oh yeah, the webcams suck big time. even the expensive ones. just get a dslr over hdmi. it's 100x better and used dslr is cheap these days. you can even get panasonic gh4/5 which is a real video camera.
You actually want a mirrorless camera, not a DSLR one. If you intend to only use it as a webcam, probably just buy Panasonic G7 or Canon M200 for $500.
DSLR will be larger than mirorrless. go for MFT mount(panasonic/olympus), they have smaller lenses. like the panasonic gh series. if you get older dslr make sure the hdmi is 1080p, not 720p. since you won't do any recording there is nothing else to worry about. you will be piping the image straight into computer via video capture card. if you would want to use it for video elsewhere, make sure you get "video camera" and not "photo camera" because due to import taxes they have limited recording time for 5-15 minutes. the gh series is a sure bet and cheapest option. gh4 is old but will do the job. used gh5 can be got for cheap and if you want to up it a bit get the gh5s.
Similarly, and multiplatforms, I recommend DroidCam (https://www.dev47apps.com/). The interface could use some polish but it works well on android/ios phones to Mac/Windows and Linux.
I use DroidCamX too, I don't have any noticeable delay but I have a fairly solid wireless setup (Unifi AP in the same room) and most of the time I just use the USB cable anyway so I can also keep the phone charging
Similarly, I've used the 'NeuralCam Live' app that also turns an iphone into a webcam. It's free to use, with extra paid options too. The biggest downside is the lack of microphone support, which seems an odd omission.
I think the article is missing the obvious solution: if you can't buy a standalone webcam with as good image/sound quality as a phone, then use/make software that lets you use the phone hardware, there's no need to try to build your own camera.
I recently switched from Droidcam to Filmiic Pro (~$20), and it's pretty good.
Filmic Pro supports clean HDMI out from the rear facing cameras on iPhones and some Android phones. You do need a capture card, but if you have a Camlink or the no-name $20 USB capture card that EposVox did a positive review on, you're good to go.
On Android (I have a P20 Pro), I use a USB-C HDMI dongle meant for a Nintendo Switch, but it works with my phone plus it lets me charge the phone while using it.
Filmic also has a "remote" app (~$3, iirc) so if you have an extra mobile device, you can control the camera app remotely (since the phone you're using as a camera has its screen is pointing away from you).
A year ago, you could easily buy a good webcam for very little. The Logitech C920 is, to my eyes, superior to the MacBook Pro webcam, and offered at least semi-decent audio quality. Pre-pandemic, it could sometimes be had for £25 (~$35).
Post pandemic, however, webcam prices seem to have at least tripled (if not quadrupled). As I type, the C920 is going for £140. I can understand this as a supply/demand thing, but surprised that things haven't started to level out yet.
so what, everyone else buys Sony or m4/3 and a capture card. It's not that you need motion in the typical videoconference that much - and even then: what's handling motion about? I don't have a problem with my c900 (or whatever) and the only problem with a very old Quickcam STX seems to be no driver ..
The Logitech C920 is a design from 9 years ago, with a sensor to match. You're missing out on a lot of sensor improvements over the years that give things like better low light performance - handy when using a camera for video indoors. It's also, unfortunately, close to the best webcam out there. Apple really don't seem to have brought the camera improvements from their iPhone range to their MacBooks, apparently their built-in webcams are as bad as everyone else's.
Agreed. Sorry, I misread the original post -- I thought they were using current MBP cameras (rather than mics) as a benchmark. C920 is miles ahead of MacBook cameras, but as you say, nowhere near iPhone level of quality.
> So there is a market gap between so-so webcams for $100-200 and a full-blown setup with a mirrorless camera, an external mic and lighting panels that will cost almost a grand or two, if you're so inclined.
Nope. You can get a mirrorless camera set up (with mic and lights) for around $500 to $600. There are plenty of 1" compacts as well in that price range.
Sony's A6000 works perfectly well, but I recommend you also grab a NP-FW50 dummy battery as it will drain the battery even when plugged in via USB over time.
If you want better sound, grab the A6600 which can also sport the XLR-K2M microphone adapter.
Regarding HDMI capture: the Blackmagic DeckLink card series works just fine in a Thunderbolt case (at work I run a 2x A6000 system + external HDMI input).
And if you wanna save some cash, any $20-25 hdmi to usb capture card will work just fine. It won't give you uncompressed video, but you won't need it for this use case.
I've been bitten in my ass lots of times by these things. Random crashes, overheating, dodgy connectors that don't tolerate even the slightest movement... thanks but no thanks, the cheapest DeckLink clocks in at 150$. Downside is you'll also need a Thunderbolt PCIe case, but eh. It Just Works (tm).
Recent MacBook Pros (2020 13" M1 and 2019+ 16" Intel based) have incredible microphones for laptop mics [1]. Older 13" Pros and Airs have decent mics too but not as good as dedicated USB microphone.
The trick to great picture quality is to use good lighting and drop the ISO on the video as low as possible. I've been using Reincubate Camo for my iPhone along with Key Light Air Lights. The quality is better than any webcam. Most webcams crank up ISO so they can work in the dark and that is what ruins picture quality.
This cannot be overstated. While I agree with many of the camera recommendations in this thread the most important factor is enough light.
Even the worst webcams go from absolutely trash to something usable if you add better lighting to you subject.
And when people start thinking over lighting you can move away from your window so you do not have that as a powerful backlight. Look out the window and the webcam will have much better results.
Given my limited understanding of photography that is not really possible with small sensor sizes. Phones can achieve that using computational photography, but I don't think it's possible using optics on webcams.
Yes, optical depth-of-field is only possible with reasonably big sensor sizes and wide-open lens.
Reportedly, Huawei P40 Pro has an IMX700 sensor with the 1/1.33" diagonal. I didn't run the numbers for it, but it is big enough that with a bright lens it will produce bokeh.
> It's easy to buy some "random" sensor that was around for years and most certainly has "meh" quality by today's standards, but we need a good one, with good dynamic range, HDR capabilities and low-light performance.
So maybe it's a matter of time until these "good" sensors reach the open market, can be bought in smaller quantities and become commoditised. Then, we may see a good upmarket webcam.
Seconded, to a degree. It seems most people's workspaces are just very dimly lit. Of course, modern hypersensitive sensors from DSLRs are immune to this.
I use a relatively simple and old Logitech (C720 I believe) as webcam, and when I am in calls, I point my desk light straight at my face from just atop the webcam. This alone increases the image quality by an order of magnitude. If I would do more videoconferencing (currently only an hour or so per day, mostly with my own team) I would probably invest in a better light setup and a microphone, before I would think about upgrading my camera. Most small cheapish sensors do absolutely fine, given enough photons to work with.
Oh lightning is definitely the largest real-life factor.
I definitely cut my colleagues some slack here since many literally had to set up a home office out of nowhere.
Some had to go to the basement (and CFL lights + webcams = blergh), others just had to cram themselves into whatever corner of the house (thus also badly lit).
Yeah, and I certainly don't want to hassle anyone who hasn't set up a perfect video studio for calls in their house. On the other hand, after 9 months I do sometimes feel a bit of frustration for the folks who are still perfectly backlit from a window rather than hanging some fabric over it.
Yeah a co-worker with a Surface Book (not sure the exact model) has by-far the best video quality I've seen on work calls. In general, I actually find built-in laptop cams to look much better than the typical external webcam. They're still not great, but entry-level external webcams are just atrocious.
They are mediocre at best, owners say. I know some people that have one they use as secondary cameras (for multi-angle setups), but they bought it first, got disappointed and bought something else, this is the path.
I own an old Pro 9000 and it's still respectable. Only its FPS is a little low but, it was the king of the hill when I bought it.
As I've looked now, it seems that they discontinued ones with Zeiss lenses. The ones with Zeiss lenses were both low light and clarity monsters for their size.
Their highest model is Brio Pro with 3D sensing it seems. I need to see its performance. However Logi says it has a real glass lens so it shouldn't be a slouch.
Nevertheless, it's not fair to compare a lentil sized sensor with a Full 35mm, last gen mirrorless.
I've also investigated this quite deeply. As I'm sure most of us know, the main problems with 'webcams', either the built-in ones or USB ones that you perch on top of your monitor, are the lens size, and the CCD/CMOS image sensor size. Manufacturers spouting specs like '4k' are deliberately misleading the public if the sensor and/or the lens aren't also upgraded.
The only cost-viable methods to get 'broadcast quality' imagery for streaming/recording right now is to buy a second hand DLSR or mirrorless camera that has 'clean' HDMI out that works without the camera auto-shutting down after X amount of time. There are a few sites out there that list the preferable models[1]. I've got a couple of old Canon DSLRs (That don't do clean HDMI) and a load of lenses, so I've been watching Ebay for a newer model Canon DSLR that I can afford. The lowest cost Canon DSLR body I've seen with unrestricted clean HDMI or that can take the Magic Lantern[2] firmware is about £150.
However... You also need a HDMI-to-USB dongle. This converts the cameras HDMI output into a standard USB Webcam input. I've already got an Elgato CamLink[3] (bought for a different reason a couple of years ago), but you can get cheap China knockoffs for about £15, I don't know how good they are though. My Camlink cost WAY more than that, so I have my doubts about the knockoff quality.
Finally, you need good audio capture that importantly is in sync with the picture. The HDMI to USB conversion adds a tiny delay to the image which can put your audio out of sync if you are using a standard USB microphone. Good software like OBS[4] can correct for this though.
I have a similar setup but don't you find the latency to be bad? At least it's not good enough for video calls IMO. It's fine for streaming to an audience or recording.
With random chinese knock-off and GoPro 3, I had a latency of 10-11 frames when doing 60 fps stream.
It was usable for video calls, but I had problems with reliability (old battery in Gopro, and even if it was permanently connected to power source, it charged only when I turned it on -- which usually was when I wanted to have a call).
> you can get cheap china-knockoffs for about £12, I don't know how good they are.
They are so-so. Well, they are much-much better than any webcam, of course, but 1080p is almost the same as 720p on them. So as a budget thingie it'll work, but Elgato's adapter is much better, of course.
You're right, I watched this youtube video on an expensive brand name item vs several chinese knockoffs and they had the same internals -- but it probably wasn't the Camlink then.
Can't find the video atm, or remember what product it did show, but it was posted in the last 2-3 months and it concerned a similarly on-demand item -- and the "repackaging" brand was respected by creators...
Well, because they don’t have enough processing power I guess? IDK, it’s hot all the time and image quality is lower than what I can get from a camera SD card.
Great comment. Another few things to add to this if you are going for more broadcast quality rather than just Zoom calls:
- The lens you use if crucial. A nice and fast prime portrait lens (20-50mm f1.4 or something) will make a huge difference with indoor light and give you nice bokeh/blurred background.
- Good quality lighting is essential. El Gato have a good, but again expensive, key light you can use as your primary source of light, but you might need side-lights and back-lights too.
The cheap USB-HDMI is perfectly viable for using it as a webcam. Qualitywise you won't notice any difference through a highly compressed Zoom/Teams/Skype video. They can output 1080p30 or 720p60, which is again mostly irrelevant in the webcam situations.
I got the CamLink 4k, for use with a 4K camera (Sony AX33). Unfortunately, the HDMI out is only 1080P. So yeah while it works it doesn't feel like much of an upgrade over my aging Logitech C910.
I use a similar setup with a Panasonic GH5 I already had, but I bought one of those €15 Chinese HDMI capture USB UVC cards [1]. These work surprisingly well, and I've had zero issues using them for ~4 hours back-to-back Zoom meetings on my MBP. They've also received some good reviews on YouTube [2].
For audio, I use my Airpods. Great setup for meetings. Latency is good enough IMO.
Is this related to newer firmware or so? Because I have a gopro and the usb stream quality is only very low, compared to the HD recording facilities of these devices. If you browse the web for this, you will find (again, as in the threads here) the recommendation to use a HDMI-to-USB converter to capture the high quality HDMI stream a gopro can emit.
Finally made an account, just to reply to this. With newer Canon DSLR bodies you can use the Canon Webcam Utility[1] to directly get the video feed show up as a webcam, with just a USB cable.
I've been using the EOS R as my webcam with the RF 35mm F1.8 lens and it's working pretty great. I just hook it up with the USB-C cable and it shows up as a webcam.
The only annoyance that I haven't been able to get around yet is switching batteries. There's a Kickstarter project[2] for a battery that is hot-swappable, but among those features it also allows you to just use the power while plugged in, which I'm eager to try out.
I haven't tested the audio quality of the camera, so I can't say much about that. I've always just used my headset. I would expect it to be somewhere between meh and ok-ish. Of course you could invest in a proper mic plugged into the Camera[3].
I have it set up on a tripod behind my desk. One thing I have been considering is getting some kind of a monitor arm style setup for the Camera, but so far I haven't found such a product.
The setup of course is quite expensive depending on the Camera, but I already had the camera and tripod since I do photography as a hobby, so I was pleasantly surprised when Canon came out with the webcam utility.
Is it worth it? Probably not if you just want something that works all the time. I mostly use the camera to take photos, so I have to re-mount it every time I come back from shooting, and keep the batteries charged, etc. but people do notice and it's fun to see their reactions and getting accused of being a YouTuber every once in a while.
Fuji does something similar with their cameras. I can use their webcam software and get clean video output when I connect my Xt3 via usb to my pc or laptop. No need to purchase extra unnecessary dongles.
Yeah, I ended up trading in my old XT1 and picked up a used XT3 at a great price which helped. It's frustrating that not all models are supported though.
I know a couple people who are doing the DSLR or mirrorless to HDMI->USB thing. The results are indeed nice. But, to be honest, I have a Logitech 920 webcam and some decent lighting and that handles even making video recordings pretty well. "Can't buy" seems like a stretch.
And for anything I'm streaming I'm frankly more likely to have issues because my Internet upload sputters than anything to do with the camera. And with the Logitech webcam attached to my monitor, the whole thing "just works." If I had a newer model of Canon, I might have tried it but as it is I'd need to buy a converter.
To mount a camera on my desk, I'm about to purchase this "Neewer Tabletop Light Stand", and a mini ball head with standard 1/4 inch screw for angle adjustment.
I can't vouch for it yet, but hope it arrives and does the job. There's other similar products in other sizes by other brands.
What resolution does it produce? My Sony α6100 yields only 1024×576, which is not great, though still better than any laptop webcam at 1920×1080, or mostly even a phone or tablet front-facing camera at 1920×1080.
(The Sony α6100 is also quite happy to run on USB power indefinitely, no fancy battery arrangement needed. I’ve used it thus for multi-hour webcam sessions, and plugged into a wall charger for multi-hour recordings, where its battery would otherwise be depleted after about 100 minutes.)
Another thing to be aware of when using fancy cameras like this is the latency: you’ll get added latency of 100–400ms, which is easily into the disconcerting zone if audio and video are out of sync by that much, so you may need to do things like add a corresponding delay on the audio, if that’s connected to the computer directly (which will give much lower latency). OBS Studio can do this. I don’t yet have an HDMI capture card, so I’m not certain about it, but the impression I’ve received is that latency will be much lower with a decent capture card than the USB/PTP approach, though still probably higher than your webcam.
I'm not actually sure what resolution gets passed through the USB cable. I would assume it's either native resolution or at least 1080. But to be fair I'm mostly recording in 720p 50fps, since the 4k is cropped with the EOS R and I felt more fps is better for webcam footage (the other modes are capped at 30fps (25?) or have a crop). Besides, people don't need to see my face in more detail.
I haven't seen any noticeable delay in the footage so far, but now that you mention it, I'll definitely keep an eye on that.
The EOS R can draw some power from USB, but it doesn't seem to be nearly enough, or it doesn't work while recording or something.
> Many of the 4GB models sold were actually 8GB models with firmware locking them down.
Definitely not that; the concept was that you had a large amount of RAM you could advertise on the box, but the card was unable to use the RAM. You're describing the opposite, the card has a large amount of RAM that is advertised as a smaller amount.
Canon has webcam software for their DSLR's, although I couldn't get 1080p output out of my 750D. Quality was great, though.
You can also just use your phone's main camera, the quality is up there with rather expensive webcams (even for midrange phones these days), add some better lighting and you're set.
