Customer Reviews

Logitech Quickcam Orbit WebCam

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I am a seasoned pc user, I found the features to be great. The problems started as soon as I installed the camera though. First I plugged it in... Windows XP didn't find any drivers. I unplugged the camera and installed the software from Logitech (newly downloaded of course). I always chuck the original cd, newest drivers are always on line. The computer restarted and locked up (Windows XP). Turns out this camera likes a powered usb hub, I moved it to the powered hub. I restarted again and all was working... BUT
Using the pan and tilt features I found the camera only moved a smidge at a time, although the demo had the thing zipping around freely. I read that the software should be reinstalled, NOT... after the uninstall process Norton 2004 password manager crashed. I reinstalled the software and had the same pan and tilt problem, but Norton was alive again. It dawned on me that the data transfer must be intensive and I switched the usb connector from the 1.1 hub to the 2.0 card (guess that's what the long cable is for, NICE, my computer is in the closet). Now it works PERFECTLY, I am IMPRESSED and I will keep it!

This is not mentioned online anywhere, but I've seen the box first hand and while the camera will connect to a USB 2 port, it does not function at the USB 2 high speed, rather it works only at the USB 1.1 speed. I believe this means that you are NOT going to be able to do 640x480 at 30FPS. Otherwise the resolution specs are nice and it's probably a good camera. As long as you aren't fooled into thinking that it's a USB 2 high speed device and expect too much, you will probably not be disappointed.

This is the first webcam I've owned, so I thought I'd pay that bit extra to ensure it was of good quality. The pictures are excellent. The face tracking does work, it's just that our office is in the basement and if the face tracker loses me, then it focuses on the ceiling light and stays there! I bought one of these for my family in the UK as well, and the webcam images are brilliant. The only microphone we have is the one in the webcam, and the sound is perfect. I would definitely recommend this webcam to anyone - even my 10 year old daughter can use it!

This is a very good webcam, perhaps the best out there. Set up was simple on my Fujitsu S Series laptop running the most recent version of XP Professional. I just loaded the CD, connected the webcam to my USB Port and I was up and running. I'm using a 801g wireless Router and going at speeds of 108kbps. With a minimum amount of light, I get real great picture clarity. On Yahoo Messenger, I'm getting 320x240 pixels, as adverised and a frame rate of .80 frames a second. The quick capture program which allows you to take pictures is of very high quality.

The only thing that was a little nerve racking in the set up was that I had to pull the camera real hard out of the base in order to connect it to the stand. I was afraid I was going to break the camera by pulling it this hard; but that was the only way to detach it from the base.

I only give this 4 stars because I think the face tracking feature needs to be improved. For instance, when someone else comes in the room, the camera moves to track the face of the other. Moreover, I find that I have to go back into the settings every 5 minutes or so and recenter the camera to track my face when I enable face tracking.

I've been using it lately without enabling face tracking and it does an excellent job as a regular webcam and does not make any noise like it does with face tracking enabled. I can move the webcam in any direction I like by going into the settings and using my mouse or cursor. This webcam is very easy and intuitive to operate. It is a little pricey but it is of high quality. I've decided to keep it. Hopefully, logitech will come out with new drivers to improve the face tracking feature. But even if they don't, this webcam is still very good.

If you run it on Win 2000 computers, its awesome. You can pan and tilt across a whole room manually or let the face tracking software track you during a video conference. The face tracking works very well as long as you don't have too noisy of a background in the room to confuse the camera. If we all ran Win 2000 machines, I'd rate the product a 4 star!

Unfortunately, the product doesn't work well on my New Dell Windows XP machine and a few other people have reported a similar problem on XP machines. The range of the pan and tilt seems to mysteriously only be about 20 percent of full range. It looks like a softare problem. If Logitech fixes this bug, we're back to 4 star all around.

To get a 5 star rating, Logitech would need to include some more useful software like motion detector software, and the ability to control your camera remotely via the web. As it is you can only control it locally at your PC.

An odd fact: Ever since the "Made in China" sticker made its way onto Logitech products, their quality has gone downhill.

I used to be (and I still am to some degree) a big fan of Logitech products. They always seem to come up with the best ideas, both in design and functionality. I noticed, however, that their latest products are absolutely unreliable and poorly built.

