Our last family Skype session from Chicago to Florida ended with a familiar refrain. My father asked me how come our video was so clear while his video was blurry and washed out.
“It’s the Mac’s built-in iSight camera, Dad. Get a Mac.” He’s heard that before but remains dedicated to Windows and PCs, so we decided to check into a camera that could up his Skype game. We settled on the Logitech Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam to match his newly acquired Mac mini (he’s retired and frugal; not necessarily in that order).
The Logitech Broadcaster is Wi-Fi so it needs batteries. The video is 720p and can live stream or record direct to your Mac. The advantage of the Wi-Fi is that the Broadcast can be used on an iPhone or iPad, too (but only on the same local wireless network).
The Broadcaster’s built-in microphone is mono. There’s also a small illumination lamp, and the camera features 3X zoom, but digital pan and tilt. Video is H.264.
I could get the camera to work fine on my Mac to stream and record video, but it wouldn’t capture video in iMovie. For iPad and iPhone you’ll need the Logitech Broadcaster app for iOS. Run the app and it finds the Broadcaster camera via Wi-Fi.
Video quality is surprisingly good, especially by PC standards, but still not quite as crisp and sharp as the iSight camera in our desktop iMac. The 2-hour battery life seems low considering that a Skype session can run for an hour with ease.
The Broadcaster camera is about half the price tag of an iPad 2, but the video quality is better.