Creative Live Cam Optia Pro

The Optia Pro from Creative is slightly different to most other contenders in the high-end webcam market, because it bundles a set of ear buds and an external microphone, as well as including a built-in mike on the camera itself. It’s a good job too, as the built-in version recorded a little too softly for our liking.

Creative has followed Logitech’s lead in offering fun extras – wigs, ears and glasses you can superimpose over your face, which move around the webcam with you – though not quite to the same level of accomplishment.

There are plenty of other tools and options included, for remote monitoring, motion detection and creating time-lapse recordings, as well as the basic capture settings, and it works with all the video instant messengers you could care to think of. You have to load up different programs to access some of this extraneous software though, which detracts from its ease of use.

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