Solid, Tinker-Friendly Webcam with Quality Components
Bear with me, this was a fun journey.
The TOALLIN 2K webcam delivers a good field of view with crisp colors in well-lit conditions. Like most webcams, it gets grainy in low light. Side-by-side with my Razer Kiyo, the Kiyo’s image looked flatter and more neutral, while the TOALLIN’s higher contrast gave a warmer feel.
Inside, it uses a SONIX chipset, a nice find at this price point. I did a full teardown and reassembly (which was surprisingly easy, a huge pro in my book). I also disconnected the built-in mic because I use my own microphone, and I like avoiding Windows’ habit of randomly switching audio inputs on me (still detects microphone, but if my peak meter is flat I know Window is at it again).
It supports Windows Hello facial recognition via a grayscale IR camera, though I don’t use it since I primarily run older Windows versions and Linux. Still, it’s fun to tinker with, you can easily access the IR feed in Linux (e.g., /dev/video2) and even whip up a Python script to recognize your face and launch apps when you sit down.
Overall, this is a reasonably priced, well-built webcam with quality internals and plug-and-play ease. Comes with a USB-C to USB-A cable, plus a USB-C adapter for USB-C to USB-C setups.
TL;DR: Good image, quality chips, easy to work on, fun for tinkerers, and works right out of the box.
M
micah
★★★★★
Great image. Easy setup. Versatile mounting options.
The image is very sharp and has great colours. I plugged it up and it was running immediately, so I found it easy to install and easy to use. (Win 10 OS)
I really like the mounting option. It can stand freely, clip onto a monitor, or mount to a 1/4-20 camera mount, which is my usually go-to.
It does what it's supposed to do and does it well.
O
Ovaltine Jenkins
★★★★★
I would give it only 3 stars if it wasn't for the price
In terms of physical design, it's a webcam, with an extra IR camera for facial recognition for Windows Hello. It's relatively compact compared to some of the other IR cameras out there, although unless if your displays have really, really thin bezels, it doesn't really matter much in terms of the size. There is a shutter that covers the normal camera, but not the IR camera.
The issues I've run into are mostly focus-related. This camera for some reason can't focus properly and this was very apparent even during the setup to use facial recognition for login, you can see this camera's autofocus struggling. This means about 70% of the time I'm using this camera (compared to some of the other IR cameras I've used) it can't login on the first try. It's also not as fast of an IR camera as other options out there.
So the camera does work, but for me the results are very inconsistent. The price kind of saves this camera though, at the time of this review it's $40. This is pretty price competitive compared to some other options (keep in mind though this isn't including any coupons), however if there's something out there that's cheaper than this, there really isn't any point in this webcam when, at least for me, I can't login automatically because the webcam fails to recognize my face.
