Creative Live Cam Notebook Ultra

Editors' rating

Good

6.6

out of 10

The good: Compact size; clips securely to laptops; included headphone/microphone set improves audio.
The bad: Poor image quality, particularly in low light; wide-angle lens has unintended fisheye effect.
The bottom line: The Creative Live Cam Notebook Ultra is about the closest alternative to an integrated laptop Webcam; it's tiny and can be securely fastened to your laptop. Unfortunately, its image quality is no better than average.

Reviewed by:
Matthew Elliott
Review date: 10/18/07

The Creative Live Cam Notebook Ultra can't match the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks where it matters most--image quality--but it's not without its charms. It's better designed, with a clip that can be firmly attached to your laptop and a horizontal orientation that makes it less prone to getting knocked from its perch. For particularly acrobatic Webcam performers, you'll be happy to know the camera can be rotated 240 degrees. And when using a third-party IM client such as Skype for video, the video quality is on a par with that of Logitech's QuickCam Pro for Notebooks. Plus, the $79 Creative Live Cam Notebook Ultra lists for $20 less than Logitech's camera. We prefer the Logitech camera on the whole because its image quality is unparalleled among laptop Webcams, but if you are buying a Webcam primarily for video chatting, we'd go with the Creative Live Cam Notebook Ultra for its superior design.

Like any Webcam, setup is a simple process of installing the bundled software, then connecting the camera to a USB port. The included software is functional, but we found Logitech's QuickCam software to be more user friendly. Unlike Logitech, Creative bundles its own video messaging app, SightSpeed. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's of dubious practicality because you'll need to convince your friends to install it as well (it takes two to chat, as they say). More likely, you'll use the camera with a video-enabled instant messenger. We tested with Skype and were very pleased with the results; video quality was more than acceptable for the purpose of a video chat. Unfortunately, the video quality doesn't improve when recording video using the bundled Live Cam software. Colors looked washed out, and the camera had no answer to low-light conditions. We much prefer the image quality of the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks.

Our favorite feature of the Live Cam Notebook Ultra is its clip. Made of clear plastic, the clip has about a 0.4-inch opening that's just about right for the thin lids on today's laptops. You can stretch the opening to just over half an inch to affix it to a chunkier laptop. Two rubber pads keep it firmly rooted in place, even when rotating the lens. Unlike the Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, which sits up vertically on your laptop, the Creative cam measures only 1 inch high by 3 inches wide, letting it lay along the top edge of your laptop. You can rotate the lens to point away from you, which is convenient when shooting others rather than yourself in front of your laptop.

The 1.3-megapixel camera lets you capture video at a resolution of up to 1,280x960. Photos can be captured at that resolution, too, and through software interpolation--never a great idea--you can capture the equivalent of a 5-megapixel image (2,560x1,920). Video can be recorded as AVI or WMV files, and photos as JPEGs or Bitmaps. Creative trumpets the camera's wide-angle, 85-degree view, but we found it only distorted the image. It might be useful if you want to gather the whole family in front of the Webcam, but for solo participants, it resulted in an unintended fisheye effect. And Creative's face tracking feature was of little help, unless you enjoy unpredictable zooming and panning. We eventually turned it off after fighting against it for an hour.

Creative gives you a host of video effects, which are fun to experiment with, from various backdrop overlays to avatars to generally goofy effects, including a Live Doodle feature that lets you draw on your video visage. The Live Cam Center console lets you set up time-lapse video along with motion detection--finally catch your cat in the act of napping on your desk--and remote monitoring. These tasks would seem to be more suitable for a desktop Webcam, but they're welcomed additions here nonetheless.

Other extras in the box include a travel pouch and a headphone and microphone set. Audio quality improved by using the tethered mic instead of the Webcam's integrated one, but you'll be appearing in your Webcam video wearing earbuds with a mic clipped to your collar.

Creative backs the Live Cam Notebook Ultra with a one-year warranty.