Customer Reviews

Kensington VideoCAM VGA Digital PC Camera (PC and Mac)

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Kensington VideoCAM VGA is a passible desktop cam for webcam or videoconferencing, but you can do better with almost any of Logitech's QuickCam models.

Connected to Mac G4, its primary role is as a webcam. It's grainy and has a tendancy to blur movement under typical office lighting. OTOH, it was cheap, and is quite small -- it's footprint is about two inches wide and three quarters of an inch deep, so it can perch almost anywhere.

PROS: Small, decent software, acts as a proper QuickTime device and so works with almost any video software.

CONS: Grainy picture, doesn't handle low-light conditions very well, software pretty but limited.

VERDICT: It does the job, but not impressively. Consider a higher quality cam if your budget allows, but if not, you could also do worse.

This webcam has to be one of the pickiest cameras in existance. Kensington's drivers are all-out horrid. It's NT compatibility is NIL. I'm not sure how it works on a MAC but its perfectly unstable on a PC, crashes my system alot, the VideoCAMWorks software only gets worse as Kensington comes out with new releases (one new version over the past year). If you're looking for a webcam whose maker will release decent patches to drivers, etc... you haven't found it. Performance is ugly too. I don't reccomend setting it up in low-light conditions.

Poor picture quality, lousy frame rate, mediocre software, and terrible in low light. These might be forgivable in an entry-level camera, but the showstopper is that the software doesn't work in anything newer than Windows 98 or Mac OS 9.x and Kensington has no plans to update it.

If you're looking for a camera from a company that makes good products and actually supports them, Kensingon ain't your bag.

I still can't believe how much of a waste this video camera is. Granted, it was cheap, but I never expected anything like this. The picture is awful, and you have to have a light behind the camera for anyone to see you (or anything else for that matter), otherwise everything looks awful. Not to mention the terribly grainy picture, and the very low quality. Also, the manual focus makes it really difficult to take pictures of anything except when you're standing still. Don't buy this, it's NOT worth the agony (nor only being able to use it in Windows ME or 98).

I find this camera to be surprisingly good, although the image quality can be grainy in low light conditions. It picks up well in low light conditions and hasn't given me any problems so far. I run it on a Apple Macintosh Powerbook G4 on iVisit, a chat program and it runs fine in both Classic mode in OS X .1.3 and OS 9.2.2
Sure beats many of the expensive cams I've tried to use with my Mac but fail to work with OS X in classic mode.

Price is low and so is the quality. Don't waste your money on this one. Spend a few more dollars and get one with better resolution.

I have tried the Kensington webcam on three different computers. running win98 and all three systems crash after a few hours of having the webcam on.
I now find that after upgrading to win2000 (thinking this will fix my problems) I find that there is no driver to run the camera but if you read the help files Kensington offer to refund your money.
Return this camera ASAP - it is rubbish.
Even for the short times when it did work - the picture quality is bad.
The software that came with this product is very limited. Most other cameras come with much better specs and software.
Although a very economical camera - you can get much better for less!

Although this is not one of the greatest digital Camera's out there it is a very good camera for its price!