Logitech C922 Pro Stream Webcam

Cut out and weep.

Let’s address the elephant in the Logitech C922 room: its box-vaunted background replacement feature. This is meant to do a virtual chroma-key, and blot out everything but yourself, making this (in theory) a perfect cam for cost-conscious streamers.

Using a piece of thirdparty software — Personify Chromacam — whatever happens to be behind you is indeed excised, but it’s done with the finesse of an angry toddler carrying a chainsaw. Chromacam routinely hacked off our headphones, and the majority of our arms and shoulders, with strange, wobbling, wavy edges. Sitting stock still and giving it time to adjust just made the problem worse, because it then presumed we were part of the background.

Chromacam isn’t this cam’s only automatic feature, though, and the rest of it is really rather good. Auto-focus works very well, reacting quickly to distance changes in the central portion of the camera’s viewing area, though the edges, with no way to select a particular focus point, are less sensitive. There’s a massive focal range, so it captures you nice and sharp wherever you happen to be sitting. The camera’s auto low-light correction is also pretty good. Although, as is usual for digital sensors, there’s a notable increase in visual noise as the sensor has to work hard to fight the dark. Taking control manually using the barebones settings panel, you get access to a limited set of exposure levels, so you won’t always find the perfect configuration.

There’s also panning, tilting and zooming integrated into the driver — these aren’t physical functions, but they’re useful if you’re a little further away from the camera’s