Anker PowerConf C300 Smart Full HD Webcam, AI-Powered Framing & Autofocus, 1080p Webcam with Noise-Cancelling Microphones, Adjustable FoV, HDR, 60…

Original Review (see updated edit below): Really sad to give this one a bad review. I was keeping up with Anker’s announcements and was eagerly awaiting this webcam since working from home has become such a big part of my life now, I thought a nice webcam might be a welcome addition to my home setup.
I am a huge fan of Anker products and the quality/pricing of their products. Recently they have broken into the ‘higher end’ tech market and this new product offering follows that pattern, pricing slightly above similar products from already well established brands in the market such as Logitech. Seeing an abnormally high price tag and considering Anker’s brilliant quality on the range of other products I have bought from them, I had high expectations for this, and maybe that’s why I feel let down
The quality of the housing and mounting system is up to regular Anker quality. However, the mechanism for rotating and positioning the webcam in different directions is odd and a bit clunky. The biggest kicker and the reason its gotten two stars from me is a pretty noticeable bit of dust or plastic inside the lens element, behind the front, transparent panel. Obviously this is a brand new product and must be a first batch problem, but I honestly expected better from Anker. I kept the camera in it’s protective film and plugged it in just to see if it was worth looking past this minor defect. I’m happy to say the camera quality is excellent. My dark corner office space did not look like such a dark corner and the camera handled the backlit scene (a window behind me) very well.

Unfortunately, it was not enough to look past the defect, I have tried to capture it on camera. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot, but considering the price and the quality I expected from Anker, I am not prepared to just ‘bear with’ the defect.

The problem is now exacerbated by the fact that I got a £30 discount by signing up to updates from Anker about the announcement and since I bought it from Amazon, I am not able to simply exchange the item for a new one and would rather have to order a brand new one and return this one, which I would be fine doing if the discount code wasn’t invalidated by its first use… So just a return it is. I guess I’ll hope for Anker to get their manufacturing processes right for this product and hope the price drops in the meantime.

Edit: After leaving this review, I ordered a replacement direct from Anker as I was still able to use my discount code there. The next day Anker Customer Support contacted me directly to offer me a replacement for my original Amazon order, free of charge. I actually ended up with two webcams, one free and the replacement I bought, which both arrived the same day. I opened up the replacement Anker sent me and noticed a very small bit of dust once again (although not as bad as the first one I got from Amazon, so then I opened the second one I actually bought myself from Anker and this too had a small bit of dust in a lens element. I don’t know if I got *incredibly* unlucky (now having received 3 separate webcams with dust in the lens), but I was still in contact with Anker Customer Support who were very friendly and helpful and were able to issue a refund for the one I bought on their website. I have updated this from 2 stars to 4, but this is mainly for the fact that I managed to receive two free, minorly defective, webcams and Anker’s support was very friendly and helpful. There is no significant reduction in the quality of the webcam image due to the dust, but the camera does perform marginally worse than some other webcams I have seen from Logitech or Razer etc. This has been an incredibly long review already but all of the problems I had with the product aside, if you do manage to get a perfect webcam first time, I honestly still think this is slightly overpriced for the image quality you receive, although the AI aspect of the webcam may yet improve the quality over time?

All I can say for certain is Anker is a fantastic company that do care about their customers, I think it’s unfortunate that I received a few slightly defective products, but this is a good first attempt at the product and I imagine could be a very successful product line with some future iterations/revisions.

**UPDATE after 3 weeks**
Anker has continued to release firmware and software updates. At this point, I’d say the HDR feature definitely has an impact on color quality. It’s noticeably better with HDR turned on. But then, why is it even an option? Who’s choosing to turn off better color reproduction??

There’s still no option to manually zoom and crop the image, which I’m wanting more and more. The “Solo-Frame” feature turned out to be really distracting in most meetings. If you lean forward, turn to the side, or whatever, then the camera zooms and crops to center your face. EVERYONE on a meeting notices this happen, comments on it, wonders about it. It’s distracting and unnecessary for most meetings at your desk.

Although I’m still hoping for software improvements, the image quality is still very good and a huge upgrade from what I had before. Still happy with this purchase; just hoping for more.

*** ORIGINAL REVIEW ***
For reference, my comparison cameras are 1) the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro and 2) a $50 external camera (3MP, 1080p) that I picked up when I started working from home.

PHYSICAL FORM
Physically, the Anker C300 feels good and substantial. The USB-C port is recessed pretty far into the body of the camera, so it actually took some finagling to be sure the cable was fully plugged in. The cable is about 5ft long, USB-C to USB-C. The box also includes a USB-C to USB-A adapter if you need it.