Any idea if the EOS M is supported for this? Last I checked Magic Lantern had no webcam type functionality but that was ages ago. If it does that's a pretty great webcam for like £100
RE those chinese knockoff dongles, I got one for £8 off ebay, use it for Pi Zero stuff occasionally and the lag isn't bad at all tbh. I'd guess somewhere between 250ms and 500ms but it maybe gets worse at larger resolutions.
I have an EOS M and it works ok. I had to install a different version of Magic Lantern to get it to not auto shut off, and generally a lot of poking around in the menus. You can get battery replacement AC adapters quite cheaply and my cheap HDMI->USB works fairly well. Lag is not a problem but it introduces black bars on the left and right and in Google Meet my feed is horizontally squashed. Other video apps the picture is fine though.
Just to add my own experience, I have a friend who had the Elgato Link and it died. He decided to give a $15 amazon one a try and he said it works "just as good" as the Elgato one. So I then bought my own $15 one (having never used Elgato before) and I can also say that it does the job.
I don't know how to further qualify it, you expect it to convert HDMI into USB and it does it. The resulting quality is amazing. So it performs its function.
> The only cost-viable methods to get 'broadcast quality' imagery for streaming/recording right now is to buy a second hand DLSR or mirrorless camera
Erm, no. Camo Studio with iPhone XS I am now using has DSLR-awesome picture, above any webcam on the market. And iPhone's BPM for camera sensor and ISP is probably in 10s of dollars. I want to buy this from kickstarter yesterday :).
Sony recently added support for webcam-over-usb to a lot of their cameras, apparently. And they are known for video quality and good lenses. So that’s $700-800 for a very good camera (new) that also works as webcam.
Yes, my 5100 (which is basically a more compact and software-limited 6000) also not included, but it seems to be a hardware limitation -- e.g. live view over USB is also ont supported on these cameras, and live view over wifi is rather crappy.
Same for Nikon and Canon, works reasonably well. None of the software supports audio, so you need a different mic (e.g. built into your laptop, external USB or on headphones).
I know they are getting long in the tooth but I wish Sony would do something with the NEX cameras. Latest firmware release was v1.03 released a year or two after they released the camera. Feels like Sony has completely abandoned them.
Sadly, the software is quite terrible. Last I checked, it only did 720p. Even an entry-level Sony at that $700-800 price range outclasses what the software can do by a long shot.
So there's no way to make use of high-end Sony gear for mind-blowing webcam quality, since the software is a huge bottle neck. Very disappointing and a missed opportunity (not to mention Sony was months behind Canikon and others with their software release).
My entry-level Canon DSLR (EOS 550D) can stream over USB, although it's not "plug and play", at least not on Linux. To make Chrome detect it as a webcam I need to go through gphoto2 -> ffmpeg -> v4l2loopback pipeline.
Owner of a Logitech Brio 4K here. The quality is terrible just like this article mentions and I would have happily spent the money elsewhere if I had options.
I used to have a tiny Canon digital camera in 2003 that had better quality than this.
The article doesn't really go into a lot of depth about which Logitech cameras they looked at. I've got the Brio (https://www.logitech.com/en-gb/product/brio) and it seems pretty good to me.
If you are looking to use an iPhone camera for streaming/Video conferencing camo (https://reincubate.com/camo/) works well.
The Brio's price isn't purely on the camera quality, a decent chunk of that price was the integration with Windows Hello. Now, of course, that doesn't matter if you're not using Windows, but the market it seems designed to cater to , is Windows users.
I have used phones with obs.ninja to stream the camera output to OBS over the local network and then send that to conference applications with OBS's virtual camera plugin.
It sounds janky (and it kinda is) but compared to some of the client/server app pairs I'd messed with earlier, it works more reliably. One plus is that I don't need to install anything on my phone since it just uses WebRTC in the browser to send the cam/mic feeds to OBS.
Of course, even once you get it set up on a tripod and pointed at your face, you will want to turn down screen brightness and keep it plugged in. It works and it works well, but your phone may get warm and drain some battery if you are using it for hours at a time. In the end I consider it a good backup option (used it when I forgot my webcam at another location) but I prefer the ease of a dedicated camera if I have the option.
The reason you can’t buy a good webcam is the same reason you can’t buy a high quality monitor outside of LG’s unreliable apple collab.
The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it.
Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GRT46782-WT” as an extra f-you to the user.
They don’t care about you because they have no ongoing relationship with you, and their executives mistakenly see their own products as commodities.
Combine this with the fact that most home users don’t care about good quality or even know what it is, and you have the current situation.
A friend once described the peripheral market as “Assholes selling crap to idiots.”
I used to have a two-monitor setup with a Dell (? not sure) and an Eizo, both using the exact same panel. I started with one monitor and then got the Eizo. The difference in picture quality and eye comfort was absolutely jaw-dropping. Dell looked and felt like a complete junk in comparison.
Make what you will of this, but it's not just a panel per se, it's also how it's integrated and used in the whole product.
Didn't know about this company but looking at their history here[1], they used to sell under the brand name Nanao in the US. Nanao made great monitors with consistent high reviews.
That seems a bit drastic but I agree with the sentiment and would also include laptops. Maybe I'm wrong since I didn't check all hardware but Apple still seem to be the only ones that have rigid quality controls, make sure parallel parts are parallel, mechanical parts stand a reasonable amount of movements. (At least as long they are not testing a new "innovation" like butterfly keyboards... ;)) That said, I buy stuff used if I cannot buy the high quality version. It falls apart anyway, this way there's no reason to be upset and it's better for the environment.
If you want to go bargain basement yes. If not, get an XPS or a Thinkpad (of the 'pro' series) and you'll have great hardware. Of course there will always be someone who finds something to complain about, but overall, these are fantastic machines.
Thing is, people complaim about there not being high quality gear, but when someone then makes it, they balk at the price. Yes people, a great laptop will cost you $3000.
Dell used to have good offerings, but all they seem to push now is the same 27” not-quite-4K 3,840 x 2,160 panels everybody else does. Now even the 22" inch LG ultrafine that used to be 4069 x 2304 is bigger at 24" and a worse 3,840 x 2,160. The only good option for mac is the 27 ultrafine 5k.
27 4k a bad size & resolution for the current computer market. Windows scaling looks like crap, and MacOS has to do more resource intensive 1.5 scaling (as opposed to native or pixel doubling mode) to look okay on these.
M1 might make this a mute point going forward, but the fact is at 27 inches, 5k is the only monitor that will look as good as the screen on your laptop while actually giving you more real estate.
But...that is 4K. It's what 4K is defined as, exactly 2x 1080p resolution in each dimension.
> Windows scaling looks like crap
I don't understand. 2x each dimension (so 1 pixel in the old resolution is 4 in the new) is, like, the easiest possible scenario when it comes to scaling in software.
200% (2 times each direction) scaling on 4K is the equivalent of 1080p. A 1080p 27 inch monitor has huuuge pixels for the normal viewing distance of a desktop monitor. 1080p is common on 23-24 inch displays. Therefore you are forced to use fractional scaling which is less then perfect.
Two groups have competing definitions. One isn't inherently correct.
I say this as someone who was "that guy" when it came to HD Radio: "It's not High Definition, it's Hybrid Digital!" even though that's exactly the confusion they were trying to encourage.
Arguing that this is misleading is a fool's errand, and only plays into things if you assume that the primary purpose of a "4K" screen somehow is inherently "to play back cinematic content", which... it's not.
While DCI 4K is a standard with 4,096 pixels of width, you’re correct that the HD standard (and therefore what is relevant to the discussion here) has always been UHD 4K and 3840 pixels wide.
DCI is relevant for movie industry professionals only, as these are the dimensions used for projection devices and (potentially) their content.
>But...that is 4K. It's what 4K is defined as, exactly 2x 1080p resolution in each dimension.
That's irrelevant though, except if we're talking about consuming movies fullscreen.
For a monitor I don't want 4K, I want insivible pixels at viewing distances, so hi-dpi.
I would also prefer no scaling for assets that are bitmap in nature. This ideally means pixel doubling (less cpu/gpu demanding and less fuzzy than fractional scaling).
This, for 27" and more, means higher resolution that 4K. I don't want to restrict myself to pixel-doubled 1920x1080 on my 27" or 32" monitor.
You do get nice DPI, but needlessly large buttons and other assets (compared to something closer to 5K).
I just completely don't understand your point. There's no misleading advertising here - the resolution is exactly as promised ,at the size promised....what's the problem? If the resolution isn't high enough for you....then buy one where it is? There are 5K monitors out there, maybe even 8K? Or just get a 4K one but in a smaller size?
>I just completely don't understand your point. There's no misleading advertising here - the resolution is exactly as promised ,at the size promised....what's the problem?
That would be relevant is my problem was false promises or misleading advertising.
But my problem is not
(a) "Monitors say they are 4K and they are not"
but:
(b) "Most monitors out there are BS-4K, but for the best quality/viewing comfort at their 27" and above diagonal they should rather be 5K, but most manufactures like Dell aren't bothered to produce at such a resolution and the few that do have prices to the skies".
>There are 5K monitors out there, maybe even 8K? Or just get a 4K one but in a smaller size?
Perhaps you've skiped through the thread?
My comment responds to (and agrees with) the sub-thread started by a parent commenter writing:
"Dell used to have good offerings, but all they seem to push now is the same 27” not-quite-4K 3,840 x 2,160 panels everybody else does.".
For me it's hard to believe that 4k on 27" is not enough, I use 1440p 27" 144Hz display as daily driver and barely see any pixels(usually with badly hinted fonts, and still not pixels, but uneven forms of letters), because I sit around one meter apart from it, and sitting closer makes me turn my head around too much, except when watching movies.
Yeah, same - 27" 1440p as a daily monitor for work and I have no issues with it. I have had a 27" 4K monitor for a while but it was just too small at 100% scaling, and at 150% scaling some things looked naff. Prefer the 1440p at that resolution.
>I have had a 27" 4K monitor for a while but it was just too small at 100% scaling, and at 150% scaling some things looked naff. Prefer the 1440p at that resolution.
That's what we say too. 27" 4K monitor is too small at 100% scaling, while too small at 50% scaling (pixel-doubling hi-dpi mode).
That's why the idea is to have a 5K at 50% scaling (so everything is pixel-doubled on each axis, and a pixel becomes 4 pixels, doubling the detail you see).
>For me it's hard to believe that 4k on 27" is not enough, I use 1440p 27" 144Hz display as daily driver and barely see any pixels
It's not just about "not seeing any pixels", and "barely see any pixels" is not the same as enjoying hi-res typography and fine detail.
27-inch 1440p monitor is about 108 ppi. That's hardly better from what we used in the 90s and 00s, dpi-wise. Sure, if you haven't used to hi-dpi it looks ok. But try using a 5K/27-inch monitor for a while and then go back to 1440p/27-inch to see the difference you miss.
Now, 4K hi-dpi (pixel doubled) on 27" is 1920x1080.
This makes pixels just fine and detail is great, but everything too large and cuts off screen space, as it's 33% less area than 1440p (which, I presume, you don't use pixel-doubled)
The solution is either 5K/27" (which gives you back the 1440p kind of screen space and UI control size PLUS hi-dpi), or using a non-doubled, fractional resolution, to overcome, (which is not optimal, looks fuzzier, and wastes cpu).
What matters for perception is angular resolution, not DPI. And 27" display covers more visual field that 17" from 90s, so you can and should sit further away from it. Once angle of perceived pixel is smaller than angular resolution of your eye, reducing pixel size only adds to the resolutions of shades you can show to the user in that area (closer to bpp increase, than dpi increase, because you can't see pixels anymore, but still can perceive irregularities of brightness on edges).
Wasn't the problem that 5K displays(or maybe it's just this specific one?) are notoriously difficult to make it work on windows? Last time I looked into getting one I found out that it just wouldn't work without getting a thunderbolt card for my AMD based system, or a DP 1.4 compatible gpu.
On the other hand, HDMI 2.1 can now support 8K@60hz, so maybe this is not an issue anymore.
I have an LG 28" 4K and while definitely isn't as nice as my iMac 27" 5K, it works well enough for coding (I'm primarily concerned about text rendering without visible pixels).
Not to the upthread specific claim that the resolution was “not quite 4K”, which is what the comment you are responding to addressed.
On the bigger issue, I don't really see the complaint. I have pretty good vision (corrected—to 20/15 or so—uncorrected is crap but I'm not coding without glasses/contacts) and honestly my 34” ultrawide at 3440x1440 is excellent for coding, and pretty much any other use. Now, would I prefer whatever resolution a 5K 16:9 would be when extended to 21:9? Or better a 4320p at the same aspect ratio? Sure, more pixels are always better. But does the sub-4K display look like crap or force bad sizes for controls? No.
>Sure, more pixels are always better. But does the sub-4K display look like crap or force bad sizes for controls? No.
Sure, I can work with a 3440x1440 34". Heck, I've worked with CGA monitors back in the day, and black and white (!) SUN Sparkstation monitors.
But, as you said, it's about looking better. "Doesn't look like crap" is a pretty low bar, no? For 2020, and after 10 years of hi-dpi phones and laptops, I expected better from monitor companies...
I'm using a Dell P2715Q (also 27 inch 4k); it looks fine. But... scaling? The point of having a gigantic 27 inch monitor is that you don't need to scale it. The only problem I do have with the monitor is that it makes me disable scaling on my 15" laptop screen, since there are annoying interactions when you have one screen with scaling active and one without.
> The point of having a gigantic 27 inch monitor is that you don't need to scale it
The point of using a High-DPI display is that you can use scaling without losing the screen real-estate. With 5K @ 27" you can get what looks like 1440p in physical UI element size, but with an increase in clarity, readability, and quality.
27 inch is a small monitor. But I agree, usable real estate comes first, then clarity (by way of scaling). So you want a genuinely large monitor (at least 40 inches) at 8K+.
In my experience, the High-DPI support of Windows 10 is excellent. I am using a 27" 3840x2160 screen set to 150% next to an old 24" 1920x1200 screen at 100%. Pretty much all modern applications seamlessly adapt to the pixel density of the screen they are currently running on without any interpolation.
Me too but with Samsung. I bought a cheapish 34-inch curved monitor that had great reviews, but it has almost as much light coming through gaps in the rear housing as the screen. Text looks like crap on its "not quite retina" resolution, especially when it's next to a retina macbook pro, although videos look very nice. I really do wish Apple would make a monitor more reasonably priced than the Pro Display XDR.
Unfortunately, you must select carefully any monitor that you purchase, and the cheapest models are unlikely to be good choices.
I am using 2 good Dell 4k monitors. One is 1-year old (U2720Q), but the other (UP2414Q) is more than 5-year old and it works as well as in the first day.
I don't buy a lot of computers, so this can change at any time without me noticing, but: I think there's basically two Dells. There's the Dell that sells the cheapest equipment you can buy. This Dell sucks as much as anyone else. Don't expect miracles. Then there's the Dell that sells upscale gear. This is usually pretty good, or at least has the ability to be pretty good. I have appreciated the ready access to service manuals and such, too.
I say this because it's unwise to hear that Dell has pretty good gear, then go to their site and buy the cheap stuff. It isn't necessarily any worse cheap stuff than anybody else, but it's not what people mean when they say Dell can have pretty good gear.
Purchased U2720Q after reading through a number of rave reviews and can definitely vouch for it. Excellent 4K image quality and works well with MacBook. It's only the monitor though, so no webcam or audio speakers.
You can check the refresh rate as follows. Open System Preferences, then click on Displays. There's a radio button, titled "Scaled". Option-click that radio button, and you'll see a pull-down menu, titled "Refresh Rate". It should be 60 Hz or higher.
Yeah, no. I have a 25" UltraSharp from them and it has a "fun" bug where it advertises to the system that it refreshes at 59.95hz but in fact refreshes at exactly 60hz, which leads to the monitor(!!!) Freezing for a frame every 20 seconds or so, it's absolutely infuriating in games and movies, and I only found out how to fix it by modifying windows drivers and forcing it to refresh at solid 60hz despite what the monitor advertises. But of course you can't do that with something like a PS4 connected to it. Would never buy another dell, thanks.
