Henry V.
Nice camera. not flame resistant.
Very nice webcam for the price. high quality and sturdy construction. I only am giving 4 stars because when I held a blowtorch on it the microphone stopped working after about 30 seconds.
Microsoft
Microsoft LifeCam HD-5000 HD Webcam
2 videosCustomer photos & videos
From 10 customers
Dennis Maeder
Good webcam for videoconferencing
Great webcam.
Adequate resolution, sharp focus, good exposure and excellent low light performance. Works fine in Windows 10.
The built-in microphone does a good job too.
The mount is bendy and does not intrude much over the front monitor bezel. The camera can be rotated left or right and tilted by moving the bendy bit.
It is rugged, and has been perched on my monitor since 2011. See picture shot with a mirror and cropped severely.
It cost me $25 back then so this now old tech is asking way too much, so I have bought a different brand for my wife.
The Matrix Fan
Great picture quality, but the auto-focus has a mind of its own.
While the picture-taking quality of this webcam is excellent, the auto-focus feature becomes very distracting after a short period of time...
...and you'll see why after you watch this video.
Hope this helps!
A. Marie
Very good Camera for the price.
This is a good camera.
Good Stuff:
It takes pretty high quality photos and videos(see video).
It fixes the lighting, even in very poor lighting. My room was kinda dark when I recorded this, yet you'd never be able to tell just by looking
It works with Skype, Yahoo Messenger and Facebook.
You really can't beat the price. I got it for $21.95.
Bad Stuff:
The autofocus sucks. You can take it off but you have to do so every time you start the camera up.
It takes up a lot of Memory. I'm using 4GB of memory and 500GB of storage here, and an AMD 2.1GH processor running Windows 7. If you have less than 1GB, This is not a camera for you. I ran it on my old desktop (a WIN XP) that only had 512MB of memory and 33 gigs of storage and I got Blue screened the first time and the pc froze the second time.
It says it's made for laptops but it's pretty awkward up there on my laptop. It took some positioning, but I finally got it to stay. However, once you have a flat surface nearby, that works too.
Overall, it's a good camera and I would recommend it.
Amber C. Small
webcam works great
very happy with this webcam, we use it as a security cam and so it records all night long. I have also used it for taking general photos with me in them that I would normally have issues with.
themarrs
Excellent Product After Turning Auto Focus Off
A short video review of the Microsoft HD 5000 LifeCam. The review shows you how the webcam behaves under different conditions. The recording is done at the highest resolution available in the software, 1280x720, and the file is only 35 MB.
One of the main things I point out in the video is the difference between using the auto-focus and having it switched off: The auto-focus is really only designed for when you want to show something within an inch or two of the webcam, not for when you are sitting in front of your computer talking. I tested it with close objects afterward and it works great for that.
I've tested the webcam with Gmail video chat, Skype 5.1, and Windows Live Messenger. For Gmail, I would recommend enabling "Video chat enhancements" from Google Labs to take advantage of the higher resolution.
One thing to keep in mind when setting up your webcam is that you need to make sure all the software is up-to-date. This includes the drivers, the firmware, and the application. When I plugged in the webcam, my computer got the latest drivers from Windows Update. When I installed the application from the included CD, it told me that the webcam required a firmware update. After that, the application crashed whenever I started it, so I got the latest from the Microsoft site ([...] Now everything works fine.
As you notice in the video, the special effects are resource intensive - that section causes the audio and video to not be synced for a few seconds. This is only a problem if you want to record the effects - just turning them on and viewing them on-screen works fine.
Ludexrasta
Nitidez en su maxima expresion
Esta es la mejor opcion en camaras web de alta definicion, excelente precio para todo lo que hace esta camara, toma fotos en alta resolucion, graba videos hd 720p, ademas de que el enfoque es widesreen y muchas cosas mas. Yo estoy muy satisfecho con mi nueva camara web. se las recomiendo.
YSC
Lovable little camera that has one serious flaw
Pros:
-- very nicely built, with a modern retro symmetrical look. It doesn't feel cheap, and in my opinion it looks nice.
-- The clamp/foot is lightweight but does an excellent job, gripping/mounting/standing as well or better than some other heavier ones.
-- Pictures come out fairly saturated, if with somewhat inaccurate colors.
-- Performs well in low light (not AF, see cons) in picking up images fairly well without horrible amount of noise.
-- The angle is fairly wide, though not quite as wide as some higher end cams (think 28mm equivalent on 35mm cameras). The wide angle stays even in HD mode, something that is somehow absent for Logitech's more upscale Webcam Pro 9000 (for comparison, the Logitech crops the scene in HD to reduce active pixel count).
-- Has AF for objects at all distances, even very close-up macros (though AF doesn't work reliably for me--see cons)
and very decent software support (truecolor) that corrects smartly for tricky lighting situations such as backlighting.
-- The software allows for manual focus. While that's probably not useful for everyone, it is a nice touch for those special situations where you want more creative control or when AF fails (see cons)
-- The mic is fairly sensitive and picks up very well.
