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If you work remotely, you’ll know how important a good webcam is. The best webcams capture video and audio in stunning high quality, and almost certainly represent an upgrade over the webcam built into your work laptop (or, heaven forbid, the front-facing camera on your phone). If you want to look and sound your best on a company meeting or livestream, a top-notch webcam is a no-brainer. Video Led Display Screen
Many now come with nifty features such as automatic reframing – keeping you in the picture at all times – and autofocus, and a few will even give you total control of the image via a companion app. You don’t need to spend a fortune, either: the best budget webcams offer many of these things at reasonable prices.
We test dozens of webcams each year, assessing low-light performance, audio quality, build quality and much more. Our buying guide at the bottom of the page covers everything you need to know about buying a webcam; alternatively, skip to our mini reviews to see the results of our tests – and our favourite webcams.
Want to learn more? 🡪 Jump to the buying guide | How we test | Best webcams
Price when reviewed: £90 | Check price at Amazon
With a host of clever AI features, the Anker PowerConf C300 is our favourite webcam for most people. Chief among those features is its ability to “auto-frame” your face, or the faces of multiple meeting guests. We found it worked uncannily well: move your face slightly off-centre and the camera’s field of view will follow you left and right and it will zoom in and out digitally as well as you move away from, and approach, the camera.
Autofocus, too, is “AI-powered” and again it was unerringly accurate during our tests. While other autofocus webcams often get confused by your movements, hunting back and forth for focus for seconds, the PowerConf C300 locked on instantly during testing and never seemed to struggle.
That’s not all, though. The C300 also delivers crisp 1080p visuals at up to 60fps and full-bodied audio via dual noise-cancelling microphones. We played around with multiple fields of view too, up to a maximum of 115 degrees. HDR keeps bright backgrounds and dark foregrounds balanced out, plus there’s the ability to tweak colours, resolution, frame rate and more via the accompanying Windows/macOS app pretty easily.
All in all, it’s a tremendously good little webcam; a bit more pricey than our budget selection but worth it should you want a great image quality and lots of functionality for the money.
Key specs – Resolution: 1080p at 60fps; Autofocus: Yes; Audio: Built-in noise-cancelling microphones; Mount type: Clip stand/tripod thread; Cable length: 1.5m
Price when reviewed: £20 | Check price at Amazon
If you’re looking for a simple, inexpensive upgrade, we found Logitech’s entry-level webcam hard to beat. It’s light, sitting on either a laptop lid or monitor by way of an easy-to-use mount, and it supports 720p recordings and video calls, either using Skype and Google Hangouts or Logitech’s own more obscure VID HD app.
Logitech’s RightLight technology means you can get decent-quality video even in low light conditions, too. Sound quality isn’t quite so brilliant, but it was good enough for us to be heard without fault across calls and conferencing, and the built-in microphone also reduces some background noise. This might be one of Logitech’s most affordable webcams, but it has the same software as its more expensive stablemates, giving you pan, tilt and zoom controls, motion detection and face tracking.
Key specs – Resolution: 720p; Autofocus: No; Audio: Built-in microphone with noise reduction; Mount type: Clip stand, Cable length: 1.5m
Price when reviewed: £140 | Check price from John Lewis
The StreamCam is perfect for content creators: it comes bundled with Logitech’s handy Capture software, which makes YouTuber tricks such as live streaming while sharing your screen incredibly easy. We found a lot to like in its selection of extra features, including auto framing, image stabilisation and the ability to tweak the colour balance and brightness of the image. It captures video at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames per second, which is perfect for aspiring streamers.
It’s a brilliant camera for bog-standard video calls, too, with sharp image quality, good audio via integrated stereo microphones, decent natural colours and excellent overall build quality. The only slight gripe we have is that the cable is a little on the short side – though it does connect via USB-C, which is a rare treat as far as we’re concerned.
Key specs – Resolution: 1080p at 60fps; Autofocus: Yes; Audio: Dual microphones; Mount type: Clip/tripod attachment; Cable length: 1.5m
Price when reviewed: £267 | Check price at Amazon
While the Insta360 Link is an accomplished webcam in its own right, it stood out in our testing by offering something most other webcams don’t – motorised tracking. With a full three-axis gimbal, it was able to lock onto and follow our faces as we moved around by panning, tilting and zooming automatically. It can also zoom in on whiteboards and flip charts as well as record in top-down and portrait orientations. You can imagine how useful this functionality is for virtual meetings or video demonstrations.
Better yet, it packs the largest imaging sensor we’ve seen in a webcam, producing exceptionally clean 4K images, even in low-light environments. Its onboard microphones aren’t the best we’ve seen and it carries a hefty price tag but for the most demanding remote workers, the Link’s flexibility is unrivalled.
Read our full Insta360 Link review
Key specs – Resolution: 4K at 30fps, 1080p at 60fps; Autofocus: Yes; Audio: Dual microphones; Mount type: Built-in with tripod thread; Cable length: 1.5m
Price when reviewed: £172 | Check price at Amazon
If you want a webcam that records the absolute crispest 4K video possible, the Dell UltraSharp Webcam is our pick. Those extra pixels allow you to crop more closely without sacrificing image quality, which is a boon for anyone with streaming ambitions.