I was surprised to find out the Ultrasharp series includes monitors with 6-bit IPS panels. Rather noticeable, even in desktop use. Previous to that I often told people to "just buy an Ultrasharp of a size you like".
Dell has very nice adjustable stands, but panels are mixed bag. eg. P2416D (1440p) is fine, but P2415Q (4K) has quite bad ghosting. So annoying I had to disable browser smooth scrolling.
> Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GRT46782-WT” as an extra f-you to the user.
That is also a strategy to prevent product comparisons and unbiased reviews. They quickly cycle through product names and sell a certain product no. only in a limited geographical area.
Doesn't matter if a consumer org/magazine/someone on reddit/your friend/etc. does a review. The product will be out of market by the time you read it, or will not be sold in your country. The similar looking product you find on the shelf might be the same, or it might have something completely different inside.
The geo-locking of model numbers is one of the vilest practices I've seen. I don't see it going away for any reason, it'll only be possible to combat by intl. legislation... but how do you even legislate that?
Legislation can mandate the conspicuous publication of a clear indication of the difference between models.
Now, companies can of course lie about this, in theory, but that's a bit like car manufacturers lying w.r.t. emission tests - possible, but you tend to get caught (cf. the recent Volkswagen case) so it's probably not worth it.
Here’s my lazy take: the best governing body to start petitioning about this is probably the EU. If I remember correctly, they already have some of the most consumer-friendly laws on the planet, e.g. w.r.t. planned obsolescence.
I don't see it going away as there are valid reasons for doing so for small but important market differences.
If you're making some device (for example, washing machine) which has a power cord and a knob for some mode selection with writing on it, then for the exact same internals you need different models where the power cords are different (USA, UK, Germany and Japan each require different plugs) and the writing on the device is printed in different language and with customizations such as Celsius vs Fahrenheit. You can't sell the exact same laptop model in every market because the keyboard layouts are different. Etc.
Just append the region identifier to the model number. Internally they clearly need to track the products separately, and you don’t want people getting the wrong product accidentally.
> then for the exact same internals you need different models where the power cords are different
The IEC 60320 connectors were specified for exactly that reason. Honestly, I don't get why these were not made mandatory for all kinds of appliances. There are even locking variants available if vibration is of concern.
> The IEC 60320 connectors were specified for exactly that reason. Honestly, I don't get why these were not made mandatory for all kinds of appliances. There are even locking variants available if vibration is of concern.
I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence but you can't use most appliances made for Europe in America and vice versa. Most electronic appliances depend on the input voltage and supplying 240V can easily cause a fire. That is true for almost all electronic appliances (water heater, fan, washing machine, etc) but not true most "computer related devices" such as a monitor, PSU, charger. Since those devices already operate on a much lower DC Voltage, they often have transformers (not sure if that's the right word), that can scale down the current from either 120 or 240. [0]
That being said, a mandatory IEC connector (and it's variances) would help a lot to cut down unnecessary e-waste. Instead of throwing away a device because the cable is damaged, you can easily order a replacement that is around $2 and high quality, instead of relying third party cords that might have bad wiring from a non reputable brand. The reason they are not mandatory, though, is that most companies like to have their own connectors so that you either overpay for it or just buy a new device.
[0]: You should still always read the specs on the input current for the device though. It is dangerous to rely on the fact that similar devices can operate at 120V/240V because yours might not. You can usually see the specs on the website/packaging or usually near the input plug.
My cheap hair drier has a switch to select the input voltage (you need to turn the dial with a screwdriver). For many devices it shouldn't be too hard to make it possible to use them both with 110V and 230V, even more so for already complex and expensive machines like a washing machine.
The biggest problem might be the amount of power a device can draw. Half the voltage gives you half the power, which is the reason why e.g. kettles are much less useful in the US.
For resistive loads (like the heating element in a kettle), half the voltage gives you a quarter of the power. (Electric kettles work just fine on 110/120; they just haven't been a thing in the US. They've been ubiquitous in Canada, although they've been pushed aside somewhat by drip coffee makers. You just need a lower-resistance heating element than would be practical with 220/240.)
Electric kettles in the US typically are 1000W-1500W, while in Europe any kettle is 2000W-2800W. This is simply because houses are typically wired with outlets for 10A-16A everywhere, regardless of grid voltage.
That ofc makes electric kettles much less useful in countries with 110V grid. It also keeps stovetop kettles relevant in these counties, since stoves don't suffer power limitations.
Houses in the US are typically wired with 240v split phase, so nothing is stopping a mad lad from installing a 240v outlet in their kitchen, and running a kettle from it.
This just seems so crazy, to think of 120V. I haven't seen a house here with 120V in my entire lifetime. It sounds like a relic from the past, like the kind of thing people used back when they rode horses.
Hmm, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean. 120V is the standard household plug in North America. If you're in, say Europe, I don't imagine you'd see a house with 120V as IIRC, 220V is the standard, and you generally have to connect to your local grid. I think the parent's post about 120V was about international devices that may have to work in North America, for instance.
> I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence but you can't use most appliances made for Europe in America and vice versa. Most electronic appliances depend on the input voltage and supplying 240V can easily cause a fire.
Here in America "electronic appliances" would imply the tech/gadget category like TVs or computers where "electrical appliances" would be the big household equipment. Just to clarify in case that confuses anyone else like it did me, it kind of reverses the meaning of what you're trying to say.
Anyways, at least with relatively modern gear you can generally assume that anything with batteries or USB ports runs off a switch-mode power supply, and all but the cheapest of those will happily accept pretty much anything resembling residential power.
Anything with a large motor or any kind of resistive element (lighting, heating) on the other hand is almost certainly built for a specific variety of electrical service and will likely require modification to accept anything else without releasing the magic smoke.
The stuff in between those categories, well, RTFLabel. Outside of audio and ham radio gear I'd imagine most DC stuff runs on switch mode power supplies these days.
I wonder if there are regulatory reasons that prevent IEC connectors being used in e.g. washing machines. I guess getting a water ingress protection IP rating might be harder if you have an IEC connector. The lack of an IP rating might prevent you from then installing the appliance in, say, a bathroom (depends presumably on country-specific regulation). This in turn might limit your sales.
Even if that's the case, the appliances should be easy to repair for a competent person and if necessary allow the cable be replaced.
> you need different models where the power cords are different
That should only affec the power brick, and hence the overall SKU, not the notebook itself.
> the writing on the device is printed in different language and with customizations such as Celsius vs Fahrenheit.
What writing is there on notebooks except for keyboard labeling and the product name? The certification label on the back already shows all labels for all countries.
> You can't sell the exact same laptop model in every market because the keyboard layouts are different.
Keyboard layouts are somewhat orthogonal to regions. I'm German, but use US-layout keyboards.
Eben Apple sells different iPhone versions on different countries. It’s mostly frequency bands but Chinese iPhones have a second sim slot instead of an eSim as far as I remember.
It becomes even more unawesome when the same product identifier actually has different parts in it.
When looking for a nice display a couple of years ago I clearly remember reading about some that were promising yet getting confoundingly variable reports, until some tore their hardware apart and revealed that the internals were different.
That's exactly what I have been telling folks about Apple vs. other laptops. Apple only has a handful of laptop models for sale and they don't even change that much across generations. Furthermore they seem to exhibit hardly any manufacturing variations within each generation. That means that if there is a problem (and yes, there were a few big ones), everyone is affected the same, everyone is screaming about it, the majority of customers are not corporate customers, and eventually a class action lawsuit is set up and Apple will often (grudgingly) offer to fix/replace broken units for free, like what happened with Staingate or the Butterfly switches.
Now compare that to buying a model from Dell or Lenovo, where the current product lineup is already 2-3x the size, the models are sometimes discontinued, sometimes changed significantly between refreshes, often refreshed annually, oftentimes configurable in a meaningful way (1080p non-glossy vs. 1080p privacy screen vs. 4k glossy vs. 4k touch screen), sometimes just available in certain geographical locations and they exhibit more intra-generation manufacturing differences. The chances of finding other folks with your exact same permutation (and same day of the week it was manufactured) of these options are much smaller, so you stand less of a chance of getting something recognized as a fundamental manufacturing issue which should be covered for free by the vendor. Plus, even if you can get repair/replacement for free, you still fear that your specific model has a flaw, so you might only get lucky after having it replaced 2-3 times.
I've seen it happen with Dell and Lenovo where folks sent back brand-new units repeatedly because the first one had overheating issues with the SSD, the second one had really noisy capacitors and the third one had a display cable that wasn't seated correctly. At least with Apple I know that if I'm getting screwed, I'm in the same boat with everyone else ;)
Apple has it's fair share of issues, and it's often a pain to diagnose them remotely without the user looking up the specific model code which isn't all to easy to identify. They often don't change any visual appearance and certainly don't distinguish between different models in their marketing. It's easy for me to look up what common issues Lenovo's had with a specific T series model, but if I'm buying a used MacBook, it's hard to know what I should be searching for until the seller has told me the exact model number. And even still, there's variance between machines of the same model because sometimes different panels and SSDs are used for the same model number.
> without the user looking up the specific model code which isn't all to easy to identify
My 7 year old macbook has "A1465" written in perfectly legible text on the bottom. "About this mac" has the serial number two clicks away, which is convertable online to exact specifications.
My old laptop from 2006 had nc8430 written close to the screen hinges. The new one from 2014 has ZBook at the bottom left of the keyboard. Maybe it's one of the differences between $300 laptops and $1000+ ones.
That last paragraph is indicative of terribly quality and quality control.
Fortunately that hasn't been my experience with the recent Dell, Asus, Lenovo and HP laptops I've purchased. Each have been without any issues at all.
But my point here is that... it sounds like you're arguing against consumer choice. You can have your Model T in any color as long as it is black. And this is Apple's model. You can have your product in any configuration as long as it's the one configuration Apple offers. Apple tried this, actually, for a long time. The iPhone started out with extremely limited configurations and only more recently branched out beyond 2. In a way, I agree with the confusion, because I know now I can't just say "Macbook" because there is at least one Macbook without suffix, at least one Air, and the Macbook Pro has a myriad of configurations - different sizes, with or without touch bar, etc.
Why did Apple start offering more options? Because that's what consumers want. Dell exists exactly because they were the first big PC manufacturer to accept configuration orders, and then (relatively) quickly manufacturer and deliver those custom configurations to users. Consumers want this. As Apple's share of the market grows, they will have to meet the consumers where they are - or their market share will be limited by the limitations they place upon themselves.
Now, I agree that, for example, the variety of models between different geographic locations is - if nothing else - annoying. Especially when nicer options aren't offered in your location! But I don't agree with the offered example of getting bad replacements. Maybe buying one laptop a year isn't enough to experience these issues.
Actually from what I've heard from Linux distro maintainers (mainly from Fedora) it seems like Apple actually does quite substantial hardware revisions internally without telling anyone as users report that their MacBook 20XX does not work with a Linux distro while another users report that on the paper the same device of the same model year works fine.
IIRC the estimate was about 4 hardware revisions per year.
This really complicates the already limited attempts to run Linux distros on the Mac hardware as users simply can't reliably tell if their hardware will be compatible beforehand.
On the MacOS side they likely paper over the differences, quirks and bugs in firmware and drivers, so the user does not native anything and they can change the hardware underneath as needed.
That raises a very interesting point: The highway system. Who owns it? Who can “attach” to it? What you said made me think about line access and comcast using its mass to keep out Google Fiber etc. I really, REALLY do not want that battle to take place over roads.
Except what you said is not at all true. Dell, hp, and Lenovo have a whole bunch of different models for different laptops. They're also very customizable, so the model may be slightly different if you want different hardware. But you're arguing for less consumer choice. Dell, hp, and Lenovo do not swap models around to try to fool consumers. Quite the contrary; you can search a very old model number and find exactly what you're looking for on their site.
They all cater a different need. I donated few laptops to a school in India. These were some of the cheapest models Lenovo had to offer. Lenovo Dell etc. cater to a much wider range of market that apple does not even bother to target. You are basically comparing Tesla with Camry and upset that Camry is not as good.
On other hand Lenovo X1 carbon is a pretty solid high end laptop along with LG gram. Former specifically is far more customizable, repairable, upgradable and also around 30% cheap while being more powerful.
It also makes it possible for big electronic stores to give price guarantees as the webshop undercutting them has monitors with a different product number.
Tip: try to find out what panel the monitor you are buying has. Then look the panel up in a database like panelook.com. This way you can get the specifications without any marketing bullshit.
It also works the other way round. Find a panel that is good enough for your eyes, then see if there's a mass marketed display with that panel. If you are adventurous, you can grab "DIY" or "assembled" monitors with the panels on Chinese e-Commerce sites.
Yes. Consider most people only care about the resolution, sometimes manufacturers substitute a lower cost panel that is inferior in say, gamut or response time.
Isn't there a chance that the assembled Chinese monitors actually use second grade panels that the big makers wouldn't accept?
I remember getting a 27-inch 1440p display from a Chinese manufacturer for really cheap back in high school. It should've been the exact same panel as was in Apple's iMacs. However, the were some quality issues with it long term and it's definitely suffering from burn-in that I don't think the iMacs suffer from.
That was the case with noname Korean/Chinese monitors a decade ago that used high quality IPS panels found in Apple and other professional displays - they used rejected panels, which had various issues (mostly dead pixels afaik).
Yeah, a cheap 1440p as a student was certainly a great thing when they were still rather expensive, even though the base was wobbly as all hell and it later developed some issues.
That brings back memories :). I ended up buying one of these and apart from some weird quirks (only wanted to work over DVI and not with an HDMI-DVI dongle), the image quality was great and so cheap (for the time).
I'm reading this on an IPS panel I bought a decade ago from South Korea. Works great, but with a bit of light bleed in the top left hand corner. I paid extra to have one without dead pixels.
Yep! Still using the "Auria" monitor that I purchased at Microcenter back around 2012. Cost maybe $300-350 for a 2560x1440 IPS monitor at a time when you were easily looking at $500-800+ for a similar panel from a name brand.
Now, if you were a professional, that quality control and warranty (not to mention better ergonomics, etc.) were easily worth the added cost, but for just "some dude who liked playing video games and doing some photo/video editing", it was a great bang for the buck.
I still use this as my main monitor and haven't noticed any dead pixels (if there are any, they're so hard to see that they may as well not be there). It's not the best monitor out there and you can probably get a better 2560x1440 display for less now, but at the time it was a big improvement over the cheap 1920x1080 display that quickly got demoted to secondary (and has now been loaned indefinitely to a teacher friend who needed a second monitor to plug into her laptop for online classes).
Heyo another Auria user here! I actually recently upgraded to a Dell 4k screen, but that Auria served me great for several years and is my secondary setup screen. Got it used for $150, amazing value there!
Bought mine on Amazon for $400 six years ago. It stopped showing a picture but I get a white flicker at the base of the screen every few seconds.
I could (and probably should) investigate fixing it but it was easier to buy a 2160p Philips for $240. Only issue with the Philips is it doesn't have a VESA mount and it would be difficult to make some sort of jury-rigging work.
I run them attached to a Mac Mini and use the DisplayPort on the monitor. At one point I believe HDMI (or maybe just the Mac) wouldn't do 1440p. I'm copying stuff from an Intel Mac mini to an M1 and I'm able to toggle back and forth using HDMI for the Intel just fine.
Actually iMacs and their display counterparts in the LG ultrafine series are known to suffer from burn-in.
Google iMac or LG ultrafine “image retention” or “ghosting.” I have no idea what percent of displays are affected, but there’s enough threads about it on Reddit and macrumors to make me think it’s pretty common.
FWIW Planar makes 27" monitors that use the same 5K and 2K panels used in the iMacs, down to the bonded glass surface. The Planar IX2790 and PXL2790MW respectively. I have the PXL2790MW and if you look closely you can see the glass peephole for the nonexistent iSight Camera. Not sure if it's B grade panels that Apple rejected but it's flawless, maybe I just got lucky.
I have a couple of these from 2014-15, and they are very, very nice (and as a plus, they matched the dpi of some macbook models at the time, at least). One surprise: they were very heavy compared to other, similarly-specced monitors.
The only issue I had was coil whine coming from a choke on the power supply inverter board. I resolved this by cracking open the monitor and encasing the choke in two part epoxy.
