The best conference room webcams will make your colleagues feel like you're right there with them in person. As remote and hybrid working is more common, a quality conference room camera is a must. However, with so many options, which one should you choose? We've put this guide together to help you sort that out.
We've picked the best conference room webcams based on our assessment of their specs and features and the opinions of our and our partner sites' reviewer experience. We've assessed video quality, audio quality and the inclusion of special features like connectivity, face detection or AI enhancements, rleying on our decades of collective experience in consumer tech to inform our top picks.
Top 3 conference room webcams
The Meeting Owl 3 boasts 360° 1080p video with eight mics – plus it has a smart zoom feature that auto-focuses on whoever is talking. It also sports USB-C and supports expansion mics to broaden the pickup radius to as much as 18m.
The affordable NexiGo Hellocam punches well above its weight with a 1080p camera that yields a clean, sharp image. It's also easy to set up and use – and the integrated Windows Hello works seamlessly. It's rounded off by a sturdy build and an automatic privacy shutter to keep you secure (though there's no option to control it manually).
The Obsbot Tiny 2 delivers superb 4K quality that'll put your video conference quality head-and-shoulders above everyone else's. It's also got intelligent tracking features that keep focus locked on whoever's talking, and offers lots of control options.
The best conference room webcams
Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Best conference room webcam overall
30 second review: The Meeting Owl 3 is one of the best conference-room webcams you can get right now, and it comes at a price that reflects that. Offering Full HD quality in a 360-degree panoramic view, it also picks up audio in pristine quality thanks to its advanced 8-mic setup, which can be further expanded to increase the pickup radius. If you've got the budget, and don't need 4K or wireless connectivity, this intelligent webcam is your best bet.
Price: Here lies the rub. The Meeting Owl 3 costs around $1,099 / £1,000 and four figures is undeniably a lot to pay for a webcam, even one as intelligent and well-featured as this. If you're a business customer who needs a reliable webcam that's going to be used for conferences and boardroom meetings several times a day, this kind of investment makes sense. However, if you're a smaller customer with a tighter budget, you may be better off with one of the cheaper options on this list.
Features: If you've read this far, you may well be wondering what on earth a conference-room webcam can do to justify a four-figure price tag. The answer is: a heck of a lot. The Meeting Owl 3 doesn't just capture the room with a 360-degree panoramic video, but it also presents the viewer with a dynamic display that splits to show the most recent speaker, and hones in on the person currently speaking. This intelligent tech is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 605 CPU, and works with most video conferencing software; the Meeting Owl 3 has a plug-and-play USB-C connection that sees it seamlessly integrating with commonly programs like Zoom and Teams. Audio is picked up by eight mics and put out by three speakers, and in the event you need to expand the generous pickup radius of 5.5m, there is the capacity to add extra mics. It's larger than a standard webcam, but slots in very naturally on a boardroom table or desk.
Our partner site IT Pro has a full review.
Best budget conference room webcam
30-second review: The cheap webcam market is a bit of a confusing place, as there's a real glut of options out there. To avoid getting something shoddy, it's best to go with a webcam that has been tried and tested, and we have personally tried and tested the NexiGo Hellocam. Putting out Full HD video, it produces an image that's a cut above standard laptop webcams (which tend to be 720p), and its dual microphones pick up audio well within a 1m radius. It's also compatible with Windows Hello, meaning you can use it for biometric security.
Price: If you spat out your coffee upon reading that the Meeting Owl 3 costs more than $1,000, this budget webcam will be more to your liking. It comes at a starting retail price of around $57 / £59, including the clip to attach it to the top of your monitor or laptop. It may not quite have the swish boardroom look of something like the Meeting Owl, but for a simple, affordable solution that provides real value for money, it's an excellent choice.
Features: In testing out the Nexigo Hellocam, our reviewer came away impressed. It doesn't bring many extra flashy features to the party, but the combination of a sharp 1080p picture and a pair of capable noise-cancelling microphones is pretty much everything that the majority of business users are going to need. Our reviewer noted that on a business call, his own image was a clear cut above those of his colleagues who were using their standard laptop webcams. Our one main criticism was that the privacy shutter is electronic only, with no manual control, which means that if the electronic functionality breaks, it's effectively useless. Other than that, this is a brilliant webcam for the money, and if you're sick of sorting through cheap webcams trying to figure out which, if any, are decent, we can recommend you save yourself some time and just go for this one. It's simple, it's affordable, and it works.
Read our Nexigo Hellocam review.
