In the current world of virtual meetings and online content, having a "good enough" webcam is no longer good enough.
While almost every laptop on the market has a webcam built into it, the quality they provide is almost never great. While most professional cameras and even prosumer cameras can also double as a webcam, they can be expensive options or a hassle to set up and then take down, especially if you are letting your camera perform double duty as a work camera and webcam (like I was doing for a long time). So, it makes sense for a lot of people to purchase a webcam that can give them better quality at a more affordable price compared to other options, especially when the webcam can give them features that a traditional camera can't offer. And the new Insta360 Link 2 Webcam does just that.
The first thing that makes this camera stand out is the form factor. You can instantly tell by the gimbal-style setup that this camera can do more than simply stream video. With the ability to pan and tilt, this camera can actually track you around the room. So you are no longer stuck in a single location while you chat or record. With traditional cameras, you either have to constantly move or adjust the camera as you physically move, or you would have to film wide enough to record an entire area. But getting an extremely wide angle of view is not always possible, and even when it is, the viewer can't always see what you are doing when viewing from so far away.
But with the Insta360 Link 2, you can have the camera simply track you as you move. Even better, you can use some of the smart compositions to have the camera zoom in or out in order to maintain a headshot, half-body, or full-body composition. So as you move away from the camera, it can zoom in so that what you are doing is still visible.
And while the tracking cannot do a full 360-degree rotation, it can get pretty close. But for situations where you may not want the camera to track you past a certain point, you can also set up boundaries so that the camera won’t go past a certain area. You can also set up different zones where the camera can track you until you enter a zone, and then it will let you move freely in that zone without the camera moving around. But as soon as you leave a zone, the camera will return to tracking you. This would be great if you have multiple areas where you want to talk or demo, but you don't want to constantly start and stop the tracking. That said, they give you the ability to use hand gestures to quickly and easily start and stop tracking as well as zoom in and out, and also enter Whiteboard mode.
In terms of other features, the audio from the device is good but not the best. It uses AI to give you the ability to cancel out unwanted noise as well as adjust the levels of the canceled audio. So if you have a noisy room or maybe loud coworkers, you can completely cancel them out. But if you are a musician and you want the music to come through, you can adjust the level so that all the music comes through, or you can also lower it a bit so that maybe you can hear the music but the vocals are more easily heard. Though I'm not a musician, so I was not able to test how well this feature actually works. But in terms of simple talking audio, I thought it was better than something like a mic built into a laptop but not as good as a stand-alone mic. Though running the audio through Adobe Podcast helps for things like recordings, you obviously can't use this option for things like calls or live streams.
When it comes to video quality, this is where the camera really outshines a laptop's built-in camera, both in image quality and adjustability. The camera features a much larger half-inch sensor, so it will be better at capturing more dynamic range as well as better low-light video. The software also lets you adjust things like brightness, contrast, sharpness, and more. You can even give the video a custom tone curve to manually adjust how shadows, mid-tones, and highlights are displayed. There is also an HDR mode that lets you take full advantage of the camera's dynamic range, and then you can use the tone curve so that the image is not overly flat. Sort of like when recording a video in a flat picture profile so you can add contrast and saturation in post-production. But for me, since I like to play with my lighting, the simple ability to adjust the exposure and white balance is a much-appreciated functionality. These two adjustments are the main reason why I always reach for my mirrorless camera when needing a webcam.
As for the video itself, you can record and stream as high as 4K30, as well as use a simple drop-down menu to select a lower resolution if you'd like. Because the camera has multiple ways to mount, you can also record in both horizontal and vertical orientations, depending on the platform you want to cater to. Both the panning and tilting functions will also work for tracking whether you are using the camera vertically or horizontally.
What I Liked
- Better image quality
- Easy to adjust important settings
- Tracking works really well
What I Didn't Like
- Desktop view and tracking didn't work at the same time for me and my setup
- The audio was fine but not better than a dedicated mic
In closing, Insta360 Link2 Webcam can give you a lot more functionality than a traditional webcam and even higher-end mirrorless cameras. The tracking feature can also open an entirely new world of possibilities when recording or live streaming. While the audio is not better than a dedicated microphone, it's better than what's normally built into laptops, and the AI noise canceling is an added bonus for calls and streams.