It is hit or miss. I own two, the one is flawless (apart from the retention which is the norm apparently in LG displays). The other I have exchanged it 2 times and still have issues with many many dead pixels. So in my case 3/4 were bad apples.
Yes, so often I ask if the seller can provide a "perfect" display, that is, without any artifacts on the display. This adds 100-200 CNY to the price.
There's a Chinese panel manufacturer called BOE that makes products competitive with some of the lower-end Samsung / LG panels.
I got one 15.6" 2160p external display with a BOE panel that offers 100% sRGB coverage. I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
Now if anyone can find a source of 55" 4K OLED panels, that would be the one ultimate display. Combine it with a VBO driver board and it becomes better than any smart TVs.
>I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about?
The customer interprets colours differently than you, the customer sees colours differently than you, and the customer is using a monitor that almost assuredly displays the colours differently than yours. And the world continues to turn.
I enjoy having a high quality display for all kinds of reasons. Better comfort while programming, accurate colour representation while looking at photos, having a good sense of what things might look like for others (accurate colour means you might be the middle ground of your users experiences, inaccurate colour means you can’t be sure at all), and otherwise, if I’m going to spend a lot on something I’ll own for half a decade I would prefer to get something accurate. The price difference isn’t sufficient enough to justify saving a little bit to have a poor colour experience.
> accurate colour means you might be the middle ground of your users experiences, inaccurate colour means you can’t be sure at all
Having a setup with multiple cheap monitors is imho really underrated for design and development. Moving something between screens and seeing clear contrast disappear, or see pleasing color choices turn ugly can be eye opening.
Agreed! Back when I was in music school, they brought in Tony Bonjiovi[0], a well-known record producer at the time. He talked about how the ultimate test of any recording was to copy it to a cassette, take it out to the engineer's Camaro with 1 broken speaker and see how it sounded there. If it sounded good there, it would sound great anywhere else.
I don't think the audiophile comparison makes really sense here (and I like to mock audiophiles more than most) simply because display technology still has a long way to go before it reaches the level of audio when it comes to "bang for your buck".
CD quality audio is less than 1 megabit per second per channel, uncompressed. HDR (10 bits per component) 4K60fps 4:2:2 video is around 10Gbit per second of data.
Of course data bandwidth is only a small part of the problem of correctly reproducing an analog signal, but it gives you the orders of magnitude we're dealing with.
I currently use a cheap ASUS 4K display. It's more good enough for coding, but I wouldn't trust it for any sort of graphical work. The viewing angle is pretty bad, so depending on what part of the screen I'm looking at I see colors differently, and some gradients become more or less visible depending on which part of the screen they're on. Contrast is pretty bad, making even some videogame display poorly: depending on the location and time of day contrast seems always too high or too low.
You can buy a good sub $100 pair of earphones and a sub $50 DAAC and they'll be good enough to do 99% of any audiophile work you could ever want to do reliably. If you want to do serious graphics work without having to constantly adjust for your display you'll have to go for something a lot more expensive than an entry-level monitor.
> And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about?
I'm a color blind person and even I can see a color difference between cheap displays that I have at work and an old EIZO one that I bought years ago at home.
I can more accurately diffrentiate between different colors/shades on my EIZO panel.
monitor image quality is quite a bit more objective than what audiophiles look for in high end audio equipment. sRGB defines a specific physical color that ought to be displayed for each RGB sequence. if you can get a very accurate display for <$1000 just by doing a bit of research, why wouldn't you?
A similar thing to audiophile is that better quality doesn't always mean improve QoL for just a consumer (not designer or similar use). Sometimes I think that it's happy if I satisfied with $100 headphones or cheap laptop display quality.
These differences are very clearly noticeable. I upgraded many years ago from a 72% sRGB to a 99% sRGB Dell IPS and everything looked much better. I just got the LG 27GN950 which is 95% DCI P3... I was mainly getting it for the 4k/144 with the P3 as a nice bonus (I already had 4k/60 on the Dell). Looking at the Dell, I was thinking that P3 might be nice to have but it wouldn't really matter much aside from photo editing - the colors on the Dell already looked great.
I just unboxed the new monitor 2 days ago. The richer color was immediately noticeable, and when I looked at some random photos I took with my phone recently I was blown away by just how red and green and yellow/blue things were. Like a completely new realm of color.
It's one of those things that you can't appreciate until you experience it (same going from the original 72% to 99% sRGB).
The Dell was $450 for 4k, 2.5 years ago. The new LG was $800, but you can find 60fps P3 4k monitors for around $500 these days iirc. If you're on Hacker News you probably use your computer a lot. Unless you're running low on cash, upgrading to a great monitor is worth it.
Seconded. I have 2 LG 27GN950-B's on my desk, and love the 27" 4K HDR @ 144Hz experience (at least on Catalina. Big Sur has completely broken DSC and will only do HDR @ 60, non-HDR @ 95).
Yeah, if you look into it, you'll find most monitors using the same panels from LG, AUO, Samsung or ChiMei, with some outliers.
When it comes to assembled monitors, the highest failure rate is in the power supply. The components used and the cooling/ventilation play a big part in that.
For monitors it is more than that. For a pretty expensive 144hz/1440p/gsync category that I researched a couple of years ago there were three options: acer, asus and viewsonic (and unavailable aoc). It turned out that asus, despite being a “better, much more money” brand, did a worse job of mounting the panel, so it had statistically worse backlight bleeding at one edge.
What's wrong with Asus installing alarms in their monitors? I learned the hard way being woken up in the middle of the night by a loud siren I couldnt locate the source as I wouldn't have expected it will come from a frikin monitor! There is no way to turn that off apart from physically powering it off and it happens totally random.
Oh, that’s amazing. I got curious and found this comment on youtube, sharing in case it may help or diagnose:
Battle Angel Sorry, not sure why I didn't share previously. So, I believe this is caused by using a non-HDMI cable with the audio out turned on. Either turn the audio in the display off completely in the settings, or use a new HDMI cable. The alarm is a result of the display trying to send an audio signal through a Displayport cable. Are those of you getting this alarm using Displayport cables? They do not pair audio with video, as HDMI does. I hope this fixes your problem.
It took me a while to find something matching those specs too. I got a couple of these when the price dropped below $300 and they're great. I had to watch a few PC Building deal Reddits to catch the deal.
...and if you're really adventurous, you can buy just the bare panel, get the backlight inverter and "scaler board" elsewhere, and build your own custom monitor. The "3663" seems to be a common model of scaler.
Another thing I find really annoying is when I browse a website and first have to choose a product line when I don't even know what the difference between the product lines are.
Right? Like "is this for home use, office use, or gaming?"
I guess I understand where they're coming from, when most potential customers would likely glaze over and click away if presented with a long list of specs and product numbers.
Still, it's always nice when they at least have a "show all products" link that takes me to exactly that. I want a full list that can be narrowed down with filters.
I spent 6 months learning about monitors before buying one for graphic design and the tldr version is: you buy from NEC or EIZO. The panel is one thing, but what sets them apart from the other ones are the electronics inside that drive the panel. And QC, the commodity brands tend to be very hit or miss.
I think it’s more of a “the market won’t pay for quality” problem. People won’t pay thousands of euros for a good monitor, so manufacturers have to slap together the parts available in bulk in order to reach price points people will pay. The LG 5K is a good example, because it is clearly compromised to reach a somewhat reasonable price point. From what I can tell the monitor market mostly exists to cater to the generic business monitor and pc gamer markets anyway, as those are the only parts still selling in volume.
Although I have to admit that I was equally frustrated when I wanted a good retina screen with 200-ish dpi to pair up with the mac mini I wanted to buy, only to conclude getting the 5K iMac instead was the most sensible option.
Apple is the most valuable company on earth right now, entirely due to their thesis that people will pay for quality hardware.
The “creator” market is much more profitable than the gamer market where kids only have as much as mom will allow them to spend (vs The tech workers, coders, designers, youtubers, etc that need high quality displays to make a living).
It’s why Apple is able to get insane 50% margins in many products. It’s crazy to me that the big Asian manufacturers don’t see the market opportunity in catering to this crowd.
In their minds you’re either an office drone using excel or a gamer who wants neon lights. Both of which are market segments with terrible margins.
There are tons of expensive monitors available that cater to the professional market. The whole premise is not based in reality. Apple simply has the highest mindshare among average products.
What does "proper resolution for MacOS" mean in this case? There are tons of 27" 4k that work fine in macOS in Retina mode and matches the medium tier iMac (their low end today is still 21.5" 1080p). Unless you declare everything below 5k subpar, I don't see where you're coming from.
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me at the moment, but a 27" 4K monitor will not match the pixel pitch of every other Mac -- screen elements appear larger when both are set at the same scaled resolution.
Yeah, to match the dot pitch apple is designing for, the 4K monitor would have to be more like 22 inches instead of 27. We know this since the 4K iMac is a 21.5 inch screen.
Basically, the ideal PPI of mac displays is a multiple of 110 PPI. So, for retina quality you need a display of roughly 220 PPI, which is what you get from 5K at 27 inch. A 27 inch 4K display is around 160 PPI. If you use that in 2x mode, things will appear too large. If you set it to scaled mode to make things appear the proper size, there are display artifacts (like shimmering when scrolling). In fairness, it's not super obvious unless you know what to look for. But if you're already spending money on a high end screen, why should you have to compromise?
That seems pretty outdated information, given that the OOTH default Retina scaling in MacBooks have been non-2x fractional since 2016 (1400x900 for the 13-inch's 2560×1600, 1680×1050 for the 15-inch 2800x1800).
What's extremely frustrating is that Apple makes an excellent 27" 5K monitor in a nice housing for $1800. The only problem is that it comes with an iMac...
So clearly, Apple could sell a monitor for about $1600, that would be perfectly compatible with Mac Pros, mac mini and as a secondary monitor for all the various MacBooks.
Maybe it's related to the reason why you can't use the 5k iMac as an external monitor. I can't remember where I found the sources, but the problem was that they essentially needed to video cards to drive the thing and making sure that both sides of the output looked identical was tricky and not something that an external source would be able to do.
IIRC it was an issue with the video connection. Nothing at the time could provide enough bandwidth to support 5K, so Apple had to cobble something together. With USB-C and TB3, that's no longer an issue.
I think "gamer with neon lights" is certainly a segment with amazing margins, especially compared to standard office equipment. Most "gaming" mice/keyboards/chairs/computers/whatever are just decorated and brightly coloured versions of other products with insane markups. Alienware PC's are a great example here - The parts in one of those PC's can cost around half the cost of what the company actually sells it for. Other peripherals have similar price increases once they're branded as a device for gaming rather than office use as they know consumers are willing to pay more. I realize that there are lots of kids who want "gaming" gear (that their parents will pay for) but the PC gaming market is certainly geared towards mid 20's/30's who have the scratch to be able to afford this stuff. Not that these people are stupid or misinformed for doing so, some simply appreciate the aesthetic (even if it's something you or me might not particularly like).
> The “creator” market is much more profitable than the gamer market where kids only have as much as mom will allow them to spend (vs The tech workers, coders, designers, youtubers, etc that need high quality displays to make a living).
This is a common misunderstanding of the gaming market due to stereotyping. The biggest age category in gaming is 18-34 by far. They generally also slant strongly to people with both more than average disposable income and higher likelihood to spend that same on gaming and related electronic toys. This makes gaming a 100 billion dollar market atm which is still growing rapidly.
> Both of which are market segments with terrible margins.
Not even close to accurate. Gaming related hardware is generally quite high margin. There's a reason ASUS et all use their gaming imprints as the place to introduce new high end parts. It's also a highly concentrated and networked market, making it very efficient to advertise to.
Ahh the LG monitor from the Apple collaboration. It’s so great. So different than other monitors. Stable, reliable, solid. A great product. You can literally see how Apple forced their product tenets on LG.
Sadly, it’s not available anymore. I have one in my office but needed another one for home. Ended up buying an LG with the funny name of something 27UKi6716263 that looked similar on amazon. It’s so different... what a shame
I thought it was the exact same as the LG 24UD58-B except with lightning connectors instead of display port and hdmi? That (the non-lightning model) is the monitor I have, it's the smallest (24") 4k monitor I could find - I wanted high DPI, and I got it.
Unfortunately at 3840 x 2160, it's not ideal since in pixel doubled mode (retina), you're only getting the equivalent of a 1080p display.
The 22" LG Ultrafine used to have a 4069 x 2304 resolution. So in pixel doubling mode you actually got more screen real estate than newer 24" 4k models (which are only 3840 × 2160)!
Hmmm. I actually quite like 2160p as a simple upgrade over 1080p; usually I just solve the screen real estate problem by buying more monitors. You can get the 24UD58-B for about $200 used on eBay, so this is not a large cost.
Eh, do really consumer want them? Like not pros that do streaming for a living etc, but the people doing conferencing or the occasional capture?
They will hit local, isps or teleconferencing bandwidth cap well before sending all the bits a webcam captures, with subsequent recompression to crap quality.
Early in my career I learned important lesson, there is no point buying displays from other brands than NEC or EIZO. Preferably upper tier products. The exception from this rule was Apple Cinema Display and Some Dell models. EIZO FlexScans are reliable and rarely have any issues. https://www.eizoglobal.com/products/flexscan/index.html
Unfortunately EIZO doesn't produce a single display with the ideal resolution for MacOS.
27" 5k or 22" 4k (4069 x 2304, like the first LG ultrafine was) are the unicorns I am seeking.
Unfortunately the LG ultrafine suffers from image retention/ghosting. So there's ultimately no great displays for Mac outside of the wildly expensive Pro Display XDR.
For reference, the 16” MacBook Pro has a 3072‑by‑1920 display.
This means the 27” 4K monitors that are the industry standard now for some reason at 3,840 x 2,160 are almost twice the size, yet have barely more resolution than the MacBook true retina screen.
MacOS can do scaling to adjust for this, but it uses the least amount of resources in native or pixel doubled mode. Any display that is between the resolutions I mentioned (like 27 4K) requires fractional scaling.
This is more resource intensive, and doesn’t look as good as pure retina.
Sorry but this has no sense at all. From 20 years on I work only with Apple based desktops/laptops. And I am a pixel peeper. Scaling is not a problem even on MacBook Pro from 2013. If you want to rationalise a purchase of new Apple Display XDR there are more factual reasons for this. Don't get me wrong - the new displays are very competitive for grading middle market, but most professionals are using separate proofing displays for testing.
I upgraded from a MacBook Pro with a good quality LG 4K 27” display using non integer scaling to a 5k 27” iMac with 2x scaling. Both provide the same visible screen area and not give you the same size icons and text. But the iMac with integer scaling is a better, sharper picture. The difference isn’t huge but it’s noticeable.
Why do you think the LG monitors outside of the Apple collaboration are not good?
Recently, I bought two 27GN950, which is a 27" 4k@144Hz gaming monitor with good colors. So far the worst part is the fan and in the long run the absence of HDMI 2.1 might be disappointing, but overall I have the impression of a good product.
Yes, it doesn't have the same PPI as smartphones, but I am not sure if we are going to see that happen ever.
I've noticed over decades that high quality stuff comes out of the checks-and-balances of experts specifying and purchasing stuff.
Examples I remember are sun monitors based on sony trinitron tubes, sun/sgi hard drives that were always checked - and sometimes returned by he container - so were actually enterprise grade, not consumer grade. Lots and lots of OEM stuff like that.
But Apple's fans are made from recicled SR-71 blackbirds to ensure ultimate noise suppression and each fan blade is assembled by a Swiss watchmaker to ensure quality.
Just kidding, it comes from the same Chinese factory as every other fan but Apple's fans(pun intended) like to believe in magic to justify the price tag.
I think it's in part related to fractional scaling, which hasn't been sorted everywhere. Text at 4k on a 27 inch is too small to run at 100%, too much of a waste to run run at 200% (equivalent to 1920x1080). So you're running 150% or 175% and that can be an issue if you're running something that doesn't like fractional scaling.
27 inch is perfect for 1440p 100% or 200% (i.e., 5k), but it seems like no one other than Apple has that figured out.