QuickCam Orbit is the latest example. I got it at the local store, having read all the great magazine reviews, and couldn't wait to try it on my PC.

Installation was fairly straight forward. First thing I noticed was great image quality. QuckCam Orbit clearly beats every other webcam in that category (to the best of my knowledge). I then decided to try the much talked about face tracking technology, and that's where the problems began... The poor thing could not tilt vertically no matter what I tried.

I went back to the store for an exchange and insisted to try it on their computers before buying. Guess what, the sales rep went through 2 of these cams before finding the one that works properly!!!

This is my second bad experience with the latest and "greatest" Logitech product, and there is only one thing I can suggest. Whenever they come out with something new and good looking, wait at least a few months before shelling out your hard earned cash for it. Look at their support forums at www.logitech.com. Read Amazon reviews (do not trust magazine reviews!!!).

In other words, do your research so that you don't end up wasting your time and money.

Advice to Logitech: Improve your quality control or you will soon start losing your reputation (and customers) faster than you can say... "move-your-production-plants-the-hell-out-of-China".

I've had this webcam for almost a year now and I've never had any problems with it. Make sure you install the software BEFORE you plug in the camera or else it could cause some problems (I'd recommend downloading the newest drivers directly from Logitech's website rather than using the CD).

The image quality is as good as any other camera in the price range, but it operates better in low light conditions than most. The face tracking is a neat little feature but I don't end up using that often. From my experience, it seems to work by tracking the area in the frame that reflects/emits the most light. This generally works, but it also means that the cam is sometimes confused by bright areas (like overhead lights) so it tends to gradually shift higher and higher until it's pointing near the ceiling and you have to reset it to its "home" position. I still think its functionality is useful even if you don't let it auto-track your face because it allows you to pan and tilt the camera quite a lot without having to take your hand off of your mouse.

To tell the truth, the biggest reason I probably purchased this particular camera was because of the way it sits on the stem. I don't like having the camera in a high position (like on top of the monitor) because then it just looks down on the top of my head at a weird angle. I don't like it down on the desk because it creates another odd angle looking up at me. When it's on the stem it brings it up to just below eye level, which is about the perfect height for using while on the computer (like while instant messaging).

Is it worth the money? You can get a pretty good camera for less. Even the same Logitech webcam without the stem and pan/tilt stuff (the QuickCam Pro 4000) costs about $30 less... but having those features was worth the extra cost to me.

I ordered 15 of these cameras for my workgroup. Out of the 15, 3 had problems with the pan/tilt mechanism. Logitech has a 2 year warranty, and is pretty good about sending replacements. I just wish they would get a little better with their QA process.

I can't review the product itself because I could never get it to install, but I will review the installation.

If your computer has a SiS or VIA Chipset I would recommend you not buy this thing. The instructions say nothing about having a problem with these chipsets and as for the instructions, they are typical instructions for products these days, none existence. The same for the live support, a real joke...

Buried in Logitech's Knowledge Base I found that if you have one of these chipsets you have to reconfigure your computer to what I would equate to standing on your head and trying to drink water. If you don't know what I am talking about when I say SiS and VIA chipset, I can just tell you that these are two very common chipsets used with USB.

I also tried to install this thing on three different computers and it didn't work on any of them. The first two computers had either the SiS and VIA chipset, but the third did not and it still didn't work on the third one. Five hours of wasted time later is when I decided that it wasn't worth my time to fool with this lousy installation and I returned the product.

Logitech's lost not mine...

So I originally purchased Apple's isight for my powerbook that runs Tiger (OS 10.4), and i was so unhappy with webcam support for macs it and I couldn't use it on my PC. So I wanted to find a camera in which I could use on both.
This lead me to this camera because I've always loved logitech webcams. The face tracking is the best I've seen and quality is quite good. It's not as clear as iSight but currently using iChat and Yahoo Messenger, you're not going to get great video anyways. I've been using this camera with MSN messenger with video and audio and both are perfectly clear, even across the room.
So you're asking, how do i get it to work with the newest version of Mac OSX. Easy! There's a great piece of software called IOXperts which can be found on versiontracker, that will give you all the functionality of the camera.

Don't be dissuaded by people saying it doesn't work with macs, it just takes a minute to download the software.