One week ago to this day, I opened the box to my brand new Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX. It has everything a person needs in a camera and it is reasonably priced. Here in Japan, we are blessed with extremely high speed Internet and unlimited bandwidth, but my family and friends at home are not. What I was looking for was a good quality webcam that did not suck up too much bandwidth. Sure, it is possible to run high-end webcams at lower settings, but there is no point. A budget model suited my needs just fine. I also wanted to do away with my ugly Elecom desk microphone.

When it arrived, I opened it up, plugged it in and I realized that something was wrong. It needs the drivers in place before it is plugged in. I unplugged it, set up the drivers and that was it. The software integrates with Skype and the face tracking technology is a lot of fun. The camera will follow your face and slowly zoom in and out according to your movements. It works well and it is very hard to trick. It had a little bit of trouble when two people were in the picture, but it would always lock onto one of them, so it was not really a problem. There are settings for following two people, but I have yet to explore them. Video quality is quite good, as much or more than can be expected from an inexpensive webcam. The mounting system is clever, and stable. It can be installed, literally in seconds. Snapshots are captured at 1.3 megapixels, and come out very clearly, providing the lighting situation is reasonable.

There are many pros for the Quickcam Communicate STX, but there are also a few cons. While I did not purchase the product expecting too much, I expected a little more from the “RightLight Technology.” I could not notice any discernable effect, in fact the only evidence of “RightLight Technology,” was the branding on the front of the webcam. The major stumbling block for the Communicate STX is the sound. It features “RightSound Technology,” that is about as good as the “RightLight Technology.” Sure, it cancels echo, but my existing microphone did that, without any branding whatsoever. The problem was the sound quality. I sounded, according to one person who was very familiar with my previous setup, as if I was talking into a box. What is worse, he went on to add, “Your old microphone sounded crystal clear.”

Logitech nailed the video for this webcam, but they screwed up the sound. I was a little disappointed that the ugly white microphone, which does not match my all black system at all, will have to stay. My Elecom microphone was $10, featured great quality sound, without the need for drivers. Is it unreasonable to expect the same quality from my webcam microphone? It is still a good product, however and I would buy it again. It is a cut above most medium priced webcams and it is affordable, I would like to see future models match the video quality with sound quality.

Price: $49.95

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