Yes, fractional scaling is an issue, but I don't think it is as much of an issue as it was a few years ago. In fact, I think the only application that doesn't scale for me is steam currently. Everything else seems to be handled by setting the correct DPI in the xorg.conf and the scaling factor of KDE (150%).
But as this is clearly a software issue, I wouldn't blame the hardware for it ;-)
Let me chime in: just bought a T14s. Could be a dream machine but the shite 1080 panel (Windows recommends a hilariously crappy 1.5 scaling. Kidding me?) the pesky trackpad and the awfully glitchy Windows 10 (yah, probably the drivers but the platform enables this horror) destroy the value of this otherwise pretty solid device.
> Windows recommends a hilariously crappy 1.5 scaling.
Windows has multiple GPU-accelerated vector graphics GUI frameworks. Well-written Windows apps look well with non-integer scaling.
> awfully glitchy Windows 10
Here's what you should do with new computers.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Make an installation USB drive, boot from that drive, remove all partitions from the laptop's SSD, perform clean install. You don't need product keys to reinstall Windows as long as the SKU matches (i.e. if you have Win10 home edition, reinstall the same edition).
Don't just blindly click through the wizard, read messages and you'll get better UX (you don't want cortana, personalized ads, geolocation, etc).
Connect to internet, run windows update.
Open device manager. If some devices are left in "unknown device" state, you might need to manually find their drivers. Make sure to only install drivers and not user-mode utilities.
It glitches, together with the keyboard. It’s like events start piling up as the UI loop locks up (for up to 1 sec.) then suddenly they rush through and the pointer wanders around and keystrokes fall through at a constant rate. Other times they’re barely lagging enough to feel it.
Awful, but I remember similar issues on Dell and an HP. It’s an issue with the device driver or some “value add” driver control software. :(
> The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them
> Combine this with the fact that most home users don’t care about good quality or even know what it is, and you have the current situation.
It sounds apt. But... There is an absolutely thriving market for keyboards and mice.
For both, conglomerates like logitech and microsoft are selling both what you describe as 'crap', as well as higher end stuff that tries to care about quality. Possibly not in the way you think is most important, but certainly a Logitech MX Master3 keyboard retailing at >$100 is not a cheap piece of crap. The letters aren't inked on, for example, thus ensuring they don't rub off particularly easily. Not a feature that is advertised or is likely to show up in a review. The kind of quality move that doesn't make sense if the market is just 'assholes selling crap to idiots'.
Keyboards are even more interesting; a lively indie market for custom-built usually mechanical keyboards, supported by parts manufacturers where price isn't particularly important.
I agree, though - the webcam market is quite a mess. So, what's the explanation for that? Why do keyboards and mice not fall under your 'assholes selling crap to idiots' rule?
Keyboards are MUCH easier to produce than LCD displays or cameras.
The problem is that there's only so many companies that truly design and manufacture photographic sensors, lenses and LCD panels. And all the downstream "brands" that assemble this technology into cheap plastic cases to sell to consumers can only do so much to differentiate. Add neon lights for gamers. Make it look dull for business users. Etc. They also sell TVs and have thousands of other SKUs, so they really don't care about any individual product.
Apple is both incentivized (due to their ongoing customer relationships) and able to break out of this mold because they:
a) Produce a tighter number of SKUs
and
b) Do enough volume to control and change what the original equipment manufacturers are producing
It seems like some company there (besides Apple), should seize the opportunity to differentiate themselves on quality, and deliver supply-chain controlled "boutique" hardware, which I'm certain many would shell out for.
I'm thinking the op was imagining something in the middle ground. Maybe +10–40% for a guarantee of quality. The case I can think of is Anker for cables although in that case they also don't charge a premium either.
There’s no money in it and the XDR is a vanity project. Too expensive for the person who isn’t grading marvel movies but not quite hitting the actual specs needed to grade a marvel movie.
Meaning the only people buying it are top tier youtubers
Went looking for a monitor recently & was so sad to see that there are less than a dozen monitors with full-array dimming, & most of those have 16 zones or less.
I ended up going with a budget option, no local-dimming. It's frustrating how behind, how stagnant, computer displays are. I don't want to sit in front of a 48 inch OLED tv, too big, not high enough dpi, but I feel like I'm throwing money at bad products trying to buy a computer monitor. At least there are some fair budget options (Pixio PX275h 95Hz 4k, $250, doing ok).
My organization has been slowly rolling out the use of Cisco Desk Pros which are hardware endpoints that connect to Webex but are in a practical sense essentially monitors with very nice camera modules and microphone arrays built into the bezel. Laptops connected to the monitor with USB C can use the camera/mic. These cost like $4000 though.
I find the video flattering (camera angle/focal length?)
You certainly can buy good high end webcams.
But their market profile here is clearly still B2B and Telepresence, no Prosumer or Individual Professionals yet.
If you are looking here to improve your webcam because you started to do remote work, don't.
First try to improve lighting and audio.
Any camera will look bad in bad lighting. It is always better to first improve your lighting before you invest in a new camera. Use high CRI lightbulbs and ensure even source color temperature in your room (ie. all lightbulbs should be emitting same color temperature).
Audio is also very important. It is processed by different parts of brain and we don't put so much attention to it but the quality will influence the other person, subconsciously. Also, audio is how the information is being passed.
It seems I needed to include a couple of shots - one is from my laptop webcam, and the other is from my phone. What "bad lighting" is changes very much based on the camera capabilities (lens, sensor, post-processing).
A better camera will be able to better compensate for bad lighting, but that doesn’t make the lighting good, and good lighting will improve the results of both. That’s why pro mage capturers (photogs and camera crews) spend a lot of time on getting the lighting as good as possible.
There's even a severe difference in different models by the same manufacturer. Apple for example, puts much better webcams in their iPhones and iPads than in their Macbooks.
I disagree somewhat. Coming from a photography background, we should distinguish quantity and quality.
Quantity of light you can make up with higher gain (ISO) and higher available dynamic range also helps, as you mentioned.
Quality of light is determined entirely outside the camera, and better gear does not help much if at all. For photography, the quality matters countless times more than quantity, usually. I would argue the same is true for video/webcam.
This is what people don't get, and so hobbyists end up with $5k in gear, taking terrible photos. It's similar to when videographers don't put effort into their sound.
This makes it a question of how and what to light, not how much. The latter would be a matter of adjusting gain in-camera, in Post-Processing, or simply turning existing lighting up. But the former part is the important, and difficult, one.
I agree that we should distinguish quantity and quality.
If we don't have enough light in a scene, we need to raise ISO for a given camera and that can easily make scene look bad. For other camera with bigger and less noisier sensor, brighter lens there can be enough light and it can look very good. I can imagine that there are cases, where increasing amount of light will only improve picture for a cheap camera.
If the light is plentiful and bad, cheap camera can produce abysmal results with parts of the image completely washed white in one part, and very dark in other parts. Good sensor with high dynamic range will produce much better results. Of course, improving the light will improve both results.
I'd agree.
I recently picked up a Logitech Brio (employer was paying) and quite happy with it. Main advantage to me is that it can produce a decent picture without me having to faff around with lighting.
Of course if I did sort out lighting, it would be better - but (to me) I'd prefer to just swap out the camera than assemble more clutter around me.
Obviously if you directly compare good camera vs bad camera the good camera is going to win.
But if you compare good camera in bad lighting and bad camera with good lighting the bad camera will almost always win unless it is really, really shitty.
It is also usually much cheaper to improve lighting. If your face is a shadow while the rest of the room is brightly lit there is only so much that the camera can do, regardless of how much you invest in it.
Sod's law means that the window is often behind the desk, making video pics a silhouette, and the light that does come from the monitor can give some ghastly hues to your skin tone!
It takes a lot of work to beat natural light coming from your window. If you have restricted budget and can choose the time when you record, this is a very good option that I always recommend to people I talk to.
On the other hand, when you do remote work you don't choose the time. Also, you will probably have other considerations for your desk placement. In the end it is much more important that you feel comfortable when working at your desk than to have good lighting in your webcam for your coworkers.
So, if you like to sit front to the window then sure, go on. But if that would make you uncomfortable then I don't think it is worth it.
Also, coming from California and living on the Pacific, I have sort of a "too much light" problem. I've got sunrise on side of the house and sunset on the other and skylights in every room. I had an optimized setup in the living room but when I moved my office to the spare bedroom I am totally blasted out by the sunrise over the mountains and shadows come across my face as the sun moves.
I'm experimenting with moving my desk but the trial and error is a pita.
I am from Warsaw, Poland and believe it or not, Warsaw is about 7 degrees north from northernmost part of Vermont. Vermont spans 42 to 45 degrees while Warsaw is at 52 degrees.
Did you know that most of people in Canada live at the lattitude of Croatia or south of it?
I have my desk in front of a window, facing the window. I keep the blind about halfway down though, because the glare makes be squint at the monitor uncomfortably.
The other option would be to not face the window, but then you have bright daylight shining onto your monitors instead.
Also a bright window behind you plays badly with some webcams automatic lighting adjust (including the logitech ones recommended here). It should just let the window be overexposed/blown out but it prefers to adjust the brightness such that that is reasonably lit with the effect of making the foreground look like I'm in a dark room.
+1 for improving audio quality. As a non-native English speaker, although I listen to daily podcasts without subs just fine, understanding an English speaking--possibly non-native, too!--person having a poor audio quality connection is a different story.
exactly, audio is the most important. Nobody needs to see your unshaven sleepy quarantine face in 4K. But if they can't hear you, or there is a lot of noise, the meeting is ruined
Actually, nobody will ever see your face in 4k because none of the platforms that are used for this will ever transmit video at that resolution. Most cap at 1080p with a very heavy compression.
Also understand that real time compression is different from offline compression. To compress well it requires a huge amount of CPU. Real time compression results in higher bandwidth for the same image quality but more typically less quality for the same bandwidth.
Here's a trick how to get beautiful studio-like lighting for less than 50€:
- buy two large sheets of white styrofoam (1m x 0.5m or bigger)
- buy two cheap bright floodlights (the brighter the better)
- get some mounting materials (eg. wood and screws, or cardboard and duct tape)
- Place the two styrofoam plates right and left behind your laptop.
- point the floodlights at the styrofoam, carefully positioning them so they are not in the picture
Enjoy beautiful bright soft light. Optionally add a 3rd floodlight that shines on you from the side/from behind for highlights, and optionally another one to illuminate the background as needed.
Now you'll look amazing even with the cheapest, crappiest webcam.
Why not white bed sheets? I'm sure you could pick up a pack at a mega mart for a few quid. Easier to store, more environmentally friendly and less messy than styrofoam.
Works fine until it falls of a makeshift stand half way through the meeting, but I guess that’s an issue with yours truly being a bit lazy/not talented at DYI
Good brands are expensive but I have had some luck with Neewer, a cheap Chinese brand. Stands are usually flimsy but if you can you should buy wall mounting arms for either your walls or your ceiling; it also preserves floor space.
Godox is very good price-performance wise. I am not sure under what brand they sell their video lights in US. I know that their strobes are sold as Flashpoint.
You don't need "pro" equipment for lighting. That's one area when you can get very creative. Most people can take lamps they already have and put some bit of white material on it, which is what I am doing for a very good effect.
If you already have something then great; but if you're buying it's easier to just get a lightning set and bulbs with a specific color temp than do a lot of trial and errors with bed sheets and whatnot.
Soft lighting is a result of geometry. You can use very huge source far away from you or smaller but very close.
You also need to pay attention to how the light is scattered and that the direct light is not shining on your face. I have asked my wife to make half a dozen covers for them from a white material. They have a spot in the middle that blocks direct light from the bulb. I use a number of covers on each depending on how much I want to attenuate the lighting.
I also use a very small, cheap 5 watt high CRI, 6400K lightbulb in each. I use same kind of bulbs from same manufacturer for overhead light and for my desk lamp. I have separate desk lamps for 6400K light and 4000K light (which is what I like to use when I work).
The total cost is something on the order of 150 PLN or 40 USD plus a favor to my wife.
4x 5W LED isn't really a lot of light, especially if you are diffusing it. If your webcam can work with that, it's not that bad :)
Edit: I just read your comment again and realized that you are putting the light really close to your face. I guess that's a way to get away with low power lights.
I just measured, the light is about 45cm from my face. Additionally, the lamp reflects most of the light in my direction.
I am not a model and am not used to have such bright light source so close to my face. I had to attenuate it because then it is just too uncomfortable but also to match light level on my face with that of the background.
This is funny advice. Are we still talking about working from home here? Who wants to stare at huge styrofoam panels all day?
Much better alternative - if you have a window, set up your desk so you face towards it. It’s an automatic soft box and you get to look out the window.
If you just want decent video quality for a zoom meeting where everyone shows up in their pyjamas then I agree -- setting up lighting like I described is wasted effort.
But for example, if you are a teacher, or an instructor, or if you have a video meeting with important customers, you may want to put some more effort into presenting yourself. And the best bang for the buck is improving lighting.
Sitting in front of a window is a nice solution for an overcast day, but it doesn't work after sunset (currently around 4PM where I live) or on a sunny day with hard light. Unlike styrofoam boards, it's also hard to control the light because you can't move the window.
I'm not suggesting everyone should do what I said. I was just sharing a possible solution if you want to make good looking video.
> Now you'll look amazing even with the cheapest, crappiest webcam.
I just bought the cheapest, crappiest webcam - a Trust Exis Webcam[1] - and I can assure you that nothing could ever look amazing viewed through that 480p blurry POS no matter what you do.
If you want cheap and crappy, I strongly recommend going for something slightly less cheap and crappy than this one.
As a service to the readers who aren't familiar with the term:
"The Color Rendering Index (CRI) measures the ability of a light source to bring out the true colors of an object. Without a high CRI light source, objects can appear faded, dull or inaccurate. "
It doesn’t matter, you can have the best lighting and audio ever and still look like a garbled piece of stuttering pixel shit on an end user’s machine because their connection can’t handle the streaming. Unless you’re a cam girl don’t even bother with a sophisticated webcam setup.
On your side monitor(s), set a couple of desktops with plain white, pink, and beige backgrounds. When you're on video, switch to the blank backgrounds to use as a soft fill light.
This is the best advice. A high end mirror less camera will help a bit with its higher dynamic range, but simply optimizing your lighting will do wonders for any camera setup. All of the people showing beautiful mirrorless webcam shots have already optimized their lighting, so start there first.
Also, don’t be the person with the overly-complicated webcam setup who ends up delaying every other meeting while they fiddle with cables, tripods, camera batteries, overheating cameras, cameras going into standby and so on. Having crisp images doesn’t matter if your always late or frazzled because you had to tend to your perfect webcam setup.
I wrote an article a few months back about this(1) and post when it's directly relevant. Main takeaways: audio is more important than video; get that correct first.
Easiest thing is using a cheap headset microphone. Advanced noice cancellation algorithms with a great microphone placed far away can't complete with the physics of having a mic close to your month.
Since publishing, I also found Webcam Settings, an app for Mac that lets you adjust specific settings on UVC webcams. I use it to correct the horrible auto white balance on my C920 (naturally looks way too blue).
I just wish Apple would make a new version of their iSight camera. Something with a similar physical shape with a cropped DSLR sensor and a fast lens. Basically, same quality as a mirrorless with a fixed f/2 lens but in a single small package.
Everyone will be happy if you up your audio quality. Cracks, pops and other distortions are in headphones are not fun. Noone really minds visual quality unless you are presenting something on the camera.
I recently found that old smart phones make better dash cams than the purpose built dash cams sold in stores. I turned a two year old Samsung J3 into a dash cam. The phone cost 90 bucks two years ago when it was new. The dash cam app was 4.99 and the windshield mount was 6 bucks. The video is way better quality and there are more options/settings to play with.
This nails the issue with creating any kind of hardware. I’ve worked for hardware developers for most of my career, and have seen these types of challenges play out.
Frankly, hardware problems are hard. The laws of physics are non-negotiable, and doing what we assume to be simple tasks at scale can be crazy difficult. Solving a problem in a lab is not the same as making it at scale. That’s why you keep reading these stories about major lab discoveries that never seem to actually materialize in product.
Us software developers get used to being able to write some code, or license a library, and the problem is solved. Scale isn’t really an issue for us. If we can do it on our laptop, then we can push out our product to millions, almost overnight.
