Customer Reviews

Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac (Black)

5 star:		(132)
4 star:		(65)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Very good video and sound quality. Plug-and-Play installation. Easy to test and configure on a Mac using Skype or Yahoo Messenger.

I'm glad I waited for this Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac instead a Windows cam. All I needed was a quality combined webcam / microphone for my G4 PowerBook - no need for special effects. This cam had to work well in low light conditions, and with slower internet connections when I travel.

I've been using it for 5 days with Skype on DSL, and both my US and international contacts are receiving very good quality sound and image.

Although it has no built-in stand, it can actually be set on a flat surface or gently clipped above the screen. Since there is no driver software, it is missing the face-tracking features of the Pro 9000, and there can be lags with a lot of movement. Not an issue for me since I'm using this in a static setting. It also is missing Logitech's RightSound, but my contacts are hearing me clearly. No snapshot button or digital zoom. HD video can be up to 1600 X 1200 pixels, which may be a little better than the 9000. I haven't tested video recording using third-party software. No travel pouch.

In all - not many extra bells and whistles, but an excellent choice for Mac users who want an instant set-up, quality webcam.

If you have a Mac and need a webcam, this is the one to get. It is a bit pricey, but in my opinion is worth the cost. I am using it with Skype, it was very quick and easy to install. It delivers a very sharp image, has excellent auto-focus, light balance and reacts well to movement - even when trying to capture my fast moving toddler.
If you're wondering what the difference is between this and the very similar looking Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, it is that the auto-focus and light balancing features are build into the HARDWARE of this camera, and are not dependent on software running on a Microsoft OS to be utilized. That is why it is "for Mac" and why it costs a little more. I chose this camera because it is the only one I found that offers these features when used with a Mac. If you don't care about auto-focus or lighting, you may use just about any camera with your Mac and it will work, just don't bother buying one that offers those features because they are typically software based, and that software will not run on your Mac.

This product listing is a bit misleading in that the Mac can't really take advantage of the high resolution of this camera. Apple software simply does not support such high resolution: as it says in the specs above, "Photo Booth and iChat support a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels."

Talia, your G4 iMac simply doesn't have enough horsepower , in processor speed or video resolution, to do satisfying video chat- with any video camera. You have to dig into the iChat specifications, but this is what Apple states for 1-1 video chat requirements: 320-by-240 pixel video resolution requires a minimum of 1.8 GHz G5, or 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo (one of the newer dual-processor computers). According to their specs, your computer would support a video resolution of 160-by-120 pixels- this is a video picture that is approximately 2 inches by 1.5 inches in size- tiny. If the chat window is any bigger, no matter what camera you use, the video will be choppy and poor quality because your Mac simply is not capable of processing the signals and displaying the video fast enough. I'm very sorry - there's not enough info here for you to have known that.

The specifications listed here are entirely inadequate for consumers to know how well this camera will work with their computer.

First thing is that this is new technology which works with the built in UVC drivers. I know Leopard includes them for Intel Macs, I'm not sure about earlier versions of the OS or Power PC Macs so users of older machines/software are advised to do a bit of research or even post on the Logitech forums. If you have fairly recent hardware and are running Leopard this camera gives the best picture I've ever encountered on a Mac.

I'm using it on my Mac Pro quad core. Excellent picture, as good a frame rate as the using software allows. For iChat that's about 15 fps which is enough for reasonably responsive image. Skype can be better, up to 30 fps but the cost is greater bandwidth needed for transmission. You will find that products which you might expect to work such as PhotoBooth don't or only give you about 5fps. That's because the software was written to use a built in web cam or FireWire and the UVC compliant camera isn't yet fully supported. You can take stills but not movies except with the jerky 5 fps limitation. You can use a third party little app called WebcamTweaker.app to capture movies from this camera.

Prior to this cam I was using a Logitech 9000 Pro which gave an equally good image but lacked the built in auto focus and light adjustments. It was limited to the 5 fps which this QuickCam for Mac has eliminated. We are only limited any more by applications which fail to make use of the abilities built into this cam. For me it was a five star purchase.