Best 4K conference room webcam
30-second review: Tiny by name and nature, the Obsbot Tiny 2 is an adorable little guy that punches above its weight in terms of video quality, offering great-looking 4K video. It's got a narrower field of view than many other cameras on this list, so is best for individuals and smaller groups who are dialling in, but its AI subject tracking genuinely works, making it great for dynamic presentations.
Price: Starting from $299 / £299, the Obsbot Tiny 2 is on the expensive end for a webcam, though is substantially cheaper than premium options like the Meeting Owl 3. You do get quite a bit for your money, including unique computational features like voice control and Noise Reduction, but it's not a budget choice.
Features: First off, the quality. If you're shopping for a 4K webcam, this is obviously going to be a priority, and the Obsbot Tiny 2 produces crisp 4K footage that looks brilliant, and puts most other webcams to shame. Its dual-ISO sensor continues to hold up even when the light levels get low, which isn't common for a webcam and helps justify the higher outlay. If you're looking for a webcam to use for a lot of external-facing calls, where you want to look your professional best, this is a no-brainer. As for the much-advertised AI-powered tracking, it really works: the Obsbot Tiny 2 is able to track not just faces but bodies too (so it doesn't lose you if you turn away), and it also has a mode for tracking a whiteboard, which is a clever touch. You can control it using your voice, or via gestures, or by using the included remote, or by the Mac or Windows app. Lots of options, which is great to see.
Read a review from our sister site, Digital Camera World.
Best boardroom conference room webcam
30-second review: The Jabra Panacast 50 is one of the more sophisticated conference webcams on the market, a video bar that's perfectly suited to big boardrooms. It’s capable of capturing 'panoramic' 4K resolution – not true 4K, but close enough. The 180° field of view means you'll capture a whole room, while the intelligent zoom system enables the camera to hone in on points of interest.
Price: With retail prices starting at around $999 / £899, the Jabra Panacast 50 is a premium webcam. It's not a casual investment, but if you want something that looks the part in the boardroom and delivers top-notch quality, it's certainly that. Small business users and those on a tight budget (but I repeat myself) will probably get more value out of one of the cheaper options on our list.
Features: A webcam's field of view refers to how wide of a scene it can capture, and with a 180° field of view, the Jabra Panacast 50 will simply capture everything that's in front of it, thanks to a camera setup that's really three cameras in one (it stitches the final image together with clever computational processing). Only the 360° Meeting Owl 3 has it beat on that front. Its 4K footage looks punchy and pristine, and it also boasts plenty of intelligent features powered by AI, including speaker tracking, which can follow you around the room and keep you in focus for your viewers. The audio pickup range is also hugely impressive, with users reporting the mics working at distances as long as 6m, which should be more than enough for even the most extravagant boardrooms. The video-bar styling also helps it look the part for professional use. It's a fairly big webcam, weighing more than 2kg, so isn't really one for on-the-go use.
Read a review from our sister site, TechRadar.
Best wireless conference room webcam
30-second review: Wireless webcams aren't as common as you'd think (a lot of 'top ten wireless webcams' lists online actually just list USB ones). For those who need to conference on the go, the Logitech ConferenceCam Connect is the logical choice. While it does still need a physical connection to a computer, it can run almost wirelessly thanks to its built-in battery that gives up to three hours of video, or considerably longer of audio only, with no external power required. It also benefits from a high-quality Zeiss lens that delivers a sharp image, though is showing its age in some ways, such as the lack of USB-C connectivity.
Price: The Logitech ConferenceCam Connect is considerably cheaper now than it was at launch, with its current street price of around $320 / £300 representing a discount of more than $100 / £100. This isn't cheap for a webcam, but as we've seen, it's also a long way from the most expensive, and the independent battery of the ConferenceCam Connect does give it a real USP compared to the competition.
Features: While it's 'only' Full HD resolution, the ConferenceCam Connect impresses with a sharp and punchy image thanks to its Zeiss-made lens, which delivers a 90° field of view. It also benefits from a 360° audio setup with a solid 3.6m pickup range. It's fairly sizeable for a portable webcam, weighing in at 766g, but a large part of this is the integrated battery, which is what allows it to be used (almost) wirelessly for up to three hours of video calls, and it means you don't have to worry about finding an additional plug socket whenever you roll into a new meeting room. While it's only a few years old, an update wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, if only to update the cable from mini USB to reliable USB-C.
