How BAD Are CHEAP Webcams, Mics, and Capture Cards.. (vs Elgato and Logitech)

one of the most common questions i get asked on stream is what is the cheapest inserts equipment piece here uh you would recommend and i do have my standard answers but a lot of people sometimes are disappointed because they expect me to give like super ultra cheap recommendations and just sometimes sometimes that's not the best bang for your buck sometimes the reason those are so cheap is because they're really cheap is that redundant i think that's the definition of redundant but you get what i'm saying right oftentimes the best bang for your buck is not the cheapest you go a tiny bit more expensive and you get five times the device so today we're gonna see exactly what the difference between my favorite budget devices versus literally the cheapest thing i could buy by the way huge thank you to the sponsor of today's video asus and their 20 series graphics cards powered by nvidia geforce rtx asus does something really interesting in their manufacturing process known as auto extreme technology which is the industry's first fully automated production process where most gpus are partially manufactured by hand asus are 100 automated meaning no human error more precision and the possibility of testing with tighter tolerances for things like component placement essentially it means your pc is more reliable nvidia geforce rtx cards are powered by nvidia touring the world's most advanced gpu architecture for gamers experience today's biggest games such as minecraft rtx like never before with the visual fidelity of real-time ray tracing and the ultimate performance of ai-powered dlss 2.0 for more information on getting higher precision and rtx technologies in your next gaming experience make sure you check out the link in the description below so over here on the recommended budget side let's pull these out for the microphone we've got the elgato wave 1 usb microphone there are a lot of good usb microphones out there nowadays and a lot of them sound very similar what usb mics generally lack is control and that's why this is the only usb microphone generally i recommend because it comes with the wavelink software which is essentially a go xlr built into your usb microphone so you have a ton of control you can control it right from your stream deck or from your phone solid microphone i want to say it's 129. sam if i'm wrong put a different price on there for the webcam we're gonna go with the trusty logitech c920 normally 50 when we're not under quarantine and price gougers are doing the work of satan and ripping you guys off i wonder if satan's gonna get this video flagged so hopefully pretty soon here price gouging will slowly come to an end or maybe they'll just all choke on their own spit or something and the c920 will be back to its 50 per usual purchase and if you're on a two pc setup or you're streaming console of course we have a capture card this is the hd60s a solid 1080 60 usb type-c capture card now on the cheapo side oh and uh elgato capture card is i want to say 179 so for this set of three things i paid 99 total let's go in the same order let's start with a microphone i haven't opened these yet oh i need to slice these things up where's my slicey boy i lost my box cutter i don't know what happened to it i i found him i've been looking for this thing for days i need like a good like if i'm gonna do unboxings like this i feel like i need like a nice knife like one of those cool ones but i just can't justify buying one any knife makers out there that want to be featured on every one of my unboxings uh po box on my twitch channel actually okay starting with the microphone the packaging actually isn't that bad so far that's the trick it came with the usb 2.0 hub i didn't even order this this just came with the microphone it's like they expect people who buy this microphone to be streaming off a laptop okay we've got our microphone mount we've got our usb cable looks like it's micro usb we've got a little tripod if we feel like using that and don't have a microphone arm and then of course it is snug we got our microphone this is smaller than i thought it would be i specifically picked this one because it had a headphone jack built into it usb microphones that don't have a headphone jack are a huge struggle for me i really like being able to hear the the microphone back in my headset as a music artist that was vital and i've gotten so used to that i can't go back got a volume knob that just spins and spins it's very lightweight but i mean it's got a nice metal mesh here i mean we'll see definitely cheap feeling but your audience isn't gonna feel it your audience is gonna see it and hear it and i think it looks fine especially if you throw some kind of pop filter in front of this thing i don't think it's the worst you'll find all right webcam these were all generally about 30 to 35 each i've been considering by the way because people are having the hardest time finding uh the logitech c920 and they ask me what webcam they should get and i i mean there are there were 20 of these cheapo webcams and i don't know which one's good so i've been considering doing a video where i order like 10 of these things and just put them all up next to each other and find out which one is the best 30 webcam you should buy so i mean if you want to see that video comment down below if enough people want to see it i will buy 10 of these and we will see this is interesting it is very plastic this feels like a child's toy by the way it does not feel like a piece of tech it's got this weird little screw-on thing with with a some kind of bug arm that you screw into it it's flexible i assume oh you bend like this and that's how you set it on top of your monitor interesting that's kind of clever actually you know this thing is this is the most plasticky feeling thing i've ever felt but if it looks good that's all that matters i'm not expecting it to look good i'm expecting that to be the biggest letdown uh and lastly capture card this thing has gotten pretty rave reviews on the internet lately i want to say this is like 25 to 30 bucks this is tiny little guy it is so hard to find a cam link nowadays that this came out and there's a little usb 2 capture card it only does 1080 30 however if it's for your camera that's not a huge problem yes 1080 60 is nice but 1080 30 will do just fine this is actually kind of nice it's in a