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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

I had a Logitech C920 that died a couple years ago and when I went to find a better replacement I ended up buying a... Logitech C920. I couldn't find anything that seemed significantly better that wasn't a lot more money. I regret the purchase, but I'm glad I didn't just spend 3 times as much on a still-not-that-great webcam. I was thinking of finding a second-hand digital camera on eBay, but maybe instead I'll see if a friend has an old iPhone.

Though you'd think with the WFH revolution there would be at least one company out there making a high-quality purpose-built webcam.

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Yeah it’s wild how much of a vacuum exists in this market and how bad it is.

I have the same webcam I also bought the lg meetup for a larger room and it sucks - it especially sucks considering the price.

The Opal is a weak attempt to improve this, but includes a mic I don’t want (lots of decent separate mics exist). The mirrorless setup looks great, but with latency, capture cards, over heating, external battery packs, required camera arms etc. just a huge pain.

I wish apple would just make a good one again since nobody else seems capable of it.

Logitech dominates the market, and it dominates it by marketing spend, not on making a better product, since they know that the average consumer will never know the difference.

I bought a C920 on the basis of many shilled reviews, and I kneel to the power of their marketing department every time I turn that piece of junk on.

I use the bad Mac onboard for almost all work conferencing because it's right there and doesn't require me to occupy a port on the laptop for in the end just different bad video quality.

Get a cheap used android phone and use the back camera as a webcam. Many times better than any webcam that doesn't cost a fortune.

Right, but then you can't share your screen, and you can't see the call participants because the android screen is facing away from you.

I think they meant to buy an extra android phone and use that as a webcam.

I guess I don't understand the mechanism where by you use an android phone as an external webcam. Guess I never tried just plugging it in via usb and seeing if my OS picked it up...

There are quite a few apps that let you easily do that. I use DroidCam which let's you do it over your local network as well, reducing the cables running to your PC.

The OP is literally a blog post on Camo, software that does this.

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