Elgato Facecam Pro Webcam Review - Streaming Perfection

TweakTown's Rating: 96%

The Bottom Line

The Elgato Facecam Pro is more than a webcam; it's a great 4K camera that can record up to 60 FPS video. With excellent software support and great out-of-the-box image quality, it's perfect for streaming, content creation, or looking your best on that next important Zoom.

Pros

• + Pristine 4K quality with up to 60 FPS capture
• + Excellent software support with deep customization options
• + The Autofocus lens and default calibration are excellent
• + Plug-and-play simplicity with a single USB Type-C cable
• + Good enough for pro-level streaming and content creation

Cons

• - It is larger than most webcams
• - It is more expensive than most webcams
• - There is no privacy cover for the lens

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon

Introduction & Specification Details and Close-up

The Elgato Facecam Pro is technically a webcam, but it doesn't feel very respectful to give it that label - even with the 'Pro' tag. The webcam is, traditionally, this low-cost, off-the-shelf USB camera you'd use to make video calls with family in another state or country. And with the internet and compression, as long as there's enough light and you can make out people's faces, crisp HD image quality isn't that important. This is why webcams on most laptops, even in 2023, are still 720p - they do the job.

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The Elgato Facecam Pro with its up-to-4K 60 frames-per-second capture, finely tuned Elgato Premium Autofocus Lens, Sony sensor, and focal range that starts as close as 10cm is something else entirely. This camera is built for the streamer and content creator generation, where image quality matters. It's also for those who want to achieve that broadcast-quality look with minimal fuss.

Okay, so the Elgato Facecam Pro is still a webcam, and with that, all you need to do is plug in the USB Type-C cable into your PC or laptop and then mount the camera on a display or your desk, and you're good to go. The out-of-the-box calibration captures natural skin tone and colors, doesn't require professional lighting to "get the job done," and offers superior image quality to almost every other off-the-shelf webcam we've used.

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Dig into Elgato's Camera Hub software for customization, or fire up OBS Studio for capture, and the Elgato Facecam Pro becomes a pretty amazing tool. A webcam that's also a camera, good enough for streaming and content creation, and all without having to shell out for dedicated, expensive camera equipment.

Specifications & Close Up

• Product Name:Elgato Facecam Pro
• Product Type: Webcam
• Interface: Wired (USB Type-C)
• Supported Resolutions: 2160p60, 2160p30, 1080p60, 1080p30, 720p60, 720p30
• Optics/Sensor: Elgato Premium Autofocus Lens, Sony Starvis CMOS
• Focal Length: 21mm
• Field of View: 90 degrees
• Dimensions: 116 x 38 x 79mm
• Weight: 240 grams
• What's In The Box: Facecam Pro, Mount with 1/4" Thread, USB-C to USB-C Cable (180 cm | 6 ft), Quick Start Guide

Kosta's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E Carbon Wi-Fi
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition
• Cooler: Corsair iCUE H100i RGB PRO XT Liquid CPU Cooler
• RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DOMINATOR PLATINUM RGB DDR5 DRAM 5200MHz
• SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD 4TB, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Plus M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD 8TB
• Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 850W
• Case: Thermaltake Core P3 Tempered Glass Snow
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

Elgato Facecam Pro 4K60 Webcam

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$299.99	$299.99	$299.99	$294.99	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 5/8/2024 at 2:00 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Design & Software

Design

Elgato's products are aimed at the streaming and content creation market or those looking for great communication tools in this modern hybrid work-from-home environment. For a webcam, the Elgato Facecam Pro's price point of USD 299.99 is pricey and high-end compared to other webcams - it's more than double the price of Elgato's own entry-level Facecam. It's enough of a difference to push it into the enthusiast realm of webcams, even though you're looking at a camera and recording solution that is considerably cheaper than even the most affordable pro-level DSLR cameras.

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To hit a level of quality with the camera's design, features, and support for up to 4K60 recording, some omissions limit its versatility. The Elgato Facecam Pro is quite large and heavy, so it's not the sort of webcam you can quickly clip onto a laptop or throw into a bag. There's also no microphone, which might, for lack of a better word, sound like a serious omission for a webcam. However, it makes perfect sense for streamers, content creators, or those who want to look semi-professional when dialing into a Zoom call.