-- It's lightweight and small for its features.
-- Being Microsoft, the software installs painlessly--just plug it in and the system does the rest (using Windows 7).
Cons:
-- Has a lot of problem focusing in low light situations, where AF just hunts constantly by scanning the entire focusing range and then still misses. It's not terribly low light either, about your average bedroom lighting, or 2x60w bulbs in a 250 square feet area. The scanning is quite annoying as the subject just goes really out of focus for 3 seconds, and it is activated whenever the subject moves. Most of the time my face is just not in focus: it tends to focus on the background rather than the foreground (a very unusual behavior as most other AF systems would hunt for foreground objects), unless the subject covers the entire field and/or is high contrast (such as texts on documents). I made sure that each out-of-focus is valid as I could make it sharper with manual focus, or the only way I could correct this glaring problem. Alas that defeats the purpose of AF. If the subject is well lit (like putting a bulb to my face or sit next to the window), it works okay, but sometimes only after scanning the entire range again.
-- While saturated, it cannot shake a feeling of blurriness, especially when compared to the Webcam Pro 9000, even when it is focused. In general the sharpness really suffers, that even by playing the AF couldn't correct it. It's a low end cam, but why bother with AF if it can't be sharp? Wouldn't it be better off being a pan-focus camera?
-- Shooting video in HD mode is very taxing on the CPU of the computer. While this activity is generally demanding, there must be something inefficient as the framerate from my logitech is much much smoother and higher doing the same 720p video. On the Livecam I could barely get 10fps (not to mention constant focus problems). It's an older laptop though, so most newer desktop may not have this problem.
It's a very decent webcam especially considering the price--has AF and decent low light/audio performance. However I think MS really needs to work on the AF problem, probably correctable by software (yes, I did update to the latest driver and software and couldn't improve it). I hope future updates fix this. However, as it is now, if your computer is in an area without consistent bright light, the AF simply won't be reliable.
This is a major problem be it in Skype calls, shooting video, or anything else you want to do with it. It is very damaging to the practical purposes of this camera. While the focus problem may not be noticeable in some situations (it doesn't have skype HD, and regular skype video's quality is so low you probably won't notice it being somewhat out of focus), the intermittent focus scanning action will put it right in your face. As it stands, no-focus is almost better than this iffy AF. The flaw desperately needs to be addressed before this camera can be taken seriously.
Brian Baker
Very Nifty!
I really like this camera. You can play my review as recorded on the unit itself.
A couple of other things I didn't mention. It has a built-in microphone, and records very good sound quality, as you'll hear if you play the video.
There's quite a bit of included software, including some that allows you to perform basic video editing on your footage.
You can also download directly to YouTube, Twitter, and other sites and apps.
Download and installation was flawless, and I run Win 7 64-bit (I noticed in some reviews that others running that OS seemed to have problems; I didn't).
All in all, 5 stars.
Terrance
Superb Color and Clarity, Poor Auto Focus Behavior
Simply put, the picture quality of the LifeCam HD-5000 is amazing, and despite losing out in terms of absolute resolution (720p is only ~0.9 MP) to some of the other webcams on the market, the HD-5000's sharp focus, low noise, excellent low-light performance, and life-like color produced superior results. Frankly, it is better than my older Logitech QuickCam for Notebooks Pro, a newish Rosewill true 1.3MP webcam, and the several built-in webcams I've used over the years. The built-in forward-facing microphone works as expected, and the stand is quite innovative and worked well stand-alone and hanging on my laptop's monitor.
Despite producing quality video and stills, however, the HD-5000 is far from perfect. Firstly, the auto focus implementation is TERRIBLE. Not only is it SLOW to focus (up to 4 seconds), but it is also triggered very easily. Second, the lack of hardware acceleration makes for high CPU usage. Simply looking at myself at 720p consumed 30-40% of my laptop's CPU and recording 720p video ate up 70-80%. (I am running 32-bit Windows XP with 4GB RAM with a Pentium Dual Core T4300 @ 2.1 GHz - 800MHz FSB, 1 MB L2) To add insult to injury, the 720p video was captured at only 15 FPS, which is only half of the advertised "true HD-quality video at up to 30 fps."
The LifeCam software is pretty basic, but has a few fun features. Besides allowing you to set the capture resolution for photos and videos, the software lets you perform basic transformations such as making your head square, making your eyes extra large, etc. You can also overlay various objects such as big hair, a cowboy hat, etc. It is worth noting that the HD-5000 didn't work out of the box with SkypeHD, but it did work with regular skype, and internet video-chat.
As it stands, I am a bit torn about the HD-5000. I am absolutely delighted with the picture quality and the fact that auto focus is available at this price point, but I am also disappointed by the auto focus implementation and high CPU usage. I like the new widescreen format, but be aware that 16:9 isn't universally supported yet. Some software and websites still assume your webcam is the traditional 4:3 ratio and may distort the output. I'm glad that the HD-5000's firmware is updatable, so perhaps some improvements can be made down the road.
