In the past three years, we've been spending a lot more time at home. In-person meetings and gatherings have often been replaced by virtual get-togethers, and it's become more important than ever to have a good webcam. However, the PC market hasn't necessarily followed. Be it the result of shrinking bezels or the simple belief that users don't care about webcam quality, even some of the best laptops still have bad cameras. Sometimes they're horribly placed, and sometimes they're just not there at all. If you're in need of a camera upgrade, we've rounded up some of the best webcams you can buy today.

As usual, we're going to cover a few different categories to help you find something that fits your needs and your budget. Whether you're looking to get a super cheap webcam or a very high-end one, we've got options for you.

Our top webcam picks in 2023

We've seen a resurgence in webcam quality over the past few years, and the Insta360 Link is easily the best webcam money can buy right now. At $300, you'll be paying a pretty penny, but this is an absolutely phenomenal camera in every way, offering great video quality and AI features to make it even better. We simply called it the best webcam in our Insta360 Link review, and for good reason.

Before we get to the smarts, let's talk hardware, which is impressive by itself. The Insta360 Link has a 1/2-inch 4K sensor, which is well above the vast majority of webcams. The lens has an f/1.8 aperture, too, and image quality from this camera is fantastic as a result. In our review, we found images to be impressively crisp and clean, and the white balance was better than most webcams offer. The wide aperture also means the focus plane is relatively small, which creates a soft bokeh effect for the background and helps you pop that much more.

However, what makes the Insta360 Link special is its built-in gimbal, which allows it to pan sideways, tilt up or down, and even rotate vertically. The camera also supports zoom, both manually and automatically, with the AI zoom feature. This is because the Insta360 Link also supports face tracking, so as you move around, the camera can follow your face just about anywhere thanks to that gimbal, and it can also zoom in on your face to keep you clearly in view. For your privacy, the webcam automatically faces down and turns off when not in use.

To top it all out, the Insta360 Link comes with special features like a desk view mode and a whiteboard mode, making it ideal for presenters and educators, for example. You can easily bring focus to documents or text you want others to see, making this an extremely versatile webcam.

That price tag may make it a bit prohibitive for some, but this is easily the best webcam on the market if the price is no object.

Logitech is one of the most renowned brands of peripherals in the world, and the Logitech 4K Pro Webcam, which is essentially a rebranded version of the Brio 4K, is still an excellent webcam for just about anyone. The original Brio 4K is many years old at this point, but it was the cream of the crop back then, and it still holds up tremendously well.

First off, of course, it comes with support for 4K video at 30 frames per second, so you get fantastic video quality for meetings and calls. If you're streaming, you can also opt for 1080p video at 60fps, or even 720p video at 90fps. The camera also supports HDR and boasts Logitech's RightLight 3 technology to ensure you're clearly visible even in less favorable lighting. The glass lens and auto-focus support also help deliver great quality, too. The webcam also includes two microphones for high-quality sound capture.

One of the highlights of the Logitech 4K Pro Webcam is that it's more than a standard camera, it also has an infrared sensor, which means it can be used to sign into your PC using Windows Hello. Indeed, the webcam features advanced facial recognition support, so you can get up and running more quickly as soon as you sit at your PC. On the topic of security and privacy, the webcam also includes a privacy cover you can easily flip down over the lens when you don't want to be seen.

With the Logi Tune software, you can change all kinds of settings for the Logitech 4K Pro Webcam, including the field of view of the camera (ranging from 65 to 90 degrees) and various image settings to get the right look for any situation.

With an MSRP of $200, the Logitech 4K Pro webcam remains one of the best webcams on the market, and it earns an easy recommendation for its quality and versatility.

As USB Type-C becomes more widely adopted, some laptops are starting to ship without USB Type-A ports, and finding a compatible webcam can be tough if you don't want to buy any adapters. Whether you have a MacBook or a Dell XPS laptop, you're going to want a USB Type-C webcam, and the Logitech StreamCam is an easy choice.

Not only is the Logitech StreamCam easy to use, it actually packs in a lot of great features for streaming, too. It starts with support for Full HD 1080p video at 60 frames per second, ensuring you look clear and move smoothly. Whether it's for video calls or live streaming, that's great. The camera uses a glass lens and it supports auto-focus, ensuring you always look as clear as possible. Plus, it supports automatic tracking, and the intelligent exposure feature helps ensure your face looks natural and well-lit in different lighting environments. If streaming is your focus, you'll also like that the camera is specifically optimized for apps like Streamlabs and OBS.

Perhaps one of the biggest selling points of the Logitech StreamCam is the ability to record vertical video, since the camera can physically rotate 90 degrees without moving the mount. If you ever feel like sharing an Instagram Story or other vertical video content straight from your laptop, this makes it that much easier to do so.