metal housing and that's all there is to it this is a neat little guy i'm excited to try it i also have one more capture card that also has output and that way again if you're using like a xbox or a pc or something and you want to use the pass-through to go out to your monitor uh this i think it's the same company makes one of these but it's got the pass-through on it so we'll be trying both of those all right let me line these up yeah if we're gonna test this guy let's put it up against a real equivalent let me grab a cam link this makes a little bit more sense and this guy is 129 i think so that's what 50 dollars cheaper so that brings us down to a total of the budget stuff i recommend down to 310 into the 360. and these guys i'm gonna stand them up nice like that okay let's get the test testing these guys uh yeah welcome back it's actually been about a week week and a half since i filmed the unboxing and the reason for that is kind of relevant uh the first thing i did was open the microphone and plug it in and i couldn't get it to turn on which i feel like is relevant to this review i tried every different usb port try different cables wouldn't turn on and now as i ordered a replacement i plug in the old one and now it works so i don't know if it was user error or if it's just a shoddy mic the other mic i plugged in worked just fine i just couldn't get this one to work at the time so we're gonna use the new mic just in case there's something wrong with this one i don't know maybe keep that in mind if you're buying a 30 mic maybe it won't turn on some days we've got a wave is plugged in picking up in the software i wonder if i wonder if i can add this other microphone oh both mics going into the software cool uh first glance both of these have very similar functionalities they both have headphone jacks they both have a single knob on the front that is the headphone volume knob and they both have a push functionality to mute although this one's this one wasn't doing it so this one should have a push to mute functionality uh but it does not weird i mean the the quality difference between the two is pretty obvious this is like the most plasticky lightweight thing i've ever felt this is elgato's as much as i'm not crazy about the aesthetics of this thing the nice chunky high quality microphone let's see how they sound obviously that's the most important thing here okay so let's do it with them on the desk since they both come with desk stands as default i'm gonna put them the same distance away so what you're hearing right now is the cheapo mic uh a pretty solid distance more farther away than i would recommend any streamer actually use just because it's so close to your keyboard and mouse that you know it's gonna pick up everything but this is what it comes with in the box so we got the cheapo mic right here now we have the elgato wave mic you all got a wave one i can't actually hear the difference right now i'm gonna have to go watch this and listen to it in a little bit but this is the elgato wave one back to the cheapo mic i don't remember what it's called it is called the professional usb condenser mic cool professional and the elgato wave mic foot foot and a half away from me here is it loud and here is it soft here is the cheapo mic right up close to my mouth there's a huge difference in uh in gain there just just signal level is a lot louder i'm interested to see how this sounds and just for the obvious sake of the experiment that's me clicking on the keyboard with this right in front of my mouth and then with the wave mic looks like it's picking up a lot more all right let's take a listen all right here we have the cheaper mic uh kind of far away from you're hearing this right you're hearing what i'm hearing is i wonder if that's just like the recording or if that's the actual microphone we'll know when we go to the elgato mic and here we have the elgato wave mic again kind of far away from me let's go back and forth no again the cheapo mic this is about hold on just wanted to make sure the box actually said professional does that word mean nothing here is it loud here is it soft oh my gosh and y'all gotta wave my foot foot and a half away from me here is it loud and here is it soft that was oh my gosh so when people ask me in chat what's a usb microphone i recommend under fifty dollars uh i'm gonna say none of them just even like aside from that nasty hum it's just it sounds like the microphone is is enclosed in a plastic case and you can't like get to the capsule the capsule is what actually picks up the audio waves it just sounds weak and muffled it's interesting i mean no absolutely no doubt about it the wave mic sounds a lot better but it doesn't isolate the uh the keyboard and the fan you hear the fan from the pc a lot more and i think that's just a byproduct of the mic itself being a higher quality condenser mic when you pick up more details you're going to pick up a little bit more room so i would highly highly recommend that if you use any condenser mic you get it as close to your mouth as possible because they are designed to pick up everything the only way they're going to isolate from the world around you like keyboard clicks and fans is if they're just awful condenser mics like this one is i i think that concludes the microphone session though let's jump to the next thing let's check out a capture card alright so if we were to take a look at this camera what you're looking at right now is kind of the the standard entry-level mirrorless setup for a streamer who wants to upgrade from a webcam it's a sony a5100 about the cheapest mirrorless crop sensor camera you can find but a good one at that and it's got the stock lens that it comes with on it no aftermarket nice lens this is just ordering the camera plugging it in through a cam link currently and what i'd like to do is compare this to this little hdmi video capture nameless brandless version usb2 is actually one of my biggest concerns so i believe this is only uh 1080 30. it's not 1080 60. like you can tell from the uh from the cam link this is definitely 60 fps so let's go ahead and swap these out i'm still going to plug this into a usb 3 port just to make sure that we're not being hindered by the usb bus bandwidth just just to make sure that the only the only hindrance is going to be the device itself that's not bad oh my gosh it's definitely 30 fps you can tell very quickly sam jump back and forth