Logitech Brio 4K Stream Edition
Too much webcam, or just enough?
YOU’RE A LOGICAL READER. You’ve seen the headline up there, you’re asking one-word questions such as “what” and “why,” and frankly you are completely justified. On the face of it, Logitech has gone absolutely mad with power. The company’s engineers (who have, it must be said, been on fire recently) realized that they could create a 4K webcam without stopping to think if they should. Then its marketers slapped the word “stream” on it, despite the fact that rendering and uploading a stable 4K stream is beyond most PCs, Internet connections, and streaming hosts. And then its power-crazed number-crunchers decided $199 was a perfectly reasonable price for such a thing. All this, when Logitech already has a 1080p webcam on its roster in the shape of the C922.
But looking back a year, we were critical of the Brio’s predecessor when it hit our reviews desk. Its somewhat noisy sensor, topping out at 30fps at full res, wasn’t good enough to justify its $100 price tag. It clearly lagged behind the much stronger sensors included with phones. “It’s time,” we said, “for the tech to take the next step.” So reproaching Logitech for going all out, when it has produced precisely the webcam we asked for, would be incredibly hypocritical of us. This really is that dream device: a higher resolution sensor, HDR support, wider angles, up to 90fps capture, and support for Windows Hello on board. Even the stand has been improved, including additional points of articulation, and a standard camera-mount thread, so the Brio can be attached to a tripod.
The fact that the Brio’s sensor can pull a respectable 4K image at 30fps shouldn’t be its major sell, though. It can certainly do that, although the results at full stretch are rather noisy and grainy. This is definitely still a webcam, as opposed to a broadcastready 4K camera. It’s when you drop it down to more realistic resolutions that the power behind the sensor really shows; at 1080p 60fps, it’s crisp and smooth, and at 720p 90fps—still a perfectly acceptable streaming resolution, we’d argue, and buttery with it—the results are remarkable. HDR support really does make a massive difference to the color depth, with scenes and lighting conditions that previously felt pallid and clammy rendering much truer.
The breadth of the sensor has a bunch of uses beyond its full resolution, too. Below 4K, you can adjust the viewing angle between your choice of 65, 78, or a mighty 90 degrees for those with particularly wide faces, or use the much-improved driver within the Logitech Gaming Software app to virtually pan and tilt its viewport, framing you perfectly, even if it’s not pointing directly at your face. You’re also given a high level of control over brightness, saturation, white balance, and more. Background replacement is still a thing and, thanks to the Hello-compatible infrared sensor, it’s much improved from the shoddy third-party implementation included with the C922. We still wouldn’t use it, as it’s pretty obvious, and it slips up on occasion, but it’s a solid stopgap if you’re unable to use a chroma key backdrop.
Excellent webcam, then. Completely overspecced, which is a true positive. And so we forgive the lunatics in Logitech’s labs for their outrageous levels of ambition, and we’ll even give them a pass for the word “stream.” The results, at online broadcast resolution, are brilliant. It’s the finance department we take issue with at the end of the day. The Brio is, at this point, far too expensive, even considering the 12-month XSplit license that’s thrown in with it. Unless you’re a daily camera user whose audience—be it streaming, conferencing, or calling—will appreciate seeing every pore on your face in exquisite detail, $199 is a massive outlay, particularly considering that you’ll never really drive it as hard as it can go. –ALEX COX Logitech Brio 4K Stream Edition
RESOLUTION Fantastic picture from 1080p down; plenty of tweakables; Hello compatibility.
REVULSION Painful price tag; patchy background replacement; 4K is generally too much.
$199, www.logitech.com