Hardware is quite a different world. We need to tool up factories, train assemblers, set up suppliers and transportation networks, negotiate dozens of contracts; even for simple projects, resolve regulatory issues (which can be quite intimidating, depending on the industry and market), establish distribution channels and create packaging. Some of these are reflected in the software world, but at a much easier-to-manage level.
Also, with software, failure usually doesn’t cost as much as it does with hardware. It’s a lot easier to pick ourselves up, dust off our lapels, and try again. Iteration is relatively easy.
> you also can buy a great XLR microphone for $100, but then you’ll need an external sound card with phantom power supply.
this is only true if you buy a condenser microphone. a dynamic microphone will work reasonably fine with your onboard soundcard if you have an xlr-->1/8" trs cable.
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[ 654 ms ] story [ 3563 ms ] threadMy experience was a delay of half a second, making it unusable for live conferencing.
I think the article is missing the obvious solution: if you can't buy a standalone webcam with as good image/sound quality as a phone, then use/make software that lets you use the phone hardware, there's no need to try to build your own camera.
I did not realize that Corsair owns Elgato.
Filmic Pro supports clean HDMI out from the rear facing cameras on iPhones and some Android phones. You do need a capture card, but if you have a Camlink or the no-name $20 USB capture card that EposVox did a positive review on, you're good to go.
On Android (I have a P20 Pro), I use a USB-C HDMI dongle meant for a Nintendo Switch, but it works with my phone plus it lets me charge the phone while using it.
Filmic also has a "remote" app (~$3, iirc) so if you have an extra mobile device, you can control the camera app remotely (since the phone you're using as a camera has its screen is pointing away from you).
This way you save money, time and a blog post (:
He talks about phone-connected webcams using an app.
Post pandemic, however, webcam prices seem to have at least tripled (if not quadrupled). As I type, the C920 is going for £140. I can understand this as a supply/demand thing, but surprised that things haven't started to level out yet.
Nope. You can get a mirrorless camera set up (with mic and lights) for around $500 to $600. There are plenty of 1" compacts as well in that price range.
If you want better sound, grab the A6600 which can also sport the XLR-K2M microphone adapter.
Regarding HDMI capture: the Blackmagic DeckLink card series works just fine in a Thunderbolt case (at work I run a 2x A6000 system + external HDMI input).
And if you wanna save some cash, any $20-25 hdmi to usb capture card will work just fine. It won't give you uncompressed video, but you won't need it for this use case.
A webcam can be more compact because it does not need half the stuff thats in a mirrorless camera
I have literally never seen anyone suggest using your webcams /laptop mic except as a last resort.
Using a laptop / web cam mic is the fourth/fifth best option - its a bit like playing Association Football (Soccer) in League Two
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=237&v=CmMOJTs7Pu8
Even the worst webcams go from absolutely trash to something usable if you add better lighting to you subject.
And when people start thinking over lighting you can move away from your window so you do not have that as a powerful backlight. Look out the window and the webcam will have much better results.
Reportedly, Huawei P40 Pro has an IMX700 sensor with the 1/1.33" diagonal. I didn't run the numbers for it, but it is big enough that with a bright lens it will produce bokeh.
So maybe it's a matter of time until these "good" sensors reach the open market, can be bought in smaller quantities and become commoditised. Then, we may see a good upmarket webcam.
But you have to build a chip to control the damn thing over usb. I coupd not find any USB3 webcam except logitech brio
From all the video calls I had this year, people either used
* their notebook's built-in webcam that's complete garbage
* any other webcam, and their image is clear as day, or at least video quality is limited by lighting or bandwidth.
I use a relatively simple and old Logitech (C720 I believe) as webcam, and when I am in calls, I point my desk light straight at my face from just atop the webcam. This alone increases the image quality by an order of magnitude. If I would do more videoconferencing (currently only an hour or so per day, mostly with my own team) I would probably invest in a better light setup and a microphone, before I would think about upgrading my camera. Most small cheapish sensors do absolutely fine, given enough photons to work with.
I definitely cut my colleagues some slack here since many literally had to set up a home office out of nowhere.
Some had to go to the basement (and CFL lights + webcams = blergh), others just had to cram themselves into whatever corner of the house (thus also badly lit).
Of course a bigger sensor and a bigger lens (DSLR, Mirrorless, etc.) is something different.
As I've looked now, it seems that they discontinued ones with Zeiss lenses. The ones with Zeiss lenses were both low light and clarity monsters for their size.
Their highest model is Brio Pro with 3D sensing it seems. I need to see its performance. However Logi says it has a real glass lens so it shouldn't be a slouch.
Nevertheless, it's not fair to compare a lentil sized sensor with a Full 35mm, last gen mirrorless.
The only cost-viable methods to get 'broadcast quality' imagery for streaming/recording right now is to buy a second hand DLSR or mirrorless camera that has 'clean' HDMI out that works without the camera auto-shutting down after X amount of time. There are a few sites out there that list the preferable models[1]. I've got a couple of old Canon DSLRs (That don't do clean HDMI) and a load of lenses, so I've been watching Ebay for a newer model Canon DSLR that I can afford. The lowest cost Canon DSLR body I've seen with unrestricted clean HDMI or that can take the Magic Lantern[2] firmware is about £150.
However... You also need a HDMI-to-USB dongle. This converts the cameras HDMI output into a standard USB Webcam input. I've already got an Elgato CamLink[3] (bought for a different reason a couple of years ago), but you can get cheap China knockoffs for about £15, I don't know how good they are though. My Camlink cost WAY more than that, so I have my doubts about the knockoff quality.
Finally, you need good audio capture that importantly is in sync with the picture. The HDMI to USB conversion adds a tiny delay to the image which can put your audio out of sync if you are using a standard USB microphone. Good software like OBS[4] can correct for this though.
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[1] https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link/camera-check
[2] https://magiclantern.fm/
[3] https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link-4k
[4] https://obsproject.com/
It was usable for video calls, but I had problems with reliability (old battery in Gopro, and even if it was permanently connected to power source, it charged only when I turned it on -- which usually was when I wanted to have a call).
They are so-so. Well, they are much-much better than any webcam, of course, but 1080p is almost the same as 720p on them. So as a budget thingie it'll work, but Elgato's adapter is much better, of course.
I saw a video where Elgato Camlink opened up, is just a chinese card repackaged with the Elgato logo, 99% similar internally to the cheap knockoffs.
Can't find it again to link it to...
8 layer pcb with custom fpga hardware, doesnt look all that cheap chinese knockoff to me
Can't find the video atm, or remember what product it did show, but it was posted in the last 2-3 months and it concerned a similarly on-demand item -- and the "repackaging" brand was respected by creators...
- The lens you use if crucial. A nice and fast prime portrait lens (20-50mm f1.4 or something) will make a huge difference with indoor light and give you nice bokeh/blurred background.
- Good quality lighting is essential. El Gato have a good, but again expensive, key light you can use as your primary source of light, but you might need side-lights and back-lights too.
For audio, I use my Airpods. Great setup for meetings. Latency is good enough IMO.
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[1]: https://www.amazon.nl/gp/product/B088ZTK56F
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daS5RHVAl2U
https://www.panasonic.com/global/consumer/lumix/lumix_webcam...
It's available for Windows and macOS. The Mac version seems to have more issues with various apps than the Windows version at the moment.
Beer Webcam I’ve ever had.
Turns out that processing is still being done by the Macbook.
I've been using the EOS R as my webcam with the RF 35mm F1.8 lens and it's working pretty great. I just hook it up with the USB-C cable and it shows up as a webcam.
The only annoyance that I haven't been able to get around yet is switching batteries. There's a Kickstarter project[2] for a battery that is hot-swappable, but among those features it also allows you to just use the power while plugged in, which I'm eager to try out.
I haven't tested the audio quality of the camera, so I can't say much about that. I've always just used my headset. I would expect it to be somewhere between meh and ok-ish. Of course you could invest in a proper mic plugged into the Camera[3].
I have it set up on a tripod behind my desk. One thing I have been considering is getting some kind of a monitor arm style setup for the Camera, but so far I haven't found such a product.
The setup of course is quite expensive depending on the Camera, but I already had the camera and tripod since I do photography as a hobby, so I was pleasantly surprised when Canon came out with the webcam utility.
Is it worth it? Probably not if you just want something that works all the time. I mostly use the camera to take photos, so I have to re-mount it every time I come back from shooting, and keep the batteries charged, etc. but people do notice and it's fun to see their reactions and getting accused of being a YouTuber every once in a while.
[1] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/se...
[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/x-tra/the-camera-batter...
[3] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-shotgun-mic/
And for anything I'm streaming I'm frankly more likely to have issues because my Internet upload sputters than anything to do with the camera. And with the Logitech webcam attached to my monitor, the whole thing "just works." If I had a newer model of Canon, I might have tried it but as it is I'd need to buy a converter.
I can't vouch for it yet, but hope it arrives and does the job. There's other similar products in other sizes by other brands.
[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001657723138.html
(The Sony α6100 is also quite happy to run on USB power indefinitely, no fancy battery arrangement needed. I’ve used it thus for multi-hour webcam sessions, and plugged into a wall charger for multi-hour recordings, where its battery would otherwise be depleted after about 100 minutes.)
Another thing to be aware of when using fancy cameras like this is the latency: you’ll get added latency of 100–400ms, which is easily into the disconcerting zone if audio and video are out of sync by that much, so you may need to do things like add a corresponding delay on the audio, if that’s connected to the computer directly (which will give much lower latency). OBS Studio can do this. I don’t yet have an HDMI capture card, so I’m not certain about it, but the impression I’ve received is that latency will be much lower with a decent capture card than the USB/PTP approach, though still probably higher than your webcam.
I haven't seen any noticeable delay in the footage so far, but now that you mention it, I'll definitely keep an eye on that.
The EOS R can draw some power from USB, but it doesn't seem to be nearly enough, or it doesn't work while recording or something.
Sony also updated their software in august and now support using their cameras as webcams without a capture card.
I vaguely remember reading about a video card that had more RAM than it was able to address.
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-radeon-rx-480-4gb-to-8...
Definitely not that; the concept was that you had a large amount of RAM you could advertise on the box, but the card was unable to use the RAM. You're describing the opposite, the card has a large amount of RAM that is advertised as a smaller amount.
You can also just use your phone's main camera, the quality is up there with rather expensive webcams (even for midrange phones these days), add some better lighting and you're set.
RE those chinese knockoff dongles, I got one for £8 off ebay, use it for Pi Zero stuff occasionally and the lag isn't bad at all tbh. I'd guess somewhere between 250ms and 500ms but it maybe gets worse at larger resolutions.
I don't know how to further qualify it, you expect it to convert HDMI into USB and it does it. The resulting quality is amazing. So it performs its function.
Erm, no. Camo Studio with iPhone XS I am now using has DSLR-awesome picture, above any webcam on the market. And iPhone's BPM for camera sensor and ISP is probably in 10s of dollars. I want to buy this from kickstarter yesterday :).
https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/webcam/en/download/
So there's no way to make use of high-end Sony gear for mind-blowing webcam quality, since the software is a huge bottle neck. Very disappointing and a missed opportunity (not to mention Sony was months behind Canikon and others with their software release).
aaaag
I used to have a tiny Canon digital camera in 2003 that had better quality than this.
Under Linux, you can use guvcview to play with the settings to your liking. Here's an example command line for Zoom purposes:
v4l2-ctl --set-fmt-video=width=1280,height=720,pixelformat=MJPG --set-parm 30 --set-ctrl=contrast=32 --set-ctrl=sharpness=176 --set-ctrl=zoom_absolute=133 --set-ctrl=tilt_absolute=-36000 -d /dev/v4l/by-id/usb-046d_Logitech_BRIO_*-video-index0
For Windows, you can check out the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwXR27wLhoE
For webcams, the only other decent option is the Avermedia PW513, which only came out a month ago.
See also my comment here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25506629
If you are looking to use an iPhone camera for streaming/Video conferencing camo (https://reincubate.com/camo/) works well.
All of them. Brio is better, but still has much worse quality than any top smartphone.
It is pretty clear that there's no competition in the webcam market, and that the offerings have stagnated for years.
I, like many people have an old smartphone lying around.
My Samsung S7 has better camera (front and back) and better mic than any webcam I’ve owned.
Getting a nice holder and a reliable app that could spit webcam picture out of that phone would be great.
It sounds janky (and it kinda is) but compared to some of the client/server app pairs I'd messed with earlier, it works more reliably. One plus is that I don't need to install anything on my phone since it just uses WebRTC in the browser to send the cam/mic feeds to OBS.
Of course, even once you get it set up on a tripod and pointed at your face, you will want to turn down screen brightness and keep it plugged in. It works and it works well, but your phone may get warm and drain some battery if you are using it for hours at a time. In the end I consider it a good backup option (used it when I forgot my webcam at another location) but I prefer the ease of a dedicated camera if I have the option.
The lazy conglomerates who sell these peripherals often don’t actually produce the parts in them. They simply rebrand commodity cameras and IPS panels in a crap plastic housing and slap their logo on it.
Then they give the product a hilariously user-hostile product name, like “PQS GRT46782-WT” as an extra f-you to the user.
They don’t care about you because they have no ongoing relationship with you, and their executives mistakenly see their own products as commodities.
Combine this with the fact that most home users don’t care about good quality or even know what it is, and you have the current situation.
A friend once described the peripheral market as “Assholes selling crap to idiots.”
Companies like Eizo typically have agreements where they will take the cream-of-the-crop panels though.
Make what you will of this, but it's not just a panel per se, it's also how it's integrated and used in the whole product.
[1] https://www.eizo.com/company/information/history/
Thing is, people complaim about there not being high quality gear, but when someone then makes it, they balk at the price. Yes people, a great laptop will cost you $3000.
27 4k a bad size & resolution for the current computer market. Windows scaling looks like crap, and MacOS has to do more resource intensive 1.5 scaling (as opposed to native or pixel doubling mode) to look okay on these.
M1 might make this a mute point going forward, but the fact is at 27 inches, 5k is the only monitor that will look as good as the screen on your laptop while actually giving you more real estate.
But...that is 4K. It's what 4K is defined as, exactly 2x 1080p resolution in each dimension.
> Windows scaling looks like crap
I don't understand. 2x each dimension (so 1 pixel in the old resolution is 4 in the new) is, like, the easiest possible scenario when it comes to scaling in software.
200% (2 times each direction) scaling on 4K is the equivalent of 1080p. A 1080p 27 inch monitor has huuuge pixels for the normal viewing distance of a desktop monitor. 1080p is common on 23-24 inch displays. Therefore you are forced to use fractional scaling which is less then perfect.
Two groups have competing definitions. One isn't inherently correct.
I say this as someone who was "that guy" when it came to HD Radio: "It's not High Definition, it's Hybrid Digital!" even though that's exactly the confusion they were trying to encourage.
Arguing that this is misleading is a fool's errand, and only plays into things if you assume that the primary purpose of a "4K" screen somehow is inherently "to play back cinematic content", which... it's not.
DCI is relevant for movie industry professionals only, as these are the dimensions used for projection devices and (potentially) their content.
That's irrelevant though, except if we're talking about consuming movies fullscreen.
For a monitor I don't want 4K, I want insivible pixels at viewing distances, so hi-dpi.
I would also prefer no scaling for assets that are bitmap in nature. This ideally means pixel doubling (less cpu/gpu demanding and less fuzzy than fractional scaling).
This, for 27" and more, means higher resolution that 4K. I don't want to restrict myself to pixel-doubled 1920x1080 on my 27" or 32" monitor.
You do get nice DPI, but needlessly large buttons and other assets (compared to something closer to 5K).
I'm so confused by your comment.
That would be relevant is my problem was false promises or misleading advertising.
But my problem is not
(a) "Monitors say they are 4K and they are not"
but:
(b) "Most monitors out there are BS-4K, but for the best quality/viewing comfort at their 27" and above diagonal they should rather be 5K, but most manufactures like Dell aren't bothered to produce at such a resolution and the few that do have prices to the skies".
>There are 5K monitors out there, maybe even 8K? Or just get a 4K one but in a smaller size?
Perhaps you've skiped through the thread?