The assumption is simple - if you're using the Elgato Facecam Pro, odds are you've got a dedicated microphone or a high-quality headset for audio. Not having a microphone is a great way to avoid that mistake all podcasters, streamers, and content creators have made when using a webcam that isn't the Elgato Facecam Pro. The audio in a recording ends up being terrible because their system defaulted to using the webcam for video and audio.

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The star of the show here is, of course, the Elgato Autofocus Lens, which supports wide-angle and wide-aperture recording and capture, zoom, distortion prevention, and a suite of features that include multiple layers of anti-reflective coatings and using the right kind of glass to reduce unwanted artifacts like chromatic aberration and unnatural tone mapping.

With support ranging from 720p30 to 2160p60, it fully uses its single USB Type-C connection and speed to power and 4K video. The result is great image quality, with the camera's autofocus working brilliantly (although sometimes it takes a few seconds to kick in or get to where it needs to be).

It's the baseline quality you can build on and improve with external lighting and software to get that professional look.

Software

For customizing the image, zoom, field of view, color, focus, and a whole suite of settings - the Elgato Camera Hub is a powerful and easy-to-use software that places all the various settings into different and concise categories. The great thing about Elgato Camera Hub is that you don't need to be a camera nerd or understand what focal point or aperture means to determine what each setting does. And in a very smart move, all options have a simple "Automatic" toggle that you can turn on or off to see what does what.

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The best customization is also a learning process, tinkering with clear options and settings with results you can immediately see - all of that goodness is in the Elgato Camera Hub. The level of detail is commendable, right down to fine-tuning the white balance (to switch between warm, cold, or neutral color tones) or adjusting the focus to hone in on objects in the foreground or background.

Elgato Camera Hub has many options because of the high-quality camera and lens deployed in the Elgato Facecam Pro. So, it's great to see Elgato get the most out of the hardware with its app. Camera Hub also includes a dedicated effects section, where you can enable GeForce RTX-powered effects for blurring backgrounds and use integrated RTX Broadcast tools to improve capture and recording.

In addition to Elgato's software for customization, the Elgato Facecam Pro is compatible with Zoom, OBS Studio, and any other app that can use a webcam. The OBS support is great because the 4K capture gives you plenty of headroom for framing and picking the right shot for streaming or capture.

Performance & Final Thoughts

Performance

When testing the Elgato Facecam Pro, we were lucky enough to do so with Elgato's excellent Key Light MK.2 lighting system - which is compact and easy to set up for broadcast. The Elgato Key Light can be controlled via an app and features enough nuance to give you the ability to create professional-grade lighting. Bright and strobe-free, if you want to take your streaming or content creation setup to the next level, the Elgato Key Light (USD 159.99) is an excellent pairing for the Elgato Facecam Pro.

This first shot is of a plant and Warcraft figurine, and it highlights the detail, color, and overall vibrant images you can get even in a room with relatively "dull" lighting.

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This next shot is of, well, me. The image quality is again the highlight - try not to stare into my "mo-vember" facial hair for too long.

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And finally, it's worth mentioning that I've been using the Elgato Facecam Pro for The TT Show - TweakTown's official weekly podcast where Jak and I go through the latest stories.

And to add a bit more balance to this section of the review, the video footage you see here was captured via OBS, 1080p, and without the Elgato Key Light (I'm still in the process of renovating my office there's a lot of temporary chaos and mess at the moment). Without any issues with flickering or drivers, using the Elgato Facecam Pro these last few months for the TT Show and all Zoom-related activities has been a wonderful and smooth experience.

Final Thoughts

Labeling the Elgato Facecam Pro as a webcam primarily for streamers is easy, but that's a little reductive. It's like saying Elgato's Wave microphones are for streamers. First and foremost, the Wave is a great microphone, so it'll be great for any situation that requires a microphone. The Facecam Pro is a great webcam and camera, and it's brilliant for streaming, content creation, or simply jumping into a Zoom call. The big obstacle is the price because it's larger than most webcams, so it might not suit every setup. Also, there's no privacy cover, which, unlike the lack of a microphone, is a strange omission.

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Like all great cameras, the Elgato Facecam Pro's true potential is reached when you throw in an Elgato Key Light and tinker with the focus, zoom, color, and the other dozen or so settings to get the perfect shot. The good news is that you can get exceptional results out of the box, where the automatic focus paired with the excellent color calibration and 4K60 video is more than enough to put this into a class of its own.