Eliot Prescott—July 26, 2009✓ Verified purchase
If I could give this product six stars, I would. I've purchased a couple of webcams over the years. All turned out to be just hard enough to use and just low enough quality that they eventually went in a drawer. Then, three weeks ago, before a trip to India and China, I decided to give webcams another try so that I could stay in touch with home. Based on Amazon reviews and previous good experiences with other Logitech products, I purchased a Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks for my laptop and a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 for the home computer. Both cameras are beautifully designed. The notebook version is very small (even smaller than it looks in the picture) and takes up about as much space than my mobile phone in my briefcase. Both units fit onto the monitors very easily (the Notebook version clips on, while the 9000 just sits on top of the monitor with a counterweight in the back). Installation of the software was a breeze -- took just a few minutes and installed without a hitch. The real news for me, though, is the Logitech Vid software. At first, I didn't load the software, because it wasn't on the CD (I had to download it). However, after trying video chat on gmail (which was a bit confusing and kept crashing my computer), I downloaded the Logitech Vid software on both my laptop and my home computer. It's incredibly easy to use. All I had to do was register an email address on each computer, after which call from system to system was as easy as clicking on the picture of the person on the other system. No exaggeration, it was easier than dialing a phone number. For the last two weeks, I've used the Logitech Quickcam to call home nightly from both India and China, using the regular internet access from the hotels. The process was incredibly simple -- a few seconds after clicking on the icon for the other computer, I was connected with home. The video quality was excellent, even in very poor lighting conditions, and the autofocus worked very well to keep us both sharp. The audio quality was also very clear; in fact, it was clearer than phone calls back to the States. Given that calls back to the States normally cost $1 to $3 a minute from Asia, I figure I made back the cost of the cameras in a single trip. Since the video calls involved no incremental cost, I was able to talk as long as I wanted. Also, being able to see the family, rather than just hear them, was huge. In a nutshell, I couldn't be more pleased. I promptly bought two more cameras for someone who works for me and also travels a lot internationally. I'll soon be ordering a camera for the grandparents; installation and use was simple enough that I'm confident my 80-something parents will have no problem setting it up and using it. As I mentioned at the outset, I've tried webcams several times before, without success. Maybe they've simply gotten better since the last time I tried, or maybe Logitech finally cracked the code of extreme ease-of-use combined with very high picture and sound quality. In any case, the outcome was a true blessing for me when traveling internationally. I highly, highly recommend this camera to anyone who wants to stay in touch with family and friends who are far away and who wants a solution that's as easy as (or actually easier than) a phone call. I couldn't be more pleased with this product. Read more
Joe Miner—September 3, 2009✓ Verified purchase
We bought this webcam as an upgrade from the really inexpensive bottom-of-the-line Logitech we picked up on Black Friday and we're very glad we did! The old one wasn't horrible. We used it almost exclusively for Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa (my parents) once our son was born. The picture quality wasn't great, but you could tell who you were talking to and the microphone worked pretty well. The big problem was movement. As soon as you started moving, the picture would stutter. If you moved your hand across the front of the webcam, you would see the hand move about 6 inches at a time, then pause, then repeat. That worked OK while our son was very little and didn't move around much, but now that he has gotten to the age where he can roll over and start crawling, it just wasn't cutting it. Grandma and Grandpa were really starting to miss out. I wasn't sure if the problem was the webcam itself, the USB 1.1 port on my 5-year old laptop, our internet connection, or some combination of the 3, so I was leary about spending a lot of money on a replacement. I didn't want to buy a more expensive webcam only to find out that the webcam itself wasn't the problem. So I checked out almost all of the webcams out there and after reading all of the really good reviews for the 9000, I figured I'd give it the first shot. I wasn't sure if all of the fancy terms like Carl Zeiss optics, RightLight2, and AutoFocus made that much of a difference or just added to the price, but I wanted to find out. Turns out, this little guy delivers on every front. We didn't tell my parents that we had purchased a new webcam and when we did our first video call with the 9000, they were blown away. They said it was like watching a DVD. You can move around almost as fast as you want and the picture won't stutter at all. Everything was crisp and focused. The RightLight technology works great. Our basement has some very uneven lighting (some very bright recessed lighting, a big glass patio door, and a ceiling fan light) and on our old webcam, things were either washed out or too dark. With the 9000, everything looks exactly like it should, all they way from the front of the room to the back. The microphone works like a pro too. It picks up the noises my son makes and at the same time it also picks up what my wife and I are saying even though we sit further away on the couch. The only small problem we've encountered when using Skype is that if you zoom in during a video call and then try to zoom back out again, you won't get as good of a picture as when you started. I'm not sure what causes that problem, or if there is a way to fix it, but it can be avoided by not playing around with the zoom during the call. We just move the webcam closer to our son or vice versa if we need to and it works out great. In fact, it works so well that we actually use it instead of our video camera when we're shooting a video that doesn't require you to walk around much (i.e. putting our son in the high chair and taping him while he eats). It's a snap to turn those videos into movie clips since the file is being captured directly on the computer. No need to hook any wires up to the camcorder or worrying if the camcorder battery is charged or if there is a tape in the camcorder. The adjustable stand/clip that comes with it can be manipulated into just about any position to fit your need. We've used it in a variety of places because we can walk around with it when it's connected to the laptop, and I don't remember ever having a problem finding a place to attach it. So, if you're in the market for a quality webcam for video calls and even for capturing videos, go ahead and give this one a shot. Grandma and Grandpa will be glad you did! Read more
