j5create 360 Degree All Around Meeting Webcam – 1080P HD Video Conference Camera with High Fidelity Microphone, USB-C | for Video Conferencing, Online Classes

Great — I have used the Meeting Owl and this probably doesn’t have quite the video quality but its no slouch either. Good white balance. I tried this thing outside to test the video quality because it was dark in my house, and apparently the noise canceling technology was muting me in certain places around the 360 degree circle. I hooked up my Blue Yeti mic and this too was canceling some audio but remains an option if ever I run into the situation where there is so much background noise in the surroundings that it will not record well. But indoors the audio is great! It seems to have a pattern of pickup of the microphone that is elongated, perfect for a meeting table. But even the weaker axis of the mic you can be heard 15 feet away if you speak up. Arrange your conference table with the louder people at the ends of the table and face the camera with the mic toward the long ends of the table. (Microphone seems to pick up better at the sides than directly facing it) As far as how it compares to the Meeting Owl (which costs 10X as much!) for features, it does not have a speaker. Big deal bring your own speaker along and plug it into your laptop! The cord is 10′ long so your laptop can be out of the way BTW. And this camera does not have a feature that automatically locates and “zooms” in to the person speaking around the table. You can however use the locator bar on top — just tap it to get the camera to crop to that person you “aim” it to, and the response is instantaneous (whereas the Meeting Owl takes a few seconds to travel over to the person speaking). A feature that is QUITE awesome that the Meeting Owl does not have is the ability to choose your mode. You can actually use this as a regular old webcam and choose between a 90 and a 120 degree angle of view. Love this.Overall I am quite pleased with this thing. I am recommending it to our staff as we are all now involved in hybrid meetings of in-person and overseas participants. Without this device we won’t be keeping the overseas people involved…people have zoom fatigue and they are not going to put up with no decent video and poor sound quality. I can see how the feature with the Meeting Owl of not needing a computer being rather appealing but the 10 foot cord that comes with this addresses that if you don’t want your laptop on the table.I mounted this on a tripod. there is a metal tripod mount machined out of chromed steel! Pretty impressive. With that feature you could use this in a circle of chairs. I expect this is going to be very useful for face to face meetings where you want it more personal / less formal to get discussion rolling etc.I hope this review helps. This camera might not give quite the impression a Meeting Owl will if you are doing a business proposal for a job with lots of capitol at stake. But its more than adequate for adding an in person touch to zoom meetings.ADDED COMMENT 5/10/2021 this camera is probably best in a brightly lit small to midsized room with people at a 2-4 foot distance from the camera, if you want faces to be a decent recognizable size on the Zoom app. At 6 feet away individuals get to be rather smaller. Mic pickup is decent I think no matter

It’s super easy to use, 100% plug & play. The 360 view is great to show everyone around vs difficult of finding a good mounting point with a typical webcam (and everyone looks tiny). It’s actually 270 degree view with some 45 degree blind spot from each side of the axis. The mic was pleasantly surprisingly good.

We needed to broadcast church classes and small group meetings using Zoom. This camera has been the best solution! We previously used a webcam that ironically cost more than this camera, but the field of view was so narrow and the audio wasn’t that great. The j5create 360 camera is awesome. I actually prefer it to the Polycom systems we use at work. For a small room you can easily adjust he camera field of view. Its great to put it in the middle of a group and be able to see everyone. The long cable makes it simple to put the camera where it needs to be and keep the connected computer off to the side. The audio quality matches the great video options.If you need a simple, professional camera for your virtual group meetings, this camera deserves a close look.

Reviews that complain about grainy image quality fail to take into account that the field of view shown by this camera is six times wider than most webcams; it’s still 1080p, but that extra 300 degrees has to come from somewhere. That said, the picture quality is actually quite impressive, and distortion relatively minimal; if you’re looking to include multiple participants from one location in a zoom meeting, or keep an eye on an entire room with a single video feed, this is an excellent solution that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

This product is amazing for the price point. The next level Competitor is the Owl360 at close to $1000. The camera quality is much superior than its competitors.