The "Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac" title is misleading.

It's not Mac only!

In fact, it's the easiest webcam I've ever installed, on XP (Windows XP Pro SP3), and on Linux (Fedora 8 and Fedora 9).

On XP, it has full native support. It's driverless. Windows XP will install it automatically. It has full native support in Windows, including image preview in My Computer, and image capture for changing your account's icon in Control Panel/User Accounts.

On Linux, it was recognized instantly. It uses the "uvcvideo" driver. The "ucview" test program worked, and Skype worked.

The webcam uses the new USB video device class standard. This means that it's generic, like a USB keyboard or USB mouse, and will never require a driver.

Autofocus and autoexposure (light level) is done purely in hardware. There's no software to install. This is different from the earlier Logitech QuickCam 9000, which depended on Windows software to do the focus and exposure, which lowered the price of the webcam, but forced you to use Windows. The microphone is pretty good for a webcam, but you'll still want a headset for clear conversation. Frame rate is very fast and smooth, 30fps at 640x480.

It's not without its disadvantages, though. It's pricey. The included stand is very wobbly, and falls down easily. When set on top of the monitor, gravity's the only thing holding it on, it will slide off easily. Unlike the older Logitech webcams with flexible plastic that could mold into place, this camera has stiff plastic, so it doesn't maintain as good a grip. No zoom. Frame rate gets much slower if resolution is increased beyond 640x480. At 960x720, it's 15fps. At the maximum 1600x1200, it's only 5ps. Anything above 960x720 is just hardware upscaling, as the true optical resolution of the webcam is 960x720.

About the only operating system I haven't yet used the webcam with, is Mac :)

I bought this camera for video conferencing using my MacBook Pro. (iSight is a poor camera). This camera works great for iChat & Quicktime, but it is NOT flash compatible. Any web-based conferencing application that uses flash will not be able to see this camera! I confirmed this with Logitech tech support.

Otherwise, this is a terrific camera - 100% improvement over the built-in iSight.

I've purchased seven of these cameras, 5 for a team at work, 1 use at home, and 1 for my mother's Mac Mini.

Most of the cameras are on XP machines. As mentioned elsewhere these cameras install without device drivers on XP SP2 or later. Unlike the superficially similar but less expensive QuickCam Pro 9000 they do light balance and focus through camera hardware. That means we don't have to deal with flaky device drivers (rarely done well for OS X), and there's less demand on the CPU to manage the device.

Not to mention that our top notch engineers are very bad about installing s/w, so a driver free device is a real plus. Also, we can easily move it between machines.

I've compared the video quality of this camera to the pinhole webcam that comes standard on modern Macs. It's light years better. There's really no comparison. It's better in low light, it's better at focus, it's higher resolution, there's far less image noise, etc.

The built-in microphone is superb. We get better sound quality using Google Video Chat and this device than we get with high end conference phones.

I'm a hard consumer to please, but I am very pleased with this camera.

Highly recommended.

Length:: 5:51 Mins

Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac (Black)

Truly "plug & play," with excellent results... even on an older Mac iBook G4 notebook, 1.42 GHz, with 1 GB DDR SDRAM, running Tiger OS 10.4.11, using Skype. I was a bit apprehensive about purchasing this webcam because of some reports about questionable performance on older, "lower horsepower" Macs... but I was pleasantly surprised when it worked flawlessly on mine. The Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro for Mac is far superior to the Macally IceCam2 Webcam. (I have two Mcally Icecam2 units.) In my estimation, images on the Logitech are three to four time clearer than those on the Mcally. To me, the approximately $70 difference is well worth the additional cost.

This camera will not operate once the computer sleeps until you reboot the machine. If you use more than one camera application like Skype and iChat as soon as you switch applications the picture goes dark. The solution is to unplug/replug the USB connector which is a pain. Logitech, as usual, has no solution. Both above problems are listed in other Amazon reviews and on the web.