VIDEO QUALITY
Without adjusting any settings, the C300 has noticeably better picture quality than both my built-in camera and my external camera. Those cameras really struggled to pick up variations in color and lighting. For example, when I wear a black sweater on my old camera it just looks like a dark blob. With the C300, it’s much more like being in person — you can see the variations of lighting and much more detail.

SOUND QUALITY
I use an external condenser mic already, so I wasn’t expecting the C300 to be an improvement. But, surprisingly, it’s not really much of a step down either! In fact, it does a much better job of focusing on voices vs. all the other noises that might be in the room. If you work from home and have kids, pets, and other sounds around you, this mic should do a better job of keeping some of that off your Zoom calls.

SOFTWARE
The AnkerWork software runs great on MacOS 10.15. Right now, the options within AnkerWork are somewhat limited. You can adjust the resolution (360p, 720p, 1080p), frames per second (30, 60), brightness, sharpness, saturation, and contrast ratio. The default settings for each were good. I couldn’t really improve the image by adjusting them.

The more interesting & unique settings are called Fixed Angle (78°, 90°, and 115°) and Flexible Angle (Auto-Frame, Solo-Frame). Fixed Angle settings acts like a zoom level. At the widest field of view (115°) you’ll get a lot of the surrounding room, at the smallest (78°) you’ll get less. It’s not that dramatic of a difference, but it does help to have some flexibility. Alternatively, you can choose Auto-Frame to have the software automatically zoom and crop the image to include everyone in the picture, or you can choose Solo-Frame to zoom and crop the image to include just the one face closest to the camera. It actually tracks your face and adjusts as you move around! I *wanted* to like Solo-Frame, but it puts your face in the exact center of the picture, whereas I think it looks better to put the face a little above center. What this really made me wish for was a way to just manually zoom and crop the image however I wanted. (It’s not like I move around that much in a normal meeting from my desk.) I’m hoping manual zoom & crop can be added to the software in the future.

There was a firmware update to enable HDR and Anti-Flicker. I tried those settings under a variety of lighting conditions (lots of natural light, artificial light, low light) and I never really noticed HDR doing anything! Anti-Flicker is only meant to be used if all your fluorescent or LED lighting is causing a flicker on the image. I had a hard time creating a lighting scenario where I got that flicker. Overall, I don’t think HDR and Anti-Flicker do very much.

OVERALL
This camera is a significant upgrade for my home video, with a much more nuanced and lifelike picture than I was able to get from my built-in camera or my cheaper external camera. The software has room to grow, and I’m optimistic Anker will do that with future software updates. I feel really good about the value at the price point I paid, and hopefully the value will go up as the software improves.

 Diese Webcam ist nicht mehr zeitgemäß, erst Recht nicht für diesen Preis. Die Bildqualität ist schlechter als von günstigeren Webcams hier auf Amazon. Der Ton ist ganz OK, hat jedoch Kompressionsartefakte. Die Software ist durchaus nett mit vielen Optimierungsmöglichkeiten. Dennoch hat mich vor allem das Bild nicht überzeugt, sodass ich die Webcam zurückgesendet habe. Schade, habe von Anker mehr erwartet! Mag sonst die Marke sehr.

I use my webcam a lot so I thought I’d treat myself to one of the best – I foolishly thought that price would be relevant in that. 1080p/60fps – yes, please. It’s expensive – more than a Logitech, the brand leader, but I thought maybe I was getting something special. Physically it seems well build, but that’s not really so important as it gets put on your monitor and never touched again. Unfortunately, actual performance was disappointing.

1. It claims adjustable field of view (78 – 110 degrees). This is simply not true. The software allows you to crop the image and then enlarge it back up, so, yes, you see less of the image and what you get is expanded but that’s not an adjustable FOV particularly as the cropped image represents only half of the sensor’s image, so resolution is halved (i.e. it’s not HD any more). This is simply deceptive.

2. The utility software to change its settings installs and asks you to agree to their privacy policy and terms of service. I actually checked it and it details what information is collects – which wasn’t much, so that was good but then, being somewhat untrusting, I ran a IP/port monitor before I ran the software and as soon as it opened, it made many connections back to Anker’s AWS servers. It didn’t ask – it just made about 20+ connections. I do not know what information was sent from my PC back to Anker, what they have logged and what they will do with that data (I’ve asked but I’m not expecting any detail other than a generic answer). This is simply not on (anyone want to get GDPR legality?).

3. Picture quality. I guess the sensor on this is tiny – a ‘glass lens’ can’t make up for that. The picture is lossy, fuzzy and poorly focussed. I still have my Logitech 720p camera connected so could compare the images side by side. The Logitech – 5 years old and 720p is just so much clearer – the colour and lighting is also much more natural. I didn’t experiment with the HDR in different situations as I wasn’t very helpful.

So, it works but I’m not sure it’s much better than a no-name £30 camera and definitely not worth the £110 SRP (£90 on Amazon at the moment).

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