Elgato Facecam Pro

The Elgato Facecam ($199.99) was an ambitious little webcam with advanced controls that ultimately disappointed us due to its high price, aggressive noise reduction filter, and lack of a built-in microphone. The Elgato Facecam Pro ($299.99) attempts to correct (some of) these faults. It adds a wider, variable-focus lens and supports a higher 4K60 resolution, but it still lacks a microphone. Moreover, it does little to justify its $100 jump in price. The Logitech Streamcam ($169.99) and Razer Kiyo Pro ($199.99) remain two of our top picks for general webcams, and if you mostly make video calls rather than create content, we recommend the Poly Studio P5 ($129.99) for its reasonable price and strong microphone.

Wide and Chunky

The Facecam Pro is wider than the squarish Facecam, measuring 1.5 by 4.6 by 3.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 8.35 ounces. The front surface of the matte black camera is concave with a lens in the center and an LED indicator to the left. The sides are mostly smooth plastic, with exhaust grilles on the top and bottom panels, nearer the back. The bottom hosts a quarter-inch metal tripod mount and a reset button. The back of the camera has a recessed USB-C port (a USB-C-to-USB-C cable included).

A plastic clip attaches to a mount with a rubberized, hinged jaw for setting the camera on top of your monitor. The mount lets the camera tilt up and down, as well as pivot left and right; it’s just stiff enough to keep the cable from pulling the camera out of alignment.

4K60, But Still No Microphone

The Elgato Facecam Pro can capture video at up to 4K (3,840 by 2,160) resolution and 60 frames per second. The lens features a 90-degree field of view and an f/2.0 aperture, with a focus range of 3.9 inches to infinity.

Like the Facecam it replaces, the Facecam Pro doesn’t have its own microphone. This means you’ll have to use a separate headset, a USB microphone, or your computer's built-in mic (if it has one). For serious content creation and streaming, we recommend a dedicated mic anyway, so some buyers may not be irked by this limitation. Those seeking a complete camera-and-mic kit, however, should look elsewhere.

Taking Control

The Elgato Camera Hub app (available for macOS and Windows) offers a variety of ways to adjust the camera with a live preview of the changes as you go. You can set anti-flicker for 50Hz or 60Hz, as well as set framing, exposure, focus, and white balance. The camera can automatically adjust these last three on the fly if you wish. For framing, you can use the digital zooming tool to dial in your preferred view between a wide 27.5 degrees and a fairly tight 90 degrees, and then manually pan the frame to center it on your face. The camera supports Nvidia-based filters that let you blur your surroundings or replace them with varied backgrounds, like many video call services already do.

Surprisingly, the Facecam Pro doesn’t have an automatic face-tracking feature. It won’t, for example, zoom in and track your face around the frame if you move around like the Dell Ultrasharp Webcam ($199.99) and the Jabra Panacast 20 ($299.99). Automatic face tracking isn't as important for desk-based content recording and streaming, but it is often handy for video calls over webcams that have wide-angle lenses.

Sharp Picture Under the Right Conditions

In terms of imaging, the Facecam Pro captures a detailed picture, but one that you’ll be better off setting yourself rather than relying on the automatic tools. In a fairly well-lit testing space, for example, the picture looked a bit noisy and fine details like my beard appeared blurry. Digitally zooming in using the Camera Hub app helped the camera to focus more clearly on my face and produced a better-framed and more-detailed picture that is still sharp enough for a 1080p video stream or recording.

I found that white balance needed to be adjusted manually; the camera’s automatic white balance tool often gave the picture a slightly green tinge. Colors looked more natural after adjusting the manual slider to match the ambient light.

Low-light performance is solid, but without a dedicated fill light, you’re going to get a noisy picture. The above photos show the camera’s picture when my monitor is relatively dark (top), and when it’s quite bright (bottom). My face is fairly sharp in the latter picture, but in both cases, the backgrounds look noisy.

The Elgato Camera Hub compresses the Facecam Pro's 4K60 video heavily, which has the effect of aggressive noise reduction and blunts just how sharp the picture can be. According to Elgato, the camera doesn't actually use noise reduction, but since the USB 3.0 connection can't handle uncompressed 4K60 video, it is sent compressed at that resolution and frame rate to the computer. With that in mind, you'll get better results by reducing the settings to 4K30 or 1080p60, the latter of which can be sent completely uncompressed.

I got the best results by setting all functions in the Camera Hub app, apart from the AI Background feature, to manual, and relying entirely on manual camera control sliders in OBS Studio (a third-party app). The above shot shows a still capture from a video recorded in OBS instead of a snapshot taken in Camera Hub. It’s significantly sharper than what I was able to capture via the Camera Hub’s manual settings.

The AI Background feature is impressive. Most video call services like Google Meet and Zoom produce a fuzzy edge around my body and my chair. The Facecam Pro and Camera Hub sharply cut me out from the rest of the frame, with an almost chromakey-accurate effect. It only had difficulty with the headrest of my chair.

A Pricey Webcam Best for Tinkerers

The Elgato Facecam Pro is a highly capable webcam, but not a set-it-and-forget-it webcam. It requires some experimentation with settings and lighting to get the best performance, and you’ll likely be best served by ignoring Elgato’s Camera Hub software for something more powerful. It has a wider field of view and is sharper than the original Facecam, with a brighter, variable-focus lens that results in a better package overall. Its $100 price increase is off-putting, though; the $199.99 Dell UltraSharp Webcam offers a crisp 4K picture for less, and preliminary tests of the $134.99 Dell Pro Webcam show similarly solid performance. They both have narrower fields of view, however, which makes the Facecam Pro the superior choice if you want the flexibility of panning and zooming.