StarCam Clip и Racer - MSI webcams

Page 3 - StarCam Clip testing

The first thing we tested was the webcam stand. When used with a laptop or thin TFT panel it is rather comfortable. But if you use it as a stand for horizontal plane, it is not the best solution. The stand has small footprint, it is not very heavy and when used, the USB cable makes the camera heavy on the back and it is not very stable.

Good impression makes also the size of the camera. Evidently it is meant mainly for laptop use. It is small, easy to carry, the retention clip is well designed and does a perfect job. A good thing also is that the cable is a standard little USB, i.e. if you use other such devices with your laptop, you can carry only one cable. Apparently the lens is meant to be rotated – this means only one thing: there is no autofocus and you have to focus the camera by hand.

Concerning software, we managed to install the camera without any problems. The software has enough settings and some funny effects you can use with the webcam video, for example: old photograph, an effect that puts your video in TV-like frame and many others. The microphone doesn’t even need software, it is entirely Plug&Play. Added to the bundle is the My Guard Video security software which can turn your webcam into video monitoring and motion detection system.

MSI StarCam Clip has 0.48 MPix sensor which gives us up to 640х480 hardware resolution. Everything higher than that is through software interpolation and degrades the quality. Also the night mode is switched by software – there are three settings: ON, OFF, Automatic. We tested the automatic mode and according to the room light the camera managed well with switching modes. The pictures below are taken at 800x600 resolution (there was no point in higher resolutions because of the quality degrading, we chose that one because it is a little more detailed but still close to 640x480). The pictures are taken respectively at normal room lighting and in dark room with the only light coming from the computer screen:

We also recorded videos to demonstrate the capabilities of the device. The first is at normal room lighting, the second – at the absence of such:

The quality as you can see is not particularly high, the picture is not very clear, but it is normal for web-cam from this range. The night vision copes pretty well, the night videos are clear more than enough. During the tests we played music on the background to test the microphone’s sensitivity. The music is barely heard, but an unpleasant parasite noise appeared. We didn’t use any noise suppression software which brought us to the conclusion that the microphone simply is not very sensitive. On the other hand it handled voice recording adequately – normal talking produced clear and easily heard result in the video.