Written on April 11, 2008 – 11:23 am | by Bogdan Alex |
Creative managed to diversify its array of products from quality soundcards at first, to now acclaimed multimedia players, speakers and webcameras. Speaking of webcams, Creative is known to offer some of the best performing devices from this category. Keeping in mind that HP has already released it 3Mpixel webcam, let’s take a look at one of Creative’s top-of-the-line competitors – Live! Cam Optia Pro.

This compact solution is among Creative’s premium webcams for enhanced online messaging and phone calls. Highlights for this webcam include a wide-angle precision lens that gets many more things in the picture and a true 1.3 MP image sensor that is able to capture finer details.. It’s got a built-in mic that integrates the Live! Audio technology which cancels-out any background noise. This way, people will be able to hear you clearer. The webcam also takes full advantage of the USB 2.0 connection that practically eliminates any bottlenecks between the webcam and your computer, and bundled with it you also get a headset for private listening. Moreover, Creative ensures smooth compatibility with Skype and Windows Live Messenger.

Comparing the Optia Pro webcam with other Creative siblings, we find out that this one is particularly accurate in reproducing colors and it is also fairly balanced as much as lighting conditions are concerned. Also, the optimum focal point is at about 3 feet.

The special stand complements the webcam with a good design. Thus, it can be easily mounted on a flat panel or on a flat surface. A tong which can be rotated out allows you to hook it to a notebook computer as well. One minor problem occurs when you actually want to point the webcam towards a specific thing or person, as the rotation possibilities are limited.
However, you can rotate it vertically about 300 degrees. This feature allows you to perform a neat trick. If pointed directly down, the camera shuts its image off along with the blue led, but the camera continues to send a black video signal to the computer. So you can black out the image without messing up the webcam drivers.

All in all, the Creative Live! Optia Pro webcam fairs well with Logitech’s similar solutions, but can’t really compete with the latest 2 or 3MP webcams. Anyhow, the current average Internet broadband will handle the 1.3 MP feeds reasonably. The webcam can be bought for about $70.