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You've never Looked this GOOD - Opal C1 is Way better than your Mac's webcam!

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I work from home most days, and this little guy has made my days better: the Opal C1 4K webcam. I’ve seen it pop up with people like MKBHD, Casey Neistat and Sarah Dietschy, and the Opal team reached out so I could try it.

You might think: I already have a webcam in my laptop, why would I want this? Because it looks better, in both picture quality and design, and has features your built-in camera can’t compete with.

Unboxing and design

Opening it feels like unboxing an Apple product, with perfectly designed cutouts. The packaging itself has won design awards for recyclability, efficiency and the unboxing experience. In the box: the C1, a magnetic privacy cover that also protects the lens from scratches, a mount for attaching it to a display, a custom aluminum tool for attaching the mount, and a nice USB-C cable with a stress-reduction coil.

I love the industrial design: a textured finish, ridges on the back that double as a heat sink, and no big logos or bright colors. The Opal team was started by former Apple, Google and Tesla employees, and the C1 was designed by Kenny Sweet, behind the first Beats by Dre and the Pixel Watch. The camera, mount and tool are precisely machined aluminum, and it comes in white or black.

It clips to a thin laptop display or a thick one like the Studio Display, fits in a computer bag for 4K calls on the go, and the mount doubles as a desk stand, or you can use any tripod mount.

Specs

  • A ½-inch Sony 4K sensor, the largest of any webcam, with an f/1.8 aperture for more light and more depth.
  • Noise-canceling microphones front and back, with a MicMesh design on the front ones, that block out notifications and even a dog barking.
  • An Intel Myriad X chip powering the hardware and software.

The picture

It’s miles ahead of Apple. Next to a 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro’s camera, the MacBook’s image is really soft and loses almost all detail, like individual hairs in my beard or, embarrassingly, my ear hair. With an M1 Mac or older, the difference is comically big, with the Mac looking like a potato cam.

The software

You get control you’ll never have with built-in webcams: exposure, white balance, hue, saturation, shadows, and bokeh (background blur). Opal’s blur is really good compared with Apple’s, which messes up the edges around me. You can add your own logo to the video feed, or an overlay with your name and title, and zoom to frame yourself. Face-Lock works like Center Stage and follows you, which is useful because I get bored in meetings all day and shuffle around.

My experience

I’m on conference calls nearly constantly, often with my boss’s boss and higher, so I want to look and sound great, which rules out my Mac’s built-in camera. It’s 1080p, but the picture just sucks. I’ve used my big cameras as webcams, which is better but needs a tripod, a capture device, a way to record good audio, and undoing it all each day. With the C1, setup is crazy simple: mount it, plug in USB, and I’m running 4K video in seconds. My big camera and lens setup cost thousands of dollars; the C1 is a fraction of that.

If you’re on web calls, joining podcasts, or contributing to a TV news segment, the C1 will up your game.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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