My comment responds to (and agrees with) the sub-thread started by a parent commenter writing:
"Dell used to have good offerings, but all they seem to push now is the same 27” not-quite-4K 3,840 x 2,160 panels everybody else does.".
That's what we say too. 27" 4K monitor is too small at 100% scaling, while too small at 50% scaling (pixel-doubling hi-dpi mode).
That's why the idea is to have a 5K at 50% scaling (so everything is pixel-doubled on each axis, and a pixel becomes 4 pixels, doubling the detail you see).
It's not just about "not seeing any pixels", and "barely see any pixels" is not the same as enjoying hi-res typography and fine detail.
27-inch 1440p monitor is about 108 ppi. That's hardly better from what we used in the 90s and 00s, dpi-wise. Sure, if you haven't used to hi-dpi it looks ok. But try using a 5K/27-inch monitor for a while and then go back to 1440p/27-inch to see the difference you miss.
Now, 4K hi-dpi (pixel doubled) on 27" is 1920x1080.
This makes pixels just fine and detail is great, but everything too large and cuts off screen space, as it's 33% less area than 1440p (which, I presume, you don't use pixel-doubled)
The solution is either 5K/27" (which gives you back the 1440p kind of screen space and UI control size PLUS hi-dpi), or using a non-doubled, fractional resolution, to overcome, (which is not optimal, looks fuzzier, and wastes cpu).
What matters for perception is angular resolution, not DPI. And 27" display covers more visual field that 17" from 90s, so you can and should sit further away from it. Once angle of perceived pixel is smaller than angular resolution of your eye, reducing pixel size only adds to the resolutions of shades you can show to the user in that area (closer to bpp increase, than dpi increase, because you can't see pixels anymore, but still can perceive irregularities of brightness on edges).
The whole point of this thread is people complaining that, outside of LG's fragile Apple collab, there aren't any 5k options widely available.
Go on amazon and search for 5k 27. There's the Apple collab LG UltraFine, and then nothing.
Ditto for 22" 4k, which would provide the same DPI as your laptop screen for that given size.
On the other hand, HDMI 2.1 can now support 8K@60hz, so maybe this is not an issue anymore.
Not to the upthread specific claim that the resolution was “not quite 4K”, which is what the comment you are responding to addressed.
On the bigger issue, I don't really see the complaint. I have pretty good vision (corrected—to 20/15 or so—uncorrected is crap but I'm not coding without glasses/contacts) and honestly my 34” ultrawide at 3440x1440 is excellent for coding, and pretty much any other use. Now, would I prefer whatever resolution a 5K 16:9 would be when extended to 21:9? Or better a 4320p at the same aspect ratio? Sure, more pixels are always better. But does the sub-4K display look like crap or force bad sizes for controls? No.
Sure, I can work with a 3440x1440 34". Heck, I've worked with CGA monitors back in the day, and black and white (!) SUN Sparkstation monitors.
But, as you said, it's about looking better. "Doesn't look like crap" is a pretty low bar, no? For 2020, and after 10 years of hi-dpi phones and laptops, I expected better from monitor companies...
That's cool I guess, I was just objecting to calling the 4K "Not quite 4K".
Huh? I'm using LG's 27 inch 4k and scaling looks good. It can bug and force you to relaunch app but that's not something you encounter often.
The point of using a High-DPI display is that you can use scaling without losing the screen real-estate. With 5K @ 27" you can get what looks like 1440p in physical UI element size, but with an increase in clarity, readability, and quality.
Unfortunately, you must select carefully any monitor that you purchase, and the cheapest models are unlikely to be good choices.
I am using 2 good Dell 4k monitors. One is 1-year old (U2720Q), but the other (UP2414Q) is more than 5-year old and it works as well as in the first day.
I say this because it's unwise to hear that Dell has pretty good gear, then go to their site and buy the cheap stuff. It isn't necessarily any worse cheap stuff than anybody else, but it's not what people mean when they say Dell can have pretty good gear.
You have to choose between ghosting or proper colours, higher refresh rate IPS panels are better in this metric but still suck compared to TNs.
That is also a strategy to prevent product comparisons and unbiased reviews. They quickly cycle through product names and sell a certain product no. only in a limited geographical area.
Doesn't matter if a consumer org/magazine/someone on reddit/your friend/etc. does a review. The product will be out of market by the time you read it, or will not be sold in your country. The similar looking product you find on the shelf might be the same, or it might have something completely different inside.
Now, companies can of course lie about this, in theory, but that's a bit like car manufacturers lying w.r.t. emission tests - possible, but you tend to get caught (cf. the recent Volkswagen case) so it's probably not worth it.
If you're making some device (for example, washing machine) which has a power cord and a knob for some mode selection with writing on it, then for the exact same internals you need different models where the power cords are different (USA, UK, Germany and Japan each require different plugs) and the writing on the device is printed in different language and with customizations such as Celsius vs Fahrenheit. You can't sell the exact same laptop model in every market because the keyboard layouts are different. Etc.
The IEC 60320 connectors were specified for exactly that reason. Honestly, I don't get why these were not made mandatory for all kinds of appliances. There are even locking variants available if vibration is of concern.
I'm not sure what you mean by the second sentence but you can't use most appliances made for Europe in America and vice versa. Most electronic appliances depend on the input voltage and supplying 240V can easily cause a fire. That is true for almost all electronic appliances (water heater, fan, washing machine, etc) but not true most "computer related devices" such as a monitor, PSU, charger. Since those devices already operate on a much lower DC Voltage, they often have transformers (not sure if that's the right word), that can scale down the current from either 120 or 240. [0]
That being said, a mandatory IEC connector (and it's variances) would help a lot to cut down unnecessary e-waste. Instead of throwing away a device because the cable is damaged, you can easily order a replacement that is around $2 and high quality, instead of relying third party cords that might have bad wiring from a non reputable brand. The reason they are not mandatory, though, is that most companies like to have their own connectors so that you either overpay for it or just buy a new device.
[0]: You should still always read the specs on the input current for the device though. It is dangerous to rely on the fact that similar devices can operate at 120V/240V because yours might not. You can usually see the specs on the website/packaging or usually near the input plug.
The biggest problem might be the amount of power a device can draw. Half the voltage gives you half the power, which is the reason why e.g. kettles are much less useful in the US.
That ofc makes electric kettles much less useful in countries with 110V grid. It also keeps stovetop kettles relevant in these counties, since stoves don't suffer power limitations.
Here in America "electronic appliances" would imply the tech/gadget category like TVs or computers where "electrical appliances" would be the big household equipment. Just to clarify in case that confuses anyone else like it did me, it kind of reverses the meaning of what you're trying to say.
Anyways, at least with relatively modern gear you can generally assume that anything with batteries or USB ports runs off a switch-mode power supply, and all but the cheapest of those will happily accept pretty much anything resembling residential power.
Anything with a large motor or any kind of resistive element (lighting, heating) on the other hand is almost certainly built for a specific variety of electrical service and will likely require modification to accept anything else without releasing the magic smoke.
The stuff in between those categories, well, RTFLabel. Outside of audio and ham radio gear I'd imagine most DC stuff runs on switch mode power supplies these days.
Even if that's the case, the appliances should be easy to repair for a competent person and if necessary allow the cable be replaced.
That should only affec the power brick, and hence the overall SKU, not the notebook itself.
> the writing on the device is printed in different language and with customizations such as Celsius vs Fahrenheit.
What writing is there on notebooks except for keyboard labeling and the product name? The certification label on the back already shows all labels for all countries.
> You can't sell the exact same laptop model in every market because the keyboard layouts are different.
Keyboard layouts are somewhat orthogonal to regions. I'm German, but use US-layout keyboards.
Good God do people even read the stupid crap they say
When looking for a nice display a couple of years ago I clearly remember reading about some that were promising yet getting confoundingly variable reports, until some tore their hardware apart and revealed that the internals were different.
Now compare that to buying a model from Dell or Lenovo, where the current product lineup is already 2-3x the size, the models are sometimes discontinued, sometimes changed significantly between refreshes, often refreshed annually, oftentimes configurable in a meaningful way (1080p non-glossy vs. 1080p privacy screen vs. 4k glossy vs. 4k touch screen), sometimes just available in certain geographical locations and they exhibit more intra-generation manufacturing differences. The chances of finding other folks with your exact same permutation (and same day of the week it was manufactured) of these options are much smaller, so you stand less of a chance of getting something recognized as a fundamental manufacturing issue which should be covered for free by the vendor. Plus, even if you can get repair/replacement for free, you still fear that your specific model has a flaw, so you might only get lucky after having it replaced 2-3 times.
I've seen it happen with Dell and Lenovo where folks sent back brand-new units repeatedly because the first one had overheating issues with the SSD, the second one had really noisy capacitors and the third one had a display cable that wasn't seated correctly. At least with Apple I know that if I'm getting screwed, I'm in the same boat with everyone else ;)
My 7 year old macbook has "A1465" written in perfectly legible text on the bottom. "About this mac" has the serial number two clicks away, which is convertable online to exact specifications.
Fortunately that hasn't been my experience with the recent Dell, Asus, Lenovo and HP laptops I've purchased. Each have been without any issues at all.
But my point here is that... it sounds like you're arguing against consumer choice. You can have your Model T in any color as long as it is black. And this is Apple's model. You can have your product in any configuration as long as it's the one configuration Apple offers. Apple tried this, actually, for a long time. The iPhone started out with extremely limited configurations and only more recently branched out beyond 2. In a way, I agree with the confusion, because I know now I can't just say "Macbook" because there is at least one Macbook without suffix, at least one Air, and the Macbook Pro has a myriad of configurations - different sizes, with or without touch bar, etc.
Why did Apple start offering more options? Because that's what consumers want. Dell exists exactly because they were the first big PC manufacturer to accept configuration orders, and then (relatively) quickly manufacturer and deliver those custom configurations to users. Consumers want this. As Apple's share of the market grows, they will have to meet the consumers where they are - or their market share will be limited by the limitations they place upon themselves.
Now, I agree that, for example, the variety of models between different geographic locations is - if nothing else - annoying. Especially when nicer options aren't offered in your location! But I don't agree with the offered example of getting bad replacements. Maybe buying one laptop a year isn't enough to experience these issues.
If the choice is between "you can know about it" xor "you can buy it", there's no real choice.
This really complicates the already limited attempts to run Linux distros on the Mac hardware as users simply can't reliably tell if their hardware will be compatible beforehand.
On the MacOS side they likely paper over the differences, quirks and bugs in firmware and drivers, so the user does not native anything and they can change the hardware underneath as needed.
and revamping the US highway system with assisted driving beacons/lines etc - because they're the only ones with enough money to do so.
On other hand Lenovo X1 carbon is a pretty solid high end laptop along with LG gram. Former specifically is far more customizable, repairable, upgradable and also around 30% cheap while being more powerful.
It also works the other way round. Find a panel that is good enough for your eyes, then see if there's a mass marketed display with that panel. If you are adventurous, you can grab "DIY" or "assembled" monitors with the panels on Chinese e-Commerce sites.
I remember getting a 27-inch 1440p display from a Chinese manufacturer for really cheap back in high school. It should've been the exact same panel as was in Apple's iMacs. However, the were some quality issues with it long term and it's definitely suffering from burn-in that I don't think the iMacs suffer from.
https://techreport.com/review/23291/those-27-inch-ips-displa...
But overall, they were a great purchase quality/performance/cost wise.
Now, if you were a professional, that quality control and warranty (not to mention better ergonomics, etc.) were easily worth the added cost, but for just "some dude who liked playing video games and doing some photo/video editing", it was a great bang for the buck.
I still use this as my main monitor and haven't noticed any dead pixels (if there are any, they're so hard to see that they may as well not be there). It's not the best monitor out there and you can probably get a better 2560x1440 display for less now, but at the time it was a big improvement over the cheap 1920x1080 display that quickly got demoted to secondary (and has now been loaned indefinitely to a teacher friend who needed a second monitor to plug into her laptop for online classes).
I could (and probably should) investigate fixing it but it was easier to buy a 2160p Philips for $240. Only issue with the Philips is it doesn't have a VESA mount and it would be difficult to make some sort of jury-rigging work.
I run them attached to a Mac Mini and use the DisplayPort on the monitor. At one point I believe HDMI (or maybe just the Mac) wouldn't do 1440p. I'm copying stuff from an Intel Mac mini to an M1 and I'm able to toggle back and forth using HDMI for the Intel just fine.
Google iMac or LG ultrafine “image retention” or “ghosting.” I have no idea what percent of displays are affected, but there’s enough threads about it on Reddit and macrumors to make me think it’s pretty common.
There's a Chinese panel manufacturer called BOE that makes products competitive with some of the lower-end Samsung / LG panels.
I got one 15.6" 2160p external display with a BOE panel that offers 100% sRGB coverage. I can see a huge difference compared to my Dell Latitude laptop display.
Now if anyone can find a source of 55" 4K OLED panels, that would be the one ultimate display. Combine it with a VBO driver board and it becomes better than any smart TVs.
And outside of a few occupations that might actually require pixel-perfect colour, what does this matter? Is this like the audiophile world, where people argue about seemingly subjective things that no else cares about?
The customer interprets colours differently than you, the customer sees colours differently than you, and the customer is using a monitor that almost assuredly displays the colours differently than yours. And the world continues to turn.
Having a setup with multiple cheap monitors is imho really underrated for design and development. Moving something between screens and seeing clear contrast disappear, or see pleasing color choices turn ugly can be eye opening.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Bongiovi
I am considering my next purchase on the basis of at least 5 years of service and that is a long time to be looking at something "not quite right".
CD quality audio is less than 1 megabit per second per channel, uncompressed. HDR (10 bits per component) 4K60fps 4:2:2 video is around 10Gbit per second of data.
Of course data bandwidth is only a small part of the problem of correctly reproducing an analog signal, but it gives you the orders of magnitude we're dealing with.
I currently use a cheap ASUS 4K display. It's more good enough for coding, but I wouldn't trust it for any sort of graphical work. The viewing angle is pretty bad, so depending on what part of the screen I'm looking at I see colors differently, and some gradients become more or less visible depending on which part of the screen they're on. Contrast is pretty bad, making even some videogame display poorly: depending on the location and time of day contrast seems always too high or too low.
You can buy a good sub $100 pair of earphones and a sub $50 DAAC and they'll be good enough to do 99% of any audiophile work you could ever want to do reliably. If you want to do serious graphics work without having to constantly adjust for your display you'll have to go for something a lot more expensive than an entry-level monitor.
I'm a color blind person and even I can see a color difference between cheap displays that I have at work and an old EIZO one that I bought years ago at home.
I can more accurately diffrentiate between different colors/shades on my EIZO panel.
I just unboxed the new monitor 2 days ago. The richer color was immediately noticeable, and when I looked at some random photos I took with my phone recently I was blown away by just how red and green and yellow/blue things were. Like a completely new realm of color.
It's one of those things that you can't appreciate until you experience it (same going from the original 72% to 99% sRGB).
The Dell was $450 for 4k, 2.5 years ago. The new LG was $800, but you can find 60fps P3 4k monitors for around $500 these days iirc. If you're on Hacker News you probably use your computer a lot. Unless you're running low on cash, upgrading to a great monitor is worth it.
I love them for my photo editing.
(This is on my 2019 Mac Pro)
...which bought Korean manufacturer Hydis (was originally part of SK Hynix), so you'll often see panels marked "BOE-Hydis".
When it comes to assembled monitors, the highest failure rate is in the power supply. The components used and the cooling/ventilation play a big part in that.
What sites are you finding these "assembled" monitors?
Battle Angel Sorry, not sure why I didn't share previously. So, I believe this is caused by using a non-HDMI cable with the audio out turned on. Either turn the audio in the display off completely in the settings, or use a new HDMI cable. The alarm is a result of the display trying to send an audio signal through a Displayport cable. Are those of you getting this alarm using Displayport cables? They do not pair audio with video, as HDMI does. I hope this fixes your problem.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1i2dB8mGuKM
https://www.amazon.com/LG-27GL83A-B-Ultragear-Compatible-Mon...
I guess I understand where they're coming from, when most potential customers would likely glaze over and click away if presented with a long list of specs and product numbers.
