Lori Grunin / CNET
The $ 200 (£ 200) Kiyo Pro is Razer’s second chance on a webcam, and the first that looks like it’s worth recommending. The original Kiyo (which is still available for $ 135) is clunky with OK quality and a built-in light ring that seemed like a good idea at the time; it’s not really bright enough to make a difference in the types of low light you need, so it looks more like a trick. The Pro dispenses with light and awkward mounting, replacing them with a wider lens and an elegant and more flexible mounting design. It also incorporates a commercial Sony full HD 60 frames per second (PDF) sensor, designed for surveillance cameras and other low-light use cases, to provide enhanced image quality in sub-optimal lighting. That is the lighting of almost everyone.
As you may have noticed, Razer is expanding beyond gaming to more products suitable for working at home, With your new line of wireless accessories and the Razer Book 13 lightweight laptop. Kiyo Pro is designed to meet the needs of game streamers – the traditional target of Razer – as well as Zoombies. This puts you in direct competition with the market leader Logitech.
For streamers, the camera offers uncompressed 1080p 60 fps video. For speakers, the increased headroom that the frame rate requires opens the door to what Razer calls “HDR”, but simply expands the tonal range to better preserve the appearance of faces. (Same most dynamic range instead of high dynamic range.) The higher frame rate and headroom are courtesy of USB-C, which has more bandwidth than the USB-A connections used by most webcams. And for the most part, the video quality looks better than that of the original Kiyo, notably with regard to sharpness and automatic exposure.
To compensate for wide-angle distortion in Wide mode, Razer offers a Linear mode option. It is essentially wide-angle, but corrects the curvature on the sides of the frame (which also requires some cutting at the edges). There is also a Medium mode, which provides cropping without correction.
But I think my favorite part of Kiyo Pro is the redesign. On the one hand, dropping the light ring makes the camera a lot cleaner, and the detachable USB-C cable is more convenient than the ordinary connected cable. And it makes it easy to know that you are completely offline. (The camera indicates that it is turned on with a tiny light in the front.)
Lori Grunin / CNET
The assembly has also been completely overhauled. It is less clumsy, but it allows more ways to position the camera, even higher. It also accommodates perching on top of wider surfaces; in other words, it now fits the monitor and the top of the support for game monitors and professionally designed monitors with thicker support. Without further forcing you to the side. The assembly is also reduced to a much smaller size. And the camera comes out of the assembly with a single thumbscrew.
Still, the camera is not as good as you think. To deal with difficult lighting conditions, such as bright or side lighting, it basically increases the gain on your face, completely turning off the brightest lights. Yes, your face is out of the shadow, but people on the other side are now looking at large white patches behind or beside your beautiful face.
And while auto white balance optimizes for skin tones, it’s a little cool. (This is a cultural preference, however. Americans tend to like warmer skin tones.) Less subjectively, this detracts from the white balance of the rest of the video. For example, my dark purple shirt looks like royal blue, something I haven’t seen since the launch of the first digital cameras. It is not something that will bother everyone, but it jumps at me.
Lori Grunin / CNET
The problems are compounded by the terrible Windows 10, horrible webcam settings interface, mainly as it imposes exclusive access to the camera, combined with the somewhat poorly planned software from Razer. To get better quality than other cameras in very low light, you should put Kiyo Pro in its HDR mode, which you can only do in Razer’s Synapse software – that and Wide / Medium / Linear modes are the only settings that require Synapse.
Windows prevents many applications from displaying video simultaneously by changing these options in Synapse. So, for example, you have to exit your application, like Zoom, change these settings in Synapse and restart it. But it doesn’t necessarily look the same on Zoom, so if you don’t like it, you’ll have to exit again, change it back and restart.
Still, Windows often seems to think that something in the system is still using the camera, despite all the evidence to the contrary, nothing you can use it. The only way I found to fix this is to disconnect and reconnect it. That’s where the removable USB-C cable comes in handy.
The built-in microphone works well: it is good for web conferencing, and streamers should use a dedicated microphone anyway.
In many ways, Kiyo Pro is a major improvement over Kiyo for both streaming and work, and is definitely an improvement over 99% of the integrated webcams you’re stuck with on a laptop; simply raising the typical 720p laptop webcam will increase your image significantly.