It's not often we stray into the world of computer peripherals
but when we find a classy gadget that we like then it makes it's way
onto our FrontPage and so it is with the Philips Toucam Pro II USB
webcam. Normally webcams are the off casts of some shoddy digital
camera manufacturer, you'd expect that webcams get the chips that
are just no good for anything else, blurred washed out pictures at
very low resolutions and we are meant to be impressed?
 So
maybe that's why we were so impressed when seeing the Toucam for the
first time with a real vibrant colour reproduction and a relatively
sharp image when used in good lighting conditions. The Toucam Pro is
capable of a 60 frames per second rate but you'll find it most
useful set to full VGA resolution at 30fps, connected to our host PC
via the USB cable and working on MSN chat and Yahoo IM it put up a
good display easily outclassing our old Logitech unit.
LP spent several hours combing various "bulletin boards" for
suitable people to test the webcam with, apparently females have a
better eye for pixilation and compression errors!
The silver housing makes it fit well with the latest PC or Mac
Styles and after bit of fiddling around with the plastic leg we
managed to get it pointing at LP's ugly mug, its not the easiest
device to position but once you get settled the image quality makes
up for the wresting match. Low light performance was more middle of
the road and the Toucam does begin to struggle in very low light
(monitor only) but then so do most cams. Quite why LP was in low
light we'll pass on quickly as you may be eating while reading this.
Philips bundle the Toucam with a host of software on CD, these
comprise of chat systems, picture editing and video editing software
as well as the usual twain drivers, we tested the still imaging
capability with Adobe Photoshop using Twain, the 1.2 mega pixel
resolution isn't exactly digital camera quality but once again the
mage was sharp in focus and had good colour reproduction, not bad
for a £56 unit.
The built in microphone was a bit weedy but you can't have
everything I guess, for users of windows XP setup is even easier we
didn't even need the CD to get started the plug and play set-up got
us up and running straight away.
Overall the Philips Toucam pro 2 is a smart bit of kit with above
average quality for a webcam, anyone would think they actually made
this out of bits designed for it not just the digicam scraps, anyhow
time to rescue LP from marrying that Russian bride he met on Yahoo!
its all in the name of gadget testing so he tells us...
More Computer Peripherals -
[ Up ] [ Cannon Lide20 Scanner ] [ HP Scanjet 4670 Scanner ] [ IBM Microdrive 1gb ] [ Belkin Speedpad ] [ Philips Toucam Pro II ] [ Maxtor OneTouch ] [ Logitech Media Play Mouse ] [ Logitech V250 Mouse and Pad ] [ Buffalo Terastation ] [ Linksys Wireless Print Server ] [ Quickcam Pro 5000 Webcam ] [ Pika One FlyCASE ] [ Logitech Cordless Plus Optical Mouse ] [ Crucial iMac RAM ] [ Microsoft Wireless Fingerprint Keyboard ] [ Viewsonic Airpanel ] [ Logitech Di Novo Media Desktop ] [ Logitech MX700 Mouse ] |
