Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra -Wide Angle Viewing... Better clean that room up!-

Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra:

Technologically sound. Wide shot area. Gives me the impression of an old time camera as far as cosmetics go. Mid-range pricing. Sharp, surprisingly clear images. Features and clarity makes the price tag of $70.00 more reasonable.

What I Think and What It Does:

Having a wide-angel lens, in my opinion, makes the Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra the cam of choice. You would normally get a 58 degree view area with a standard webcam. With the Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra, you have a digital video capture area of 78 degrees. Awesome! That's why I said better clean up that room in the title. It's going to capture stuff that most webcams will not.

This webcam captures 640x480 digital video, and can also take snapshots up to 1280x960 ( 1.3 MP ) pixels in size. It has a high definition CCD sensor and that is why you get such clear images and sounds.

Sounds? Clearer voice output also make this webcam more appealing to many. With this cam, Creative Labs has managed to increase audio clarity. They've included a handsfree headset with the cam to help eliminate background noise as well. I noticed voices being much more audible with this cam. Less fading.

The Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra, works well with most all online messengers such as AIM, Yahoo!, Windows Messenger, and MSN messenger. I really don't know about ICQ. I haven't used this feature but my niece has and is quite pleased with it. She uses AIM and says she has had minimal problems. By minimal, I assume she is referring to image clarity or disconnection issues.

Okay, you know how most digital images from webcams seem to be in slow motion and jagged? There is still evidence of the same with this webcam but not nearly as much. This one has technology called Smart Face Tracking with up to 4 times digital zoom. The camera can pan and zoom to keep up to speed with you movement thus making images appear more real so to speak. Frame rate at up to 30 frames per second. Not too choppy and very little blur. I've really been impressed with this cam.

Install:

Easy enough. I installed the cam for my niece on her computer. Hers processes much slower than mine does and it only took about 7 or 8 minutes to install. Should have been much less, by a couple minutes and would have on my computer but considering the mood swings her computer has, it really did quite well. It has a 6 foot USB cable included.

We attached the webcam to her monitor. The cam has a three way base and can easily connect to most monitors or flat surfaces, even a flat panel or laptop.

Warranty:

The Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra has a 1 year limited warranty from the store she purchased it from. Beyond that, I am not aware of any other warranties.

Out of the Box:

Included in my niece's Creative Labs WebCam NX Ultra purchase was the webcam, 6 foot USB cable, handfree headset, instructions, warranty card, installation CD which also had this free software included: Creative PC Cam Center, ArcSoft PhotoImpression, ArcSoft Greeting Card Creator, ArcSoft VideoImpression, and ArcSoft Multimedia Email. Pretty nice inclusions but nothing to write home to mama about.

Specs and System Requirements:

USB 1.1 port and CD-ROM drive. Intel Pentium II or AMD Athlon processor running at 266MHz. Windows 98, 98SE, Me, 2000 or XP. 64MB RAM. At least 500MB free hard disk space to install the software, Display adapter capable of 16-bit color at 800x600, and Sound Blaster or other Windows compatible sound card. I don't suppose the sound card would be a necessity unless you are wanting to use the audio part.

Specs- according to Creative:
640x480 CCD Sensor for still image capture up to 1280x960*
Snapshot button and Manual Focus Lens
Supports video capture at up to 640x480
Wide field of view (78°) compared to other webcams