or put them side to side with this hand movement i did with the other one as well i mean in terms of just like right out of the box quality we're talking i think this is like a 25 capture card let's go back to the cam like i want to see if i notice a difference in color at all they're close enough where i would need to see them side by side it looks like there might be a little bit more uh dynamic presence on this we're getting a little bit higher highs a little bit lower lows the other ones seem to maybe a tiny bit washed out but i'm wondering if it was just a little bit of a bias knowing i was plugging in a cam link right now that made me think it was um yeah i'm actually gonna go and take a look at the recording right now all right so we got the cam link going on here it's definitely coming through as 1080p i didn't have to resize the source at all however there is a lot more detail in the colors and like i'm just specifically right now i'm looking at my eyes things look just a little bit it almost looks like the lens is a tiny bit dirty back to the cam like yeah just the crispness of my face in the cam like yeah here we go here we go the old one or the the cheapo one there is a notable difference however important thing to keep in mind this is a direct recording uh six thousand kilobits per second x264 medium straight onto my desktop this isn't going to twitch being transcoded through twitch when it comes to to actually streaming not only going through the whole process of twitch but also usually your cameras and a lot smaller little section i don't think the color and the clarity is a huge deal breaker for me that wouldn't bother me unless i had a 3 000 camera like the one i stream with but if you're looking to get a nice camera and you want to save on the capture card really the only thing you're missing here that's noticeable is 60 fps and that is a noticeable difference but if that doesn't matter to you i mean we're talking you know 90 off that's pretty cool all right last one let's grab those webcams we have our two webcams set up here the logitech c920 which is unfortunately difficult to find at a normal price it used to go for about 50 but now during the pandemic it's like 150 200 because people are price gouging but important to know this was not originally a 50 webcam this is a 100 webcam that's been around for so long and it's been so mass produced that they're able to bring the price down to 50 um so it is more expensive than than what we're going for it's just old the cheap webcam however is 25.99 so uh hopefully after price gouging ends when we when we're able to work through this pandemic it'll be about half the price so this is probably the the smallest in terms of price difference twenty six dollars to fifty dollars uh i'm hoping that this has the least the least noticeable difference but the cam link so far the the capture card has actually been the most surprising so if we look right now you can kind of see the microphone in the shot it is what it is this is the logitech c920 no color correction has been added nothing to it it's just the webcam with two lights on me right got a rear light back here kind of edge lighting me and then this ring light right here that's a little bit off to the side so we get a little contour let's i haven't looked at this yet let's look at the cheapo webcam oh no oh no what did it do to my face oh my gosh how's the it's even like skipping frames every once in a while we got completely washed out lights right there uh a weird purple hue let me just see just for fun if i can get rid of that crazy purple hue in obs color correction [Laughter] i don't think it's happening oh man let's go back to the c920 oh that makes this thing look like a dslr we have like zero dark probably doesn't get down below like 20 black just look at the difference in the blacks here versus here i mean it's nice that you get that extra detail i guess but i mean that's just a part of dynamic range that is really dark back there i would have liked to see somewhere in the middle although i guess i could technically just lower the darks in color correction but uh yeah you have like no dynamic range except you're completely washed out here yet the washed out area doesn't look white it looks like yellow oh man all right cool i think that about sums it up uh the microphone and the webcam were just absolutely terrible would not recommend anything below my budget solution of a c920 and a elgato wave mic this is definitely my go-to usb mic when people ask just because of the software that goes along with it you got a full solution of both high quality and control you got neither of those with a cheap one um and of course a logitech c920 when you can find one at a normal price but i was highly impressed with the capture card that is probably out of all these i shouldn't say probably that is definitely the only thing i would recommend uh potentially to skimp on keep in mind you will have zero support with these if something goes wrong you gotta buy a new one maybe return it to amazon if you got it it's within 30 days but uh i'm gonna get a lot of people saying don't buy a usb device from china they're just gonna take all your stuff and you know what it might be true that is the risk you take with a 26 capture card if you have any questions about anything you think i missed again feel free to jump into my twitch stream i stream every monday wednesday saturday link in the description below or if you want to talk with other people about their cheap webcams they picked up feel free to jump in the discord we have like almost 90 000 members in the discord all streamers all looking to collaborate get to know each other share ideas and equipment experiences link to that in the description as well and as always happy streaming

Channel: Alpha Gaming

Views: 451,585

Keywords: Alpha Gaming, Stream Doctor, OBS, Tips, Streaming, Harris Heller, Alpha, Gaming, Live, Overlay, Design, Stream, Twitch, Doctor, How, To, How To, Help, Mixer, Youtube, Broadcast, Alerts, Streamlabs, youtuber, growth, stream, streamelements, harris, heller, money, monetize, income, full-time, full time, career, beginner, beginners, setup, widget, graphics, audio, review, camera, mic, microphone, pc, lights, lighting, webcam, usb, c920, logitech, elgato, Elgato gaming, wave, wave 1, wave 3, cheap, affordable, inexpensive, starting

Id: KkDi-WTFIwE

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020