It never fails. You get a shiny, brand-new laptop with ALL the bells and whistles, and yet the same thing lets you down every time. The built-in webcam. Even laptops that promise superior webcams ultimately fail to deliver. And if you’re wondering “why?” the answer comes down to everything else you love about your laptop.
Unfortunately, in this modern world, the webcam is more important than ever. Chances are you’re all too familiar with the terms, “Zoom” and “Teams” which now mean something totally different than they did 15 years ago. More people are working from home, and even those in the office are still attending remote meetings. And if you’re a professional, you want to look good. So why does your laptop’s webcam make you look terrible, and what can you do about it?
Further reading: The best laptops we’ve tested
The webcam position isn’t glamorous
Josh Hendrickson/IDG
Josh Hendrickson/IDG
<div class="scrim" style="background-color: #fff" aria-hidden="true"></div>
</div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Josh Hendrickson/IDG</p></div>Chances are that your laptop’s webcam is centered in the top bezel of your laptop’s display. That’s about as high as you can get on a laptop, but that still leads to the first problem. An unflattering view. Laptops aren’t all that tall, and there’s many people place them directly on a desk, front and center for easy reaching.
But you can’t lift the built-in webcam any higher than the actual laptop. If you’ve placed yours on a desk, then it’s probably below your face. If you want to take a good-looking photo of someone, the general advice is to raise the camera higher, not lower. A downward angle is almost always more flattering, and unfortunately you won’t get that with a laptop on a desk. Worse yet, chances are with the display positioned at a perfectly vertical angle, it will cut your head off. The only option is to lean back, which gives you the classic “up the nose” view that no one wants to see.
And all of that is the lucky scenario. For reasons we’ll get into below, some manufacturers have gone with alternative laptop placements, such as early Dell XPS 13s that positioned the webcam in the bottom bezel of the display, or Huawei’s attempt to stick a popup webcam in the keyboard. An even lower position just makes things worse.
Further reading: How to look fresh and professional in videoconferences and web meetings
Size is everything
Josh Hendrickson/IDG
<div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="webcam" class="wp-image-2333214" width="1200" height="675" loading="lazy" /></figure><p class="imageCredit">Josh Hendrickson/IDG</p></div> </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Josh Hendrickson/IDG</p></div>When you bought your laptop, you probably paid attention to the features that matter most like RAM, display size, and battery life. But one area that influenced your decision probably also made your built-in webcam worse: form factor. Most people want a thin and light laptop with small bezels, because that makes for a more portable device. And that makes sense. But those very benefits are detrimental to webcams.
Think about the average camera for a moment. When you want a better camera, you probably look for the usual specs like megapixels, and then assume more is better. But that’s not the whole story. Sensor size also matters, which is why a DSLR with “fewer megapixels” can take a better photo than a smartphone with “more megapixels.” To understand why, you need to understand camera image sensors. A single camera image sensor is made of small light sensors called pixels. At its most basic, each pixel captures light, and all those light signals are combined into an image.
The problem is smaller sensors leave less room for those pixels. The only way to get more megapixels into a smaller sensor is to shrink each pixel sensor. Smaller pixel sensors are worse at capturing light, and cramming a huge number of megapixels into a small sensor only compounds that problem. That’s why a DSLR that’s “just” 20 megapixels can take an image that’s nicer, crisper, and even less noisy in dark settings than a 48-megapixel smartphone camera.
But alas, the fact that larger sensors lead to higher quality image capabilities runs headfirst into laptop portability requirements. In this day and age, we want smaller bezels, and thinner screens, which leads to less room for webcam hardware. That leaves manufacturers with the choice between making a chunkier laptop or using smaller less capable camera hardware.
The decision manufacturers settled on is obvious too: remember Dell’s decision to put the webcam at the bottom of the display for early Dell XPS 13 models? The company did course correct and managed to move the camera back to the best position at the top of the display. But Dell got there by working with camera sensor manufacturers to make even smaller webcam hardware. That reduced the image quality even more, although at least you don’t get as much up the nose as before.
Webcams are an afterthought anyway
Josh Hendrickson/IDG
<div class="lightbox-image-container foundry-lightbox"><div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large enlarged-image"><img decoding="async" data-wp-bind--src="selectors.core.image.enlargedImgSrc" data-wp-style--object-fit="selectors.core.image.lightboxObjectFit" src="" alt="webcam" class="wp-image-2333213" width="1200" height="675" loading="lazy" /></figure><p class="imageCredit">Josh Hendrickson/IDG</p></div> </div></figure><p class="imageCredit">Josh Hendrickson/IDG</p></div>If you’re thinking, “shove camera hardware into a small package” sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. Smartphones contend with some of the same issues, and yet they consistently turn out better results. Why is that? Priorities. When you look at the most important specs for buying a laptop, webcams don’t top the list. But smartphones are now the default camera we take everywhere, so Apple, Samsung, and other smartphone makers have an incentive to spend more on camera hardware.
You will see some of the size dynamics play out in a smartphone. Afterall, the rear facing camera is almost always far superior to the front facing camera. But once again, the front facing camera contends with smaller bezel, forcing pho
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