A geat product!

You should first know about me and how I use a camera. I use it for video chat with parents and children. I thought, when I bought this camera, that I would "vlog" - record a video log of my ever-so-interesting life and maybe post those vlogs to YouTube or Veoh or MySpace.

It turns out that my life is not all that interesting, so the camera is used probably for what most people would use it for - to chat live with friends and loved ones and *maybe* record the odd video here or there.

This is a pretty high-end device and does far more than I know it can do. It can "animate" you, turn you into a cartoon character, track your face, and much, much more. As such, it is better suited to serious buyers who will take full advantage of all the features it has. It is, frankly, too much for me.

I have bought 3 cameras in my life. The first was years and years ago when I started to teach online and wanted to hold my office hours online. That worked well, in a much inferior product from the same company but I never had a student use that feature.

Years later, I now have this camera and another one I bought for $5 in China. Comparing the two, for what I do with the camera, there's almost no difference.

My 80 year old mother uses the $5 one that I hooked up for her to chat with grandchildren via Skupe. It can be choppy where the Logitech is not. That being said, some of the choppiness comes from the fact that internet connections are not fast enough to keep up. The $5 one, when faced with a reliable and fast internet connection, remains choppy. The logitech does not.

The quality of the video is superb. What gives it that quality is what is called fps, or frames per second. The logitech takes video at a rate much, much higher than the $5 one so when a video is live over fast internet, it is tremendous. If you are a serious video fiend, this is a good choice but the second you buy it, there will be another camera that will deliver even more fps. The most basic camera sold in the US right now has adequate fps for most of us.

If you record a video, there isn't much difference between the two cameras. The $5 one does an adequate job and the logitech looks about the same.

This particular logitech hangs on your (thin) monitor or on your laptop. It's very nice and easy to use. You have to position it, just like the $5 one but the $5 one will hang like the logitech or it will sit on its own tripod.

A superior feature, and now mostly standard, is face-tracking. The camera will follow your face and focus on it, no matter where you move. The $5 one does not, so some video goes in and out of focus.

Another nifty feature is the "reverse image". I like that. It helps you track your moves rather than try to do that as if you were in a mirror. That makes it easy to show things, but it is still a mirror so if you show anything with words, it comes out backwards if you use that feature.

This camera adds light, inasmuch as it can, when needed. That is very helpful. The camera is so smart that it can gauge the quality of the video and continuously try to improve it.

Another great feature is the built-in microphone. It is a good if not great feature. You just talk and it handles noise reduction to some extent and the sound is good to great.

The $5 one is not smart and does not add light, reduce noise, and does not have a built in microphone.

I'm torn. For what I do, the $5 camera does just fine. If you are doing more than I do, you might prefer the logitech, which is clearly a superior product.

Even then, I wonder if you even need to consider a camera at this point. Most of the newer pc's, macs, and laptops have built-in cameras. Consider that carefully. If your computer needs a camera, how long will it be before you buy a new computer? If your answer is a year, get a cheapie camera. If your answer is several years, maybe a good camera is worth it, provided it can work with you "ancient" (3 years ago) system.

Another consideration, if you are not doing live video, is whether your video camera is enough. You probably can post your (video) camera's video without much trouble at possibly higher quality than a computer camera.

I have friends who have sent me video via email that they took with their digital cameras.

Technology is merging fast! Consider what you want to do before spending too much on technology you might not ever use.