As with other Logitech webcams, you can also count on support for the Logitech Capture app, which gives you all kinds of controls for your webcam on both Windows and macOS. Logitech Capture lets you toggle features like auto framing and image stabilization, choose whether to prioritize frame rate or exposure, and apply all sorts of effects and filters.

The Logitech StreamCam is a little pricy, but it's a great camera from a reputable brand, and it's easy to recommend.

If what you're after is the ultimate image quality for streaming, look no further than the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra. It's one of the most recent options on this list, having been introduced earlier in 2023, and the images it produces are incredible based on our quick hands-on at CES 2023.

The Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra is packing one of the largest camera sensors we've seen on a webcam — a big 1/1.2-inch Sony sensor — and it has a wide f/1.7 aperture. That large sensor means the camera captures much more light for looking clear and crisp even in dim lighting conditions. That's also helped by hDR support, which helps compensate for uneven lighting scenarios to ensure you're always visible.

The wide aperture also helps achieve a natural bokeh effect, so your background is softly blurred without any software tricks. What's more, the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra supports a completely uncompressed 4K, 24 FPS video stream for the best image quality possible. For streamers using soft or dim indoor lighting, the image quality of this webcam is hard to match.

The camera also has useful features like face-tracking autofocus, which ensures your face always looks clear on camera. While the camera can't move physically to follow you around, it detects your face and ensures you stay in focus when possible. It also has some welcome privacy features, like a privacy shutter you can activate by rotating the bezel of the camera and a proper camera cover for transport.

Like most Razer peripherals, the camera also supports Razer Synapse, meaning you get all kinds of camera controls built into the software. You can change things like exposure, focus, and zoom, settings, among many other things.

At $300, it costs the same as the Insta360 Link and it misses out on some features like AI-based tracking or even Windows Hello like what the Logitech 4K Pro Webcam has. But if you want the best quality for streaming, this is the webcam for you.

Most webcams on this list will work on macOS to some extent, and many, including the Insta360 Link and Logitech 4K Pro Webcam, have dedicated software for macOS. But if you want another alternative, the Dell UltraSharp is another fantastic option for Mac users, particularly desktop Macs like the Mac Mini or Mac Studio.

That's because this is a relatively large camera, so mounting it on a MacBook won't always be ideal, but in return for that size, you get fantastic image quality. The Dell UltraSharp 4K webcam, as the branding suggests, features a 4K sensor, specifically a Sony STARVIS sensor that's optimized for low-light scenarios, which means you should be clearly visible even in less favorable conditions. What's more, it supports HDR to help make up for uneven lighting, and auto-focus should ensure you always look crisp and clear.

Unfortunately, Mac users can't take advantage of Window Hello support, one of the best features of the Dell UltraSharp, but it's there in case you ever switch to Windows. However, Dell does support macOS quite well thanks to the Dell Display and peripheral Manager app. This lets you change all kinds of settings, including changing the field of view of the camera, so you can crop out your surroundings or fit more in the frame, enable or disable AI framing, and adjust general image settings like brightness, contrast, and saturation. All of this should help you look the way you want to on your calls, and it's great that Dell goes out of its way to support macOS despite being a major player in the Windows space.

A potential downside of this webcam is that it doesn't have a built-in microphone, but if you're serious about your meeting quality, you're likely wearing a headset anyway, so this may not be a huge deal. Aside from that, the Dell UltraSharp remains one of the very best webcams on the market, and macOS support is always good to see.

Many of us need a webcam for meetings and video calls, especially with remote work becoming as widespread as it has. If you want something that will work great across all kinds of meeting platforms, the HP 965 Streaming Webcam is for you.

On the hardware side, the HP 965 comes with a 4K Sony STARVIS sensor, which should help ensure great call quality in challenging lighting conditions. HDR support further helps with this by helping compensate for uneven lighting, too. The camera also features color correction, so your skin looks more natural in different lighting conditions. And with HP Presence, you can further enhance your look thanks to features such as background removal. The camera also has two built-in microphones to gelp you conduct meetings without a headset.

To get the best possible angle, the webcam also supports 90 degrees of tilt and 360 degrees of swivel adjustment, so you can get the right angle for any position you might be in relative to the camera. The camera also includes a magnetic privacy cover to avoid accidentally showing yourself when you didn't mean to.

While the HP 965 Streaming Webcam misses out on Windows Hello support, it's ideal for workers because HP has achieved certification for Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google meet, Cisco Webex, BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, as well as streaming software like OBS and Xsplit. This means you should look and sound your best no matter what platform you need to be on.

You will be paying $200, so it's very close to the Dell UltraSharp while lacking Windows Hello support, but that software certification may be worth it if remote meetings are a major part of your life.

All of the webcams we've looked at so far are fantastic, but most of them are also quite expensive. Sure, if you're looking for the absolute best quality, they're worth it, but if you just want to upgrade the camera on an old laptop or you want something to get you started, the Microsoft Modern Webcam is for you.

