Lumina webcam
MSRP $199.00
“The Lumina webcam is a classy and compact webcam with good 4K image top quality.”
Professionals
- Good design and shade decisions
- Small and lightweight
- Crisp, well-balanced image top quality
- Simple setup
Cons
- Accompanying app nonetheless in beta
- Important Mac apps aren’t completely appropriate
The Lumina webcam is a peculiar and stylishly designed webcam with AI-powered choices supposed to hold a DSLR experience to the home or office.
Whereas many built-in laptop internet cameras are infamous for being grainy and darkish, the Lumina excels in heightening internet camera 4K top quality, even at its most basic settings.
At $250 (at current $200), it’s pretty expensive, and quite a lot of the bonus choices actually really feel half-baked. Nevertheless this little webcam merely would possibly want the polish and movie top quality to make up for it.
Design
Amazon and completely different on-line retailers are flooded with webcams, nevertheless plenty of them look pretty comparable. Cumbersome and ugly are the key.
Nevertheless the Lumina webcam breaks the mold. This compact and pleasant gadget would pair utterly with a MacBook or modern House home windows laptop. That’s very true of the rose gold model I reviewed, which really stands out from the same old uninteresting webcams you should purchase. Totally different shade decisions embrace silver, atomic gray, and gold.
The matte finish has merely enough shimmer to it, and the two “Lumina” logos on both facet don’t get in one of the simplest ways. Then there’s the lens, on the left facet, the power lighting, and the audio system on each facet.
The Lumina’s design is complete minimalistic at 3.5 ounces (100 grams) and 22 x 22 x 70 millimeters. It has a compact, curved rectangular type and is product of aerospace-grade aluminum. Its black laptop mount blended in correctly with my all-black rugged laptop. You might merely swap the accent out for a tripod mount, nevertheless that perform won’t be included.
The accompanying wire is USB-C, nevertheless the webcam moreover helps USB 2.0. Efficiency is actually very good when the webcam is plugged straight into your machine. I happen to have a USB hub and wi-fi mouse that take up lots of my restricted I/O space, so there was quite a few plugging in and out required to utilize this gadget. For me, it wasn’t an extreme quantity of of an issue, nevertheless it absolutely’s one factor to remember once you’ll be using your webcam repeatedly. Each be able to have a faithful port in your Lumina or to unplug completely different gadgets to make room in your webcam.
The Lumina comes with a magnetic snap-on privateness cowl that matches the look of the physique and is supposed to be snapped once more to the rear when not in use and snapped forward over the lens to cowl the camera when needed. That makes it fairly unobtrusive, nevertheless I ponder it an adjunct which will nonetheless be misplaced if not appropriately handled.
The Lumina moreover contains a shade card with a QR code on it inside the subject. The thought? You buy a Lumina webcam after which get on an onboarding identify to have an official rep stroll you via tuning and calibrating your camera. That doesn’t sound all that helpful, and it wasn’t at current on the market anyhow.
Choices
The Lumina camera features a 4K 5 facet f/2.0 glass lens with a 24.84mm² sensor and a space of view customizable between 65 ranges and 95 ranges. Among the many choices highlighted by Lumina embrace energetic shade calibration and “adjustable AI cameraman.”
A lot of these choices are accessible inside the Lumina app; nonetheless, as I discussed, the energetic shade calibration was one I was not ready to check out. Often, you’d keep the color card up inside the app’s preview window to have it mechanically alter for components similar to pores and pores and skin tone, lighting, texture, and so forth., to make for a very excellent video shot.
The AI cameraman comprises some configurations in superior settings that administration the AI monitoring perform on the Lumina webcam. The alternatives embrace zoom, tempo, offset x, and offset y. One different attention-grabbing superior perