Customer Reviews

Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision SE Webcam

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I highly reccomend the Ultra Cam for any Mac User who feels "Slighted" by not having the "iSight" availible any longer. Comments on this cam from the recieving end have all said "Exceptionally Sharp and clear Video" and Good clean audio on Ichat. Works Great on my "Mac Pro, running OS 10.5! It provides the "Missing" Video and Sound Inputs that my Mac Pro sorely needed to be a "Complete" computer. (My previous Mac Had Isight and audio built in as a Imac, I should not expect less from Apple on "Professional Grade" machine such as the "Mac Pro")
My reccomendation is to pass up all the other cams and get this one, best performance for the value and money! (I tried a couple of others, but thier performance was sub par). Thank You Logic Tech for a superior Product that compliments and enhances my Mac Experiance, As I do use my Machine and your camara for my video Conferences!)

I bought an MS LifeCam VX6000 and had it for less than six hours. It promised "HD quality video" blah, blah, blah. I opened it up, installed everything and tried a record with VirtualDub. VD is great because it tells you what frame rate you are actually capturing at. At regular VGA, it was only capturing at 15fps. Pitiful. I returned it and got the QuickCam UltraVision SE. I was immediately impressed. The video was bright in any light and the audio quality was excellent. It captured VGA video at the promised 30fps (29.??? is close enough). I had read a review of the non-Special edition that said it darkened the video. This is the SE and the picture looked great. I had never had a webcam before this really, so I did not know what to expect picture-wise. The best way to describe the video from this camera is "fair reception on an analog TV channel." It is not perfect, you will notice the scan lines, but it is watchable. The software enables you to set the video resolution up to 1280x960 but do not do it! The camera only supports that resolution at about 1fps. Another review of this cam said that the Logitech software package is huge and mostly useless. Because of this, I did not install the software, only the drivers, and it works wonderfully. A messenger app will have the video chat stuff built in, and a video capture program like VirtualDub or Windows Media Encoder only needs the drivers for this cam.

I just got the camera today and installed the lastest software release (2/27/07) from logitech website. Camera video is fine under different lighting condtitions. Even with lights turned off camera produced nice video. It is a bit expensive but I think it is worth the price. The audio is fine too. There is no echo and the voice is clear.

I just received and tested yesterday a QuickCam Ultra Vision Special Edition. I really like it. It is not the smallest video camera Logitech makes (The tube is almost 2 inches in diameter) but the replacement of the plastic lens for the glass lens gives the 1.3Megapixel images a dramatically sharper look. I had a chance to compare this camera with the slightly cheaper Fusion model from Logitech. They both used the same computer software installation so that rapid plug-in comparisons were easy. The 1.3Mpixle and the 720x960 pictures were just much sharper with the Ultra Vision Special Edition camera. I was pleasently surprised. It was not that the Fusion images were in any way really bad. I am sure the Fusion is very good for video conferences etc but if you are looking for the sharpest images I recommend this "Special Edition" camera. I only compared the resolution of the native 1.3 Megapixel mode and 720x960 video mode for capturing video data for a science experiment. The difference in quality was apparent for these images

One issue that I did no expect was that neither camera could take a good picture of a large 46 inch LCD flatscreen TV. My new video camcorder could do this with no problem. The problem with the Webcams is the video screen poriton of the image appears extremely overexposed while using either of the Logitech cameras. There is a software adjustment of "brightness" but this control did not have enough range to fix the problem. Using the WebCams I can take a good picture of my laptop screen. I think this difference with the large flatscreen is because the room lighting is different for the laptop. I did try turning the room lights for the large flatscreen on to full brightness to make the large flatscreen more visible but this was not enough to bring the exposure to the proper point. The flatscreen TV is simply too bright.

My concern for flatscreen TV issues is because one application I might have had for the camera is to take videos of human presenters while they are making Powerpoint presentations to groups of people while using a flat screen or video projector for showing the PowerPoint slides. It looks like this application for the WebCam would not work well.

For many applications I have the high image quality from the glass lens looks like this $129 camera is worth the extra money it costs.

ok.... 2 things... It is a very well made cam (it doesn't feel like a flimsy plastic web cam), and it works on both mac and pc...

i have a mac and a pc in my house, and i really like the fact that i can bring it back and forth between computers.... while on the mac it was easier to install (just plug it in, and restart the comp), on the pc it has alot of features which are not available on the mac version (like the auto lighting feature, the "follow me" feature, etc.)
pros:
WORKS ON MAC! with no drivers to download! and without having to use Macam
when using on windows, it's a very high quality camera and the features are incredible
the microphone is cristal clear
you can pretty much mount it on any monitor (with the exception of laptops)
even without the additional features on the mac, it still looks alot clearer than the "isight" that comes with the new macs

the "low light mode" is simply AMAZING! i was in a pitch dark room and it looked clear as day
cons:
DOES NOT WORK WITH IMOVIE! imovie requires a firewire hdcam to work... so this is only for use with im programs (ichat, skype, etc..)

expenssive.. i paid $140 @ the apple store (should have bought it on amazon! lol)

it's a little bulky..

the zoom is not optical, it's digital, therefore, the more you zoom in, the grainier and more pixelated it looks.



that's pretty much it... overall i think it's a great product.. and until Steve Jobs and apple get a little smarter and realize that people wanna have the option to buy usb cams for their macs, im gonna have to deal with it~

-pedro

Great quality and great looking product. Had a little trouble installing on Windows Vista, I couldn't get the Mic to work. I downloaded the software/driver from Logitech website, followed the instructions and wa-la, mission accomplished with no hassel. Love the Right Light technology and the video effects except for the Avatar video effect which tends to lose the face tracking sometimes but that's not the reason I got this webcam anyway. I'm completely satisfied with this Webcam and I only gave it 4 stars because of the size (not suitable for Laptops), it could have been a little more compact but it's OK for a 19" LCD.

.

This product works better on a PC than a MAC. On the PC, the camera, will follow you if you move around--it doesn't do this on the MAC. On the other hand, I find PC's to be a PITA to work with--it works, but it is not as easy as using on a MAC. Note I did not try this with iMovie. On the Mac it worked with PhotoBooth and iChat.

At present I use it on a Mac Mini hooked up to a flat panel TV. My 15 year old niece loves it. The size of this display and the farther distance away from the camera, provides a better field of view and an in-your-face camera.

I personally, rarely use it, but I can see the potential for as a video phone. I wish more of my friends and family had similar set-ups, as it would be great to see people at a distance and be able to talk to them.

I highly recommend the Mac Mini hooked up to a flat panel. I also use a Mac Wireless keyboard and just ordered a Bluetooth TrackBall. By the way, the Mac Mini has worked great for web browsing. Hit "Command" and "+" to zoom text sizes to read the news from across the room. Very cool.

Overall, I think this is a great webcam. It has pretty good color and makes a good sharp image. I wish it has still higher resolution, but it does it's job well. You can't go wrong for this price also.

This is a best buy, image clarity and face tracking function are wonderful. Definitely would buy second one.

This webcam is very responsive, gives excellent image quality and the software some have complained about from previous versions is now in excellent shape. The sound quality is equally excellent. Extremes in lighting conditions cause the webcam some indigestion, but it will soon settle down. I found the image to be surprisingly stable when I jostled my laptop. It also follows me around as if there's someone inside watching me. This webcam is truly worth having if it's quality you want. If it's compactness, this is not the one for you, but Logitec has a number of smaller, more compact webcams specifically made for laptops.

Logitech keeps doing the same thing - they use their standard software & drivers then add some gizmo (a tripod, a robot, whatever) to make it different, but the camera is still a 640x480. Hello? Anyone at home Logitech? My laptop screen is 1920x1200 (dell 1705) - HDTV is 1920x1080 - why would you possibly STILL make a 640x480 camera?

It's time for an upgrade. Logitech needs to make a multi-megapixel class camera that has "usefull" features (listening to the grinding motors on the robo-camera made the sound useless, for example - better gears would have fixed that)

For LESS money than this, you can buy a 3 MP camera with a USB cable and a webcam function so with that available, the 640x480 is out of date.

All the video cameras give logitech a worse name when they come out.