This is a relatively basic webcam compared to others on this list, but it's still great for the price. It offers support for 1080p video at 30 frames per second, which is enough for you to look great during video calls and meetings. The camera also supports HDR to ensure you stay clearly visible in less favorable lighting conditions. On top of that, if you want to look your best, the True Look feature can apply some facial retouches to help you with exactly that.

Of course, the webcam includes a microphone for your audio needs, though quality shouldn't be exceptional, and there's a privacy shutter, too. If you're worried your camera will be turned on when you're not using it, this is very useful to have, and the camera actually integrates with Teams. That means that when you slide the privacy cover over the lens, the camera is turned off in Teams, instead of just presenting a black image. The opposite also happens when you uncover the lens, so you're always ready to go more quickly.

Considering it's such a modern webcam, we would have liked to see features like Windows Hello integration or at least a USB Type-C-to-C cable to make connections easier on modern laptops. Still, the $70 price tag is great for this camera, and what's even better is that you can very often find it discounted for much less. At writing time, it's just $40, which is solidly in budget territory, and you get great quality for that price.

Let's be absolutely clear right off the bat: If you want great microphone quality for at-home use, your best choice is buying one of the webcams above and pairing it with a headset or a dedicated microphone. Typical webcams don't have fantastic microphones, but they should do the job for the most part. However, if you absolutely want an all-in-one solution without sacrificing the microphone quality, you're going to be looking at meeting room hardware, and the eMeet Meeting Capsule is a fantastic choice.

There's a lot going on here, starting with the fact this isn't a fixed camera. Indeed, the camera can rotate 360 degrees to keep users in the frame, including a remote control to make it easier to move the camera as needed. The camera captures video in 4K but outputs in 1080p, which should deliver great quality for meetings. Most meeting software doesn't support 4K video anyway, but you still get the benefits of a higher-resolution sensor. Most notably, the camera can capture up to three active speakers at a given tie and highlight them in individual feeds thanks to that high-resolution sensor.

For voice pickup, the eMeet Meeting Capsule comes with a whopping eight microphones placed in a circle for true 360-degree capture. It uses what eMeet calls VoiceIA technology to cancel out background noise (including 282 types of noise, according to the company), as well as enhance human voices and reduce echo, providing crystal clear audio quality for scenarios where audio quality reigns supreme. eMeet says the Meeting Capsule can pick up voices clearly in a radius up to 18 feet, so you should be well covered in most situations where you'd want to use it.

With a cost of $800 (discounted to $700 at writing time), this definitely isn't a webcam for everyone, and it can't even be mounted on a monitor or laptop, so it's not made for general use at all. But for organizations and enterprise users with a meeting room, this is an excellent choice.

If you're used to hosting live streams in dark rooms, it can be difficult to have a camera that captures you well in the dark. Many of the best webcams we've mentioned have large sensors to compensate for that, but the Razer Kiyo is a more pragmatic solution. It simply addresses that issue by building a ring light around the camera, which illuminates your face so you look good regardless of the lighting conditions around you. That light intensity can be easily adjusted by rotating the dial on the camera, so you can customize it to fit your setup and stay comfortable without an overly bright light.

Aside from the light, the Razer Kiyo comes has a Full HD 1080p sensor, which supports recording at 30 frames per second. Alternatively, you can use it to record in 720p at 60fps, if you favor the high framerate more than resolution. The camera supports auto-focus, too, and combined with the built-in light, this should provide a clear picture in almost any condition, and it does so while being much more affordable than cameras with larger sensors. The webcam also includes a microphone you can use in a pinch, and it has a compact foldable design that makes it fairly easy to store or carry with you when you need to.

You can customize various image settings with Razer Synapse, and using the app is definitely recommended. You can switch between auto and manual focus, color balance, and more. It also allows you to get firmware updates, which Razer has released to improve the image quality and add more options.

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Best webcams in 2023: The bottom line

With these options, you should be ready to choose something that suits your needs. When choosing a webcam, you'll want to consider your budget, how often you use it, and what you use it for. Of course, the best webcams are a bit more expensive, but they're going to give you a great experience in return. The Insta360 Link is an absolute favorite among the ones we've tested. The large sensor provides fantastic image quality in all but the absolute worst lighting conditions, and additional features like AI-powered tracking along with whiteboard and desk view modes make it an extremely versatile choice. It's certainly expensive, but it's doing a lot to justify that price tag.

Of course, that's not for everyone, and many laptops have really terrible cameras. If you want a solid upgrade on the cheap, the Microsoft Modern Webcam is a great option with 1080p resolution and great image quality for most common scenarios. It's also far more affordable, especially with the fairly common discounts it gets.

If you're buying a webcam and you're streaming or in meetings while traveling, you may want to get a laptop that stays connected wherever you go. We have a roundup of the best 5G laptops you can get right now, so you don't have to rely on Wi-Fi all the time.