Until I saw this article on the BBC, I had no idea there was a webcam shortage. But apparently, the lockdown has meant these, too, have been panic-bought into oblivion, and they are difficult to get hold of.
During the lockdown, I’ve been having a nightly Skype session with my mate who lives in Leeds. Initially, we were just doing voice, but he upgraded his laptop and we were then able to do video calls. However, although my Surface Pro laptop has a camera, I prefer to use my desktop.
Over the years I’ve had several webcams, but since I didn’t typically use them much they inevitably ended up being put in a box somewhere and forgotten about. They were always oddly-shaped things, too. All curves and funny angles – and far, far bigger than they needed to be. This time around, I started looking for a simply bullet-style camera that could sit on the top edge of one of my monitors without it wanting to break into a song and dance routine and flash pretty lights at me for no apparent reason if I was on Facebook or something. I also wanted HD.
One of my preferred brands is Logitech. However, their HD cameras have all the usual angles and curves, with the added ‘benefit’ of being the size of an iPhone thanks to whatever fancy additional features Logitech is trying to sell to nutjobs who post on Instagram and Tik Tok every five minutes. I just wanted a camera – I have a separate microphone, anyway.
After more searching I came across a camera that looked like exactly what I was after on Amazon. The AUSDOM AW615.
It’s full HD, does 16:9 widescreen, and it does have a microphone (it’s also manual focus and wide-angle). For me, the most important detail was it’s shape and size – the camera itself is a short cylinder, and it has a bendy clip and bracket so you can put it in different positions on different monitors or surfaces. At that time, the price was around £70 (at the time of writing it is on offer at £50), but what I did then was take a look on AliExpress. It was obviously (to me, anyway) a Chinese device, and it was carried by many sellers on AliExpress. if I bought direct it turned out the price was $33 (about £25). So that’s where I bought it from. Incidentally, if you check out any of the models above, they’re cheaper if you buy directly from China – but it’s up to you.
It took about three weeks to arrive, but lead times are always a little longer from China anyway.
It doesn’t need any software – you just plug it in and Windows does what it needs to do to recognise it. As with any webcam, you really need to connect it directly to a USB 2.0 port on your computer, and not through any daisy-chain of hubs. If you do that, you’re likely to get problems, especially with a HD image at 30fps, which is this camera’s spec.
It works like a charm. Nice sharp picture, and you can do all the things with it that Skype lets you – blur background, add image, and so on. My boom microphone is better for sound, but the microphone on it works perfectly well. Definitely worth considering if you’re after a webcam.