Creative WebCam Live! Pro Newark DE

Rating: 7/10

The WebCam Live! Pro is a neatly designed unit that sits happily on a flat surface, or will clip over the top of a typical LCD monitor. It's a USB device that produces a video stream at a resolution of 640 x 480, (which is standard VGA resolution). It will also capture still images up to 1024 x 768, although this is a computer enhanced (or interpolated) resolution. Having said that I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the captured images, which even in the dim light of my workroom were well saturated and capable of producing quite decent 150 x 100 prints. Obviously a WebCam is no substitute for a real digital camera but this particular model when set up properly has a good stab at it. From the tests I did, I imagine that the lens and CCD used in this model is of better quality than previous cams.

The other thing that makes this unit stand out is the separate clip microphone that's included in the package. It certainly makes a much better job of recording sound than the on board microphones you normally get on units at this price. To stitch the whole lot together, Creative have included quite a nice selection of software. Including their own WebCam centre that controls the capture, remote monitoring and motion detection functions. It also has the ability to track the face of anyone standing in front of the camera. The WebCam centre doubles as a very usable archiving and album program. There's a CD that contains ArcSoft imaging software primarily designed for photo and video editing. Despite initial reservations, the WebCam Live! Pro is a quality piece of hardware, thoughtfully packaged.

For more information, visit Micromart.co.uk