Customer Reviews

Macally Portable Goose Neck USB Video Web Cam - ICECAM

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

I bought one of these for my mother to use with iChat AV and Mac OS X 10.3. With the addition of Ecamm's "iChatUSBCam" software (not included) it does work quite nicely, given the limitations of this USB camera and assuming you don't go into full screen mode. Physically, the camera is hardly imposing at all. The actual camera itself is slightly smaller than, say, a Bic lighter. The cable to connect it to your computer is strengthened; you bend the wire like a coat hanger to position the camera. The good thing is this makes the camera infinitely positionable. The bad thing is if you want to use this as a desk camera you'll find even the slightest vibration makes the camera wobble. I've found that if you wrap the wire around a solid object like a desk support, the camera becomes significantly more stable. Of course, this camera is really intended for travel use which makes all of this pretty well moot. IMAGE QUALITY: Image quality is decent for a USB camera but it won't win any awards. It does NOT like shadows or dimly lit areas; artifacting becomes a problem when lighting goes down. Given proper lighting conditions it produces an acceptable image. The ring around the lens allows you to focus it, but since the aperature is so tiny those with large hands may find it difficult to adjust. Macally has VERY good customer support and has historically been very Macintosh friendly. BOTTOM LINE: If you're looking for a cheap (Mac-friendly) webcam and you're not terribly concerned about premium image quality, this is a good way to go.

You only have two choices if you're running OS X 10.4. You can get the Isight for $150.00 or you can get the Macally Icecam for about $30.00.

The Macally gets the job done with just a few drawbacks. 1) You have to buy a driver online for which there comes a coupon when you buy the camera. 2.) The USB cable is only about 15in. long.

It works with OS10.4.6 without buying anything else, although you need install an attached driver in your computer. To the best of my knowledge, this is the most reasonable webcam for Mac users. The design of the webcam and the image quality are not that great, but I find it satisfactory to show your family/friends how well you look.

I am satisfied with my purchase of the macally icecam and I can confidently recommend this product for the price. It is VERY EASY to set up and use and it works well; However, I took off 1 star for the following 2 reasons: 1. Room lighting plays with the focus and the focus needs very delicate fine tuning - but it has a great picture once you finally get it in focus and get the room lighting right. 2. A separate software (purchase, but only $5.00 w/coupon) needed for Ichat.

I use this with Yahoo Messenger and my Powerbook. The video quality is far from perfect, and its a little annoying that you have to buy extra software to use the camera with iChat, but I don't really need to do professional video conferencing or anything like that, so it gets the job done for me.

Bottom line... for the price it works pretty well.

If it weren't for a fantastic tech staff at Macally, I would never have gotten the camera to work. They bent over backwards to help me get online with iChat AV. The tracking is slow and focus could be better but what do you expect for the price. It works... and the goose neck is long enough to be visible above my iMac screen. It woud be nice if there was a stand for it but since mine only worked if connected directly to the usb port on the computer and not a hub, the goose neck will do. Until Mac reduces the price on their iSight, this'll do me fine.

This web cam is the only cheap one I could find for a Mac. It works well with Skype, which is all I wanted it for. It has no bells and whistles, but gets the job done.

I don't know why, but I bought this webcam for my Mac thinking it was the only third party webcam that would work natively with iChat. If such a webcam exists, this isn't it. The Macally IceCam still requires iChatUSBCam (another $10 piece of software you have to buy, although you do get it for half off through a coupon included with this camera). Perhaps it would have worked in Skype without the separate iChatUSBCam software but I didn't test that.

The driver install was painless, although it did leave me with an application in my Applications directory as well, called Webcam Monitor, which seemed to do nothing at all.

It works in iChat, I tested it between two computers on my home network, so the performance should have been ideal. My other Mac uses a built-in iSight and the picture quality for that one was fantastic. Not so, with the Macally IceCam. It looks completely awful. The focus is never right, no matter how much I fiddle with the focus dial. The resolution is low, in any case, and the frame rate is even worse. iChat reported 15fps but it looked more like low single digits. I would guess between 2 and 5 frames per second. Worthless.

I suggest getting iChatUSBCam from Ecamm and using it to operate one of the other compatible third party webcams on the market. Or, if you have OSX 10.4.9 or later, you can get certain Logitech QuickCam models that don't require any additional software to work with iChat.

Transmitted video using Skype is OK. Not the highest quality but adequate. Purchased primarily to use on my Macintosh laptop. It did not work. However, works fine on my desktop mac. Skype will not work if the camera monitor software provided with this camera is activated. You must quit this application before using Skype. I like goose-neck design. Unfortunately, its video quality isf average to below average. It would be great if Macally improved resolution for this camera (or is there another improved model that I am not aware of!).

This webcam was easy to install and use. The picture is not the greatest, but for the price it is amazing. I have had no problems with the cam crashing Yahoo Messenger, running with MacOSX 10.4.8 on an PowerBook 1.5 GHz G4 with 512MB RAM.

The controls are easy to use, but you have to scroll down to find them. It might be nice in the future to have a separate window available to change exposure, frames per second, etc.

Normally, I'd give it a 3. But I'll say it again, YOU CAN"T BEAT THE PRICE. For that, it gets an extra star from 3 to 4.