Get the most out of your virtual meetings with the right equipment today by choosing one of the best conference webcams. With the rise of hybrid working, the need for a quality conference room camera is more important than ever, but it's difficult to know where to start. That's why we've put this guide together for you.
On this page, we've picked the best conference room webcams for different uses based on our assessment of their specs, features, use cases and customer reviews. We've assessed video quality, audio quality and the inclusion of special features like connectivity, face detection or AI enhancements.
If you're looking for a simple webcam for one-to-one calls rather than conferences, see our list of the best webcams. We also have a guide to the best Macbook webcams if you're an Apple user, and a guide to the best monitor with webcam.
The best conference room webcams
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The Meeting Owl Pro is streets ahead of its competition: it sports a single lens and yet provides an effective 360° view of a room, ensuring that everyone is in the shot. It's also got eight omnidirectional microphones, covering an area with a radius of 18 feet and Smart Zooming technology to pick up speakers sitting further away from the camera. It also sports a host of smart connected features.
With a full HD 1080p resolution and a 1m-range mic, the Logitech C930e delivers top-quality video for smaller rooms and the ideal webcam for the mobile professional. The lens has a 90° field of view, which easily fits multiple participants into the same shot. It also allows for 4x digital zoom.
The Kandao Meeting Pro can connect directly to a screen, monitor or mixer via its HDMI connection, and it can capture Full HD video encoded in H.264 and MJPEG formats. There's an SD card slot, which gives you an offline means of recording your meetings. Plus, an eight-mic, omnidirectional audio system delivers superb sound.
The Microsoft Lifecam Studio is billed as a 1080p camera, but you need to use some third-party webcam software to get it to record at this resolution – otherwise it’ll top out at 720p. Still, the CMOS sensor on the camera does do an impressive job, producing a clear image with good colour accuracy.
If money's not an issue and you have large boardroom meetings that need the perfect sound, the Logitech Rally Bar is the best conference room webcam. It has six microphones, and if the seven-metre range isn't enough, you can add more. The lens features a 15x zoom, making it ideal for boardroom presentations.
The Huddly IQ is an advanced conference room webcam that uses AI-powered tech to frame up subjects for a smoother viewing experience. It produces Full HD video with a generous 150° – though make note that you do have to pick up the 5-mic module as well if you want the audio to be recorded.
The Jabra Panacast is one of the most sophisticated conference webcams on the market. 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.
For the best video quality possible for individual presentations to conferences (or in small groups), the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam is a winner. It's capable of shooting 4K at 30 frames per second or Full HD at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. There's no built-in mic, so you’ll need to factor in the cost of one.
The 2021 Metal Portal Plus is a capable conference room webcam, as long as the group isn't too big and sit close together. You get Full HD video and a 14-inch HD screen, with no need for a laptop or PC to make it work. It's a nifty device so long as you don't need the flexibility to use any platform you choose.
The Logitech ConferenceCam Connect delivers good-quality Full HD video and perfectly clear audio. Its tubular shape is a little unusual – it makes it easy to transport. It's also easy to use and is compatible with the usual video conferencing apps. It also runs on an internal battery that can last for a 3-hour video call.
How should I choose the best conference room webcam?
One of the main deciding factors is likely to be your budget. Specialist conference webcams with features like facial recognition and more powerful microphones cost more than some smaller businesses will want to shell
out, so in our guide to the best conference webcams above, we've included some standard webcams as well.
There are a number of factors worth thinking about when selecting the best conference room webcam. The resolution of the camera is quite important. Although you probably don’t need stunning 8K resolution for your conferences, if you can get at least Full HD it will make the video experience much more pleasant for those attending and ensure that everyone can see what they need to if there’s a presentation taking place.
A good conference room webcam should also have a microphone, or at least the capacity to attach one, and you may want to think about how well the webcam integrates with your software or OS of choice. Some conference room webcams come with useful integrations for systems like Android, enabling control via your phone or tablet.
How much should the best conference room webcam cost?
The price of a webcam for video conferencing can vary enormously. Video conferences can involve different numbers of people, and businesses have different budgets, so in our list above we've sought to provide options at different price points, from around $50 / £40 right up to around $3,900 / £3,000.
The best video conferencing webcam overall, at least in terms of technological sophistication and audio quality is the Logitech Rally, but that misses out on the top spot on our list because it's way more sophisticated than most people need and almost prohibitively expensive for individuals or small businesses.
We've included a couple of budget conferencing webcams such as the Logitech C930e, which starting at around $80 / £90 will do well for many small conferences. However, for the best balance of excellent quality and flexibility with a price that's not too astronomical, we rate the Owl Labs' Meeting Owl Pro. It's pricey at around $1,200 / £1,000 full price, but it offers superb 360-degree audio and video capture.
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