Read a review from our sister site, Digital Camera World
Best conference room webcam with display
30-second review: If you're tired of hooking up cables and connecting to Bluetooth and doing all the other seemingly endless tasks required for video conferencing, you may be interested in the Kandao Meeting Ultra. It has its own built-in displays on two sides, which means you can potentially forgo the computer connection entirely and run your conference through the Meeting Ultra itself. Offering 4K quality, it delivers an impressive performance, with the main trade-off being it's a big and unwieldy device.
Price: If you did spit out your coffee at the Meeting Owl 3, then it'd be worth putting it down before reading the next sentence. The Kandao Meeting Ultra retails at around £2,899 / £2,899, which is obviously going to be a prohibitive cost for many people. It's offering something genuinely unique on this list, with a lot more power and functionality than any other webcam, but the price is naturally going to mean it's only an option for big-business customers.
Features: Not only can the Kandao Meeting Ultra display video as well as capture it, but it can also be plugged into a TV via HDMI for even more options. Its audio pickup range is a generous 5.5m, so it should cover even spacious boardrooms, and it has a 10W speaker that delivers solid audio output, so you can hear everybody as clearly as they can hear you. You can use it to run software like Zoom or Google Meet independently, banishing the need for a separate computer or laptop, and if you've used an Android device before, you won't have much trouble navigating your way around it. Yes, it's big. By far the biggest device on this list, not to mention the heaviest. You're not gong to toss it into a bag and run to meetings with it. But for a stable, independent video conferencing setup, the Kandao Meeting Ultra is your one-stop shop.
Read a review from our sister site, Digital Camera World.
How to choose a conference room webcam
When choosing a conference room webcam, take the following factors into consideration:
Video resolution: If you give presentations often or interface with clients from around the globe, you'll want to grace your viewers with crystal-clear visuals. Because you're usually presenting a larger space than just yourself, up to a whole boardroom, 4K would be best, but 1080p is also doable. (By comparison, integrated laptop webcams are usually 720p, and would be woefully underpowered for this purpose.)
Audio pickup: For larger conference rooms in particular, this is key as you'll want to ensure everyone can be heard. Omni-directional microphones are ideal as they'll be able to pick up sound from all over the room. If you regularly take meetings in an area with a lot of ambient noise, look for noise-cancelling capabilities. In some cases, you may need to purchase an external mic separately.
Size: This doesn't just relate to the camera itself, but rather how big your regular meeting space is – as well as how large of a group will typically convene on these conference calls. A simple webcam will make more sense than an elaborate tabletop camera with a broad field of view if you're often running meetings solo.
Compatibility: As always, you'll want to make sure your webcam plays nice with the rest of your devices and your conferencing software of choice. Read the specs sheet carefully before buying to avoid buying something that won't work with your current setup.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a webcam and a conference camera?
Webcams are designed for one or two people to comfortably fit into frame. Laptops usually have cameras built in, but people often purchase a separate webcam for better quality video and to add more features. Webcams are good for meetings, streaming and video calling family and friends.
A conference camera has a broader field of view and a wider audio pickup to ensure that sound is picked up from all areas of the room – ensuring that everyone is seen and heard. Conference cameras are more sophisticated (and pricier) than most webcams as they're generally used for business.
What's the ideal placement for a conference room camera?
Try to have the camera positioned as close to seated eye level as possible in relation to your space as this will best replicate the experience of speaking to someone (or a group) in person. You'll also need to consider if your conference cam has special features like speaker autofocus, panning/tilting and omnidirectional mics (which will make it easier to pick up sound from all areas of the room).
What field of view do I need for a conference room webcam?
It varies depends on how many people you need to fit into a single shot, but in general we'd say a minimum of 90° is going to be necessary for a conference room webcam. This will cover small rooms with about three to five people fitting comfortably in the frame. If you need to cover a larger area, a 180° camera is a better bet, while 360° cameras take the guesswork away by allowing you to cover a whole room at once (though they will need a wide display and ideally intelligent tracking software in order to be used effectively).
How we test webcams
Our choices of the best conference room webcams for this guide on our own expert reviews, as well as those of our sister sites Techradar, IT Pro and Digital Camera World, all of whom conduct regular tests on a wide range of tech.
Each of these cameras has been tested by a professional reviewer, who has put it through its paces in video meetings, from 1-to-1s to large conference situations. Reviewers test them over long periods of time to ensure they catch issues that only emerge from substantive use. We are selective about what makes it onto our best-of lists, and if a product doesn't pass muster with our experts, it doesn't get into guides like this one.
