a champ. As with any webcam, the quality depends largely on the amount of light available. The Orbit copes well with both good and bad lighting. It accurately reproduces colors in almost any light, although the picture is a bit noisy even in moderately lit rooms. It does a pretty good job of capturing 640 x 480 videos with a slight drop in frame rate. The audio sounds good and doesn't have the timing issues that some webcams that run the microphone through the sound card have. You can take photos up to 1280x960, although any size over 640x480 will be interpolated. Orbit's auto-tracking capabilities are a mixed blessing. Face tracking may fail in situations where the light is directly overhead. In a room with overhead lighting and a vaulted ceiling, we found the camera angle slowly moved towards the ceiling until the subject's face disappeared completely from the frame. Orbit exhibited the same strange behavior in some dark environments when it stopped tracking altogether. When face tracking actually worked, it was useful and fun. The internal motor makes a whirring sound when the lens is moved, which can distract you when talking to family and friends. It can be heard both live and on video. It would be helpful if Logitech added a sensitivity control to reduce the frequency of automatic lens adjustments, thus reducing the frequency of buzzing. If you find that face tracking is too loud or inaccurate, you can always turn it off. You still have a sleek webcam with manual software positioning and above-average video quality.