Still, it's always nice when they at least have a "show all products" link that takes me to exactly that. I want a full list that can be narrowed down with filters.
Although I have to admit that I was equally frustrated when I wanted a good retina screen with 200-ish dpi to pair up with the mac mini I wanted to buy, only to conclude getting the 5K iMac instead was the most sensible option.
Apple is the most valuable company on earth right now, entirely due to their thesis that people will pay for quality hardware.
The “creator” market is much more profitable than the gamer market where kids only have as much as mom will allow them to spend (vs The tech workers, coders, designers, youtubers, etc that need high quality displays to make a living).
It’s why Apple is able to get insane 50% margins in many products. It’s crazy to me that the big Asian manufacturers don’t see the market opportunity in catering to this crowd.
In their minds you’re either an office drone using excel or a gamer who wants neon lights. Both of which are market segments with terrible margins.
It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at the problem, nobody is making 27” 5k displays right now.
Basically, the ideal PPI of mac displays is a multiple of 110 PPI. So, for retina quality you need a display of roughly 220 PPI, which is what you get from 5K at 27 inch. A 27 inch 4K display is around 160 PPI. If you use that in 2x mode, things will appear too large. If you set it to scaled mode to make things appear the proper size, there are display artifacts (like shimmering when scrolling). In fairness, it's not super obvious unless you know what to look for. But if you're already spending money on a high end screen, why should you have to compromise?
So clearly, Apple could sell a monitor for about $1600, that would be perfectly compatible with Mac Pros, mac mini and as a secondary monitor for all the various MacBooks.
This is a common misunderstanding of the gaming market due to stereotyping. The biggest age category in gaming is 18-34 by far. They generally also slant strongly to people with both more than average disposable income and higher likelihood to spend that same on gaming and related electronic toys. This makes gaming a 100 billion dollar market atm which is still growing rapidly.
> Both of which are market segments with terrible margins.
Not even close to accurate. Gaming related hardware is generally quite high margin. There's a reason ASUS et all use their gaming imprints as the place to introduce new high end parts. It's also a highly concentrated and networked market, making it very efficient to advertise to.
Sadly, it’s not available anymore. I have one in my office but needed another one for home. Ended up buying an LG with the funny name of something 27UKi6716263 that looked similar on amazon. It’s so different... what a shame
EDIT: it’a not available in Germany
I've got one and really like it although it doesn't seem to support HDCP.
The 22" LG Ultrafine used to have a 4069 x 2304 resolution. So in pixel doubling mode you actually got more screen real estate than newer 24" 4k models (which are only 3840 × 2160)!
The problem is better described here: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/20678597/lg-ultrafine-4k-2...
They will hit local, isps or teleconferencing bandwidth cap well before sending all the bits a webcam captures, with subsequent recompression to crap quality.
Why would they bother then?
27" 5k or 22" 4k (4069 x 2304, like the first LG ultrafine was) are the unicorns I am seeking.
Unfortunately the LG ultrafine suffers from image retention/ghosting. So there's ultimately no great displays for Mac outside of the wildly expensive Pro Display XDR.
This means the 27” 4K monitors that are the industry standard now for some reason at 3,840 x 2,160 are almost twice the size, yet have barely more resolution than the MacBook true retina screen.
MacOS can do scaling to adjust for this, but it uses the least amount of resources in native or pixel doubled mode. Any display that is between the resolutions I mentioned (like 27 4K) requires fractional scaling.
This is more resource intensive, and doesn’t look as good as pure retina.
Here’s a better explanation: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/
I am talking about good quality display with bearable price. Not display for $6,299.00 Example: https://www.amazon.de/EV3285-BK-Monitor-DisplayPort-Reaktion...
Recently, I bought two 27GN950, which is a 27" 4k@144Hz gaming monitor with good colors. So far the worst part is the fan and in the long run the absence of HDMI 2.1 might be disappointing, but overall I have the impression of a good product.
Yes, it doesn't have the same PPI as smartphones, but I am not sure if we are going to see that happen ever.
I've noticed over decades that high quality stuff comes out of the checks-and-balances of experts specifying and purchasing stuff.
Examples I remember are sun monitors based on sony trinitron tubes, sun/sgi hard drives that were always checked - and sometimes returned by he container - so were actually enterprise grade, not consumer grade. Lots and lots of OEM stuff like that.
Just kidding, it comes from the same Chinese factory as every other fan but Apple's fans(pun intended) like to believe in magic to justify the price tag.
However, over the day is is barely audible and it only comes to my mind when I am sitting in front of the PC late at night (+ without headphones).
27 inch is perfect for 1440p 100% or 200% (i.e., 5k), but it seems like no one other than Apple has that figured out.
But as this is clearly a software issue, I wouldn't blame the hardware for it ;-)
Windows has multiple GPU-accelerated vector graphics GUI frameworks. Well-written Windows apps look well with non-integer scaling.
> awfully glitchy Windows 10
Here's what you should do with new computers.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 Make an installation USB drive, boot from that drive, remove all partitions from the laptop's SSD, perform clean install. You don't need product keys to reinstall Windows as long as the SKU matches (i.e. if you have Win10 home edition, reinstall the same edition).
Don't just blindly click through the wizard, read messages and you'll get better UX (you don't want cortana, personalized ads, geolocation, etc).
Connect to internet, run windows update.
Open device manager. If some devices are left in "unknown device" state, you might need to manually find their drivers. Make sure to only install drivers and not user-mode utilities.
Awful, but I remember similar issues on Dell and an HP. It’s an issue with the device driver or some “value add” driver control software. :(
> Combine this with the fact that most home users don’t care about good quality or even know what it is, and you have the current situation.
It sounds apt. But... There is an absolutely thriving market for keyboards and mice.
For both, conglomerates like logitech and microsoft are selling both what you describe as 'crap', as well as higher end stuff that tries to care about quality. Possibly not in the way you think is most important, but certainly a Logitech MX Master3 keyboard retailing at >$100 is not a cheap piece of crap. The letters aren't inked on, for example, thus ensuring they don't rub off particularly easily. Not a feature that is advertised or is likely to show up in a review. The kind of quality move that doesn't make sense if the market is just 'assholes selling crap to idiots'.
Keyboards are even more interesting; a lively indie market for custom-built usually mechanical keyboards, supported by parts manufacturers where price isn't particularly important.
I agree, though - the webcam market is quite a mess. So, what's the explanation for that? Why do keyboards and mice not fall under your 'assholes selling crap to idiots' rule?
The problem is that there's only so many companies that truly design and manufacture photographic sensors, lenses and LCD panels. And all the downstream "brands" that assemble this technology into cheap plastic cases to sell to consumers can only do so much to differentiate. Add neon lights for gamers. Make it look dull for business users. Etc. They also sell TVs and have thousands of other SKUs, so they really don't care about any individual product.
Apple is both incentivized (due to their ongoing customer relationships) and able to break out of this mold because they:
a) Produce a tighter number of SKUs
and
b) Do enough volume to control and change what the original equipment manufacturers are producing
You think that complete vertical integration will improve product quality?
The qualities I value however are freedom, security, and privacy.
In that lens, the quality of Apple is very poor.
They cost multiple thousands (or tens of thousands for reference monitors with built-in calibration and Dolby Vision certification).
Grab something like the i1Display Studio to calibrate and it'll be golden for anyone who doesn't need a hardware LUT or built-in calibration.
Meaning the only people buying it are top tier youtubers
I ended up going with a budget option, no local-dimming. It's frustrating how behind, how stagnant, computer displays are. I don't want to sit in front of a 48 inch OLED tv, too big, not high enough dpi, but I feel like I'm throwing money at bad products trying to buy a computer monitor. At least there are some fair budget options (Pixio PX275h 95Hz 4k, $250, doing ok).
I find the video flattering (camera angle/focal length?)
Cisco had some impressive cameras in their older Telepresence products: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/collaboration-endpoint...
But the Cisco TelePresence Precision 60 Camera CTS-P60-K9 ist Ethernet Only and needs prohibitivily expensive hardware to work with.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/collaborat...
Next up is probably the Logitech PTZ Pro 2 or Rally
https://www.logitech.com/en-roeu/product/rally-ultra-hd-ptz-...
First try to improve lighting and audio.
Any camera will look bad in bad lighting. It is always better to first improve your lighting before you invest in a new camera. Use high CRI lightbulbs and ensure even source color temperature in your room (ie. all lightbulbs should be emitting same color temperature).
Audio is also very important. It is processed by different parts of brain and we don't put so much attention to it but the quality will influence the other person, subconsciously. Also, audio is how the information is being passed.
A better camera will be able to better compensate for bad lighting, but that doesn’t make the lighting good, and good lighting will improve the results of both. That’s why pro mage capturers (photogs and camera crews) spend a lot of time on getting the lighting as good as possible.
Most webcams including the ones in laptop can provide decent quality image if there is ample amount of good light on the subject.
Quantity of light you can make up with higher gain (ISO) and higher available dynamic range also helps, as you mentioned.
Quality of light is determined entirely outside the camera, and better gear does not help much if at all. For photography, the quality matters countless times more than quantity, usually. I would argue the same is true for video/webcam.
This is what people don't get, and so hobbyists end up with $5k in gear, taking terrible photos. It's similar to when videographers don't put effort into their sound.
This makes it a question of how and what to light, not how much. The latter would be a matter of adjusting gain in-camera, in Post-Processing, or simply turning existing lighting up. But the former part is the important, and difficult, one.
If we don't have enough light in a scene, we need to raise ISO for a given camera and that can easily make scene look bad. For other camera with bigger and less noisier sensor, brighter lens there can be enough light and it can look very good. I can imagine that there are cases, where increasing amount of light will only improve picture for a cheap camera.
If the light is plentiful and bad, cheap camera can produce abysmal results with parts of the image completely washed white in one part, and very dark in other parts. Good sensor with high dynamic range will produce much better results. Of course, improving the light will improve both results.
But if you compare good camera in bad lighting and bad camera with good lighting the bad camera will almost always win unless it is really, really shitty.
It is also usually much cheaper to improve lighting. If your face is a shadow while the rest of the room is brightly lit there is only so much that the camera can do, regardless of how much you invest in it.
It takes a lot of work to beat natural light coming from your window. If you have restricted budget and can choose the time when you record, this is a very good option that I always recommend to people I talk to.
On the other hand, when you do remote work you don't choose the time. Also, you will probably have other considerations for your desk placement. In the end it is much more important that you feel comfortable when working at your desk than to have good lighting in your webcam for your coworkers.
So, if you like to sit front to the window then sure, go on. But if that would make you uncomfortable then I don't think it is worth it.
I'm experimenting with moving my desk but the trial and error is a pita.
Did you know that most of people in Canada live at the lattitude of Croatia or south of it?
I think my favorite tidbit is that Rome and Boston are at the same latitude.
The other option would be to not face the window, but then you have bright daylight shining onto your monitors instead.
But yes, in general, I have the same problem. It doesn't matter how well I see you if I can't understand what you are saying.
Also understand that real time compression is different from offline compression. To compress well it requires a huge amount of CPU. Real time compression results in higher bandwidth for the same image quality but more typically less quality for the same bandwidth.
- buy two large sheets of white styrofoam (1m x 0.5m or bigger)
- buy two cheap bright floodlights (the brighter the better)
- get some mounting materials (eg. wood and screws, or cardboard and duct tape)
- Place the two styrofoam plates right and left behind your laptop.
- point the floodlights at the styrofoam, carefully positioning them so they are not in the picture
Enjoy beautiful bright soft light. Optionally add a 3rd floodlight that shines on you from the side/from behind for highlights, and optionally another one to illuminate the background as needed.
Now you'll look amazing even with the cheapest, crappiest webcam.
If you just want soft light, bounce it off anything you have on hand.
When I looked into it a couple of years ago a minimum set of two strobes, mounts and a reflector would have cost more than 300€.
Soft lighting is a result of geometry. You can use very huge source far away from you or smaller but very close.
You also need to pay attention to how the light is scattered and that the direct light is not shining on your face. I have asked my wife to make half a dozen covers for them from a white material. They have a spot in the middle that blocks direct light from the bulb. I use a number of covers on each depending on how much I want to attenuate the lighting.
I also use a very small, cheap 5 watt high CRI, 6400K lightbulb in each. I use same kind of bulbs from same manufacturer for overhead light and for my desk lamp. I have separate desk lamps for 6400K light and 4000K light (which is what I like to use when I work).
The total cost is something on the order of 150 PLN or 40 USD plus a favor to my wife.
Edit: I just read your comment again and realized that you are putting the light really close to your face. I guess that's a way to get away with low power lights.
I am not a model and am not used to have such bright light source so close to my face. I had to attenuate it because then it is just too uncomfortable but also to match light level on my face with that of the background.
And it's so much nicer now! It's amazing what light can do to a room.
I think most homes should have an order of magnitude more light.
Much better alternative - if you have a window, set up your desk so you face towards it. It’s an automatic soft box and you get to look out the window.
But for example, if you are a teacher, or an instructor, or if you have a video meeting with important customers, you may want to put some more effort into presenting yourself. And the best bang for the buck is improving lighting.
Sitting in front of a window is a nice solution for an overcast day, but it doesn't work after sunset (currently around 4PM where I live) or on a sunny day with hard light. Unlike styrofoam boards, it's also hard to control the light because you can't move the window.
I'm not suggesting everyone should do what I said. I was just sharing a possible solution if you want to make good looking video.
I just bought the cheapest, crappiest webcam - a Trust Exis Webcam[1] - and I can assure you that nothing could ever look amazing viewed through that 480p blurry POS no matter what you do.
If you want cheap and crappy, I strongly recommend going for something slightly less cheap and crappy than this one.
[1] https://www.trust.com/en/product/17003-exis-webcam-black-sil...
As a service to the readers who aren't familiar with the term:
"The Color Rendering Index (CRI) measures the ability of a light source to bring out the true colors of an object. Without a high CRI light source, objects can appear faded, dull or inaccurate. "
On your side monitor(s), set a couple of desktops with plain white, pink, and beige backgrounds. When you're on video, switch to the blank backgrounds to use as a soft fill light.
Also, don’t be the person with the overly-complicated webcam setup who ends up delaying every other meeting while they fiddle with cables, tripods, camera batteries, overheating cameras, cameras going into standby and so on. Having crisp images doesn’t matter if your always late or frazzled because you had to tend to your perfect webcam setup.
Easiest thing is using a cheap headset microphone. Advanced noice cancellation algorithms with a great microphone placed far away can't complete with the physics of having a mic close to your month.
Since publishing, I also found Webcam Settings, an app for Mac that lets you adjust specific settings on UVC webcams. I use it to correct the horrible auto white balance on my C920 (naturally looks way too blue).
I just wish Apple would make a new version of their iSight camera. Something with a similar physical shape with a cropped DSLR sensor and a fast lens. Basically, same quality as a mirrorless with a fixed f/2 lens but in a single small package.
1 - https://jonpurdy.com/2020/03/how-to-improve-your-zoomskype-t...
Frankly, hardware problems are hard. The laws of physics are non-negotiable, and doing what we assume to be simple tasks at scale can be crazy difficult. Solving a problem in a lab is not the same as making it at scale. That’s why you keep reading these stories about major lab discoveries that never seem to actually materialize in product.
Us software developers get used to being able to write some code, or license a library, and the problem is solved. Scale isn’t really an issue for us. If we can do it on our laptop, then we can push out our product to millions, almost overnight.
Hardware is quite a different world. We need to tool up factories, train assemblers, set up suppliers and transportation networks, negotiate dozens of contracts; even for simple projects, resolve regulatory issues (which can be quite intimidating, depending on the industry and market), establish distribution channels and create packaging. Some of these are reflected in the software world, but at a much easier-to-manage level.
Also, with software, failure usually doesn’t cost as much as it does with hardware. It’s a lot easier to pick ourselves up, dust off our lapels, and try again. Iteration is relatively easy.
One of my favorite scenes: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
this is only true if you buy a condenser microphone. a dynamic microphone will work reasonably fine with your onboard soundcard if you have an xlr-->1/8" trs cable.
You can get battery powered condenser mics, though, and output unbalanced XLR to 3.5mm, works fine.