I agree. I rarely find I’m bothered by the quality of another person’s camera in video chat situations.

However, it’s significantly bothersome when people refuse to use earbuds or a headset so audio isn’t constantly clipping during conversation, or they have a massive light source behind them like a window and their face is just a shadow the whole time, or their camera is staring god knows where the whole time.

There’s a lot of low hanging fruit to up the quality of a video chat before you need to get too worried about the quality of the camera.

Obviously this is for everyday video chat. If you’re live-streaming or doing some kind of professional video presentation, then yes it’s frustrating that the market is $100 or $1,500+.

Of course existing webcams meet expectations for online meetings - nobody expects meeting participants to use something that doesn't exist.

But if you've avoided the $15 Amazon's Choice webcams and purchased the absolute peak of what the webcam industry can produce, wouldn't you expect something better than the mediocrity shown?

What if you're someone who cares about their appearance, and the pallid, unhealthy look of the C920 would have you reaching for your makeup bag if you saw it in the mirror?

What if the pandemic has forced your dating life into zoom calls, for a first date you want to absolutely look your best, and you don't like how the Kiyo makes your forehead look shiny and really adds contrast to your receding hairline?

What if you're slightly into photography and presenting such a shitty image as the best you can do goes against your pride when you can see so much wrong with it?

And a few decades ago most people would say that SDTV looked absolutely fine for everything but some high-visuals movies that they would rather see in the cinema. Now, even a newscast looks crap in SDTV.

I think if webcams look absolutely fine to you for online meetings it's probably because you have become used to the crappiness. People don't typically show notebooks or pieces of paper in online meetings, because the cameras are crap, and they know they will create an awkward moment trying to focus on the notes and probably failing. For the same reason, people often won't use a whiteboard in an online meeting, etc. These would be totally normal things to do if we had decent webcams.

Agree, It's all wonderful comparing quality until you jump on a call and the stream gets throttled to 480p.