We enjoyed fine-tuning the colour balance with its accompanying software, as well as zooming in, out and panning around the scene manually. But it worked surprisingly well simply leaving the camera’s AI capabilities to track your face.
That’s not the only feature we like, though. Another particularly appealing aspect of the Dell UltraSharp Webcam is that it supports Windows 10’s Hello facial login, so you can sit down at your PC and log in without having to type in your password.
The one odd thing about the UltraSharp is that it doesn’t come with a built-in microphone, though that shouldn’t be a problem if you already use a headset or USB microphone on video calls.
Read our full Dell UltraSharp review
Key specs – Resolution: 4K at 30fps, 1080p at 30fps, 720p at 60fps; Autofocus: Yes; Audio: None; Mount type: Monitor stand, tripod adapter; Cable length: 2m
Price when reviewed: £70 | Check price at Argos
The Trust Taxon a reasonably priced 2K webcam with well above-average video quality. For the money, you get an 80-degree field of view, stereo microphones and a physical privacy shutter. Autofocus worked well no matter how we tried to trick it, with very little of the hunting you see with other webcams.
Otherwise, it’s a pretty basic offering. There’s no accompanying software for tweaking the image zoom or colours and it only captures at 30 frames per second. Still, with that handy physical shutter and all the other basics covered, that’s all you really need if you just want a high quality webcam and microphone combo.
Key specs – Resolution: 2K (2,560 x 1,440) at 30fps; Autofocus: Yes; Audio: Built-in stereo microphones; Mount type: Clip stand with tripod thread; Cable length: 1.8m (captive)
Price when reviewed: £200 l Check price at Amazon
If poor lighting is a bit of an issue, then the Razer Kiyo Pro could be just the ticket to give your conference calls or Twitch streams a much-needed shot in the arm. Despite lacking the 4K resolution of the Logitech Brio, the Kiyo Pro’s 1080p HDR video excelled in our tests, with well-balanced colours and accurately judged exposure in all manner of lighting conditions.
It also supports a wide 103-degree field of view, which can be cropped to either 90 or 80 degrees in the camera’s settings. The Kiyo Pro’s Z-shaped mount is thoughtfully designed, too, supporting monitors up to 60mm in thickness, and the webcam can also be placed on a desk with a reasonable degree of adjustability. Our only complaint (apart from the hefty price tag) is that the webcam’s autofocus is a bit on the slow side.
Read our full Razer Kiyo Pro review
Key specs – Resolution: 1080p at 30fps (HDR), 1080p at 60fps (SDR); Autofocus: Yes; Audio: Omnidirectional microphones; Mount type: Detachable Z-shaped stand; Cable length: 1.5m
Price when reviewed: £60 | Check price at Amazon
When travelling, you want a small and capable webcam that can be set up on a dime. The Poly Studio P5 is our pick: it’s a simple 1080p webcam with a monitor clamp and tripod-thread mounting, just like many on this page, but it manages to condense everything into a relatively compact package – certainly, at 4.3cm tall it’s the smallest webcam we’ve tested.
Poly’s business pedigree means the all-round quality is a lot better than average. During our testing, it delivered clean, balanced 1080p images in good light and bad, autofocusing efficiently on anything we brought into frame. The microphone is excellent, too, picking up voices clearly without gathering too much in the way of external background noise.
As for extra features, there’s an integrated privacy shutter – just twist the lens housing to block off the camera – while the Poly Lens software allowed us to tweak all sorts of image quality parameters, from brightness and contrast to saturation and zoom.
The Poly Studio P5 is, all told, a brilliant webcam, ideal for remote working wherever you find yourself, and it’s well worth the £60 asking price.
Key specs – Resolution: 1080p at 60fps; Autofocus: Yes; Audio: Single directional microphone; Mount type: Clip/tripod attachment; Cable length: 1.3m
Webcams start at around £10 for a basic HD (720p) webcam, with prices rising to over £150 for the most feature-rich 4K cameras around.
Here’s our guide to the four major resolution types. As a rule of thumb, remote workers won’t need anything more than 1080p (full HD).
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Each webcam goes through a series of tests to assess build quality and design, stability and flexibility when in use, and most important of all, the picture quality of the feed each webcam displays.
To make sure our tests are fair, we assess each webcam under the same conditions. This is a combination of different lighting conditions: well-lit (with lighting behind and in front of the reviewer), backlit (with bright light only from behind the reviewer, besides the lighting from their monitor/laptop) and low-light (with no lighting besides that from the reviewer’ monitor/laptop).
We make sure to compare all webcams to others, by simultaneously showing feeds of different models on our laptop or PC screens using the OBS software. This way, we can get a more accurate assessment of what the visual differences are between the various webcams that we test at Expert Reviews.
We’ll also dive into all the additional features and/or software that each webcam offers, though this will inevitably vary depending on the model.
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