Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks : Deluxe - Review and Downloads

The quickcam for notebooks deluxe edition is a pretty smart piece of kit, it's certainly my favourite in design of all the Logitech cameras. Like all Logitech cameras, it comes with excellent software and you can be guaranteed a good quality sound and picture.

Overall : 4.5/5

Pros:
- Beautiful design (seriously)
- Excellent quality picture
- Face tracking
- Good quality USB microphone

Cons:
- Only really works clipped onto a screen
- Clip not expandable beyond 1.5cm.

Here's the webcam clipped onto my laptop

This is a closup of the lens

Quick Links

- Driver
- Picture
- Sound
- Software
- Overall

That's the box it comes in (much smaller than it looks in this photo!)

And this is what you'll find inside.

1. Driver

The webcam uses the standard Quickcam drivers 8.4.8 which you can download by clicking here.

Mac drivers are only available for Logitech Quickcam zoom, pro 4000, Orbit or Notebooks Pro. Sorry!

Installing the webcam is really easy, and you can find more information about installing a Quickcam by looking at my review of the Quickcam notebooks refresh, which is identical in installation to the notebooks deluxe. Click here for that.

The only difference is you get a different message when you plug the webcam in, notably;

2. Picture

The picture you get on a webcam always depends on the level of light in a room. However, even in dark settings I managed to get a reasonable picture by using Logitech's low-light boost option on their software.

Here's Teddy Gloria hogging the limelight again. She's by a window in my kitchen, but i've turned the brightness down to compensate for the additional light.

This is using the Quickcapture feature which comes with all Logitech Quickcam webcams. As you can see, it's pretty easy to take a picture or record a video, however the "Take a picture" feature always compresses the image somehow. I'm not sure if you can turn this option off, but it's a bit annoying. Recording videos is also very easy; I'll come onto that in a minute.

You can alter the quality of picture you're getting by using the options module:

As you can see, I've turned the brightness down a little bit to help with overexposure.

I had to focus the camera when I first got it. Was very easy to adjust, though

Sound

The sound quality on the Logitech cameras is absolutely great, picks up sound nicely from the other side of the room quite often. The micrphone is installed at the same time as the webcam (all done in the background, you don't have to worry about it) and is controlled in the Logitech control panel. It installs an icon on your desktop for the control panel, so it's really easy to operate and sort out if something's wrong with the settings.

Software

I've already mentioned the webcam control panel. You also get to install various options such as the video calling software. I haven't tried this out yet, but I'd probably say that using Skype is just as good - and you don't have to pay for it. It's another revnue stream for Logitech, I guess. If it's anything like their control panel though, it'll be easy to use.

You get this message when you first fire up the Logitech programme. The webcam starts quite shortly after that.

You can also use the control panel to install MSN, AIM or Yahoo.

Maybe the reason it's called the Deluxe is because of the face-tracking. Note : You have to turn this option on, but then it works really well. Thankfully, the picture quality does not suffer when you turn it on, even when the webcam has to zoom in on your face. I was very impressed with this feature.

Overall

The main attraction for me is this webcam's looks, although it's got the best picture I've seen so far from any webcam I've tested. As a laptop user, I love the way it clips on and blends so seamlessly onto my screen (being the same colour). The software with all Logitech webcams is well thought-out, andn the face tracking software is a nice touch, if not absolutely essential. I suppose if I were not using a laptop this webcam wouldn't be much good, but for mobile users I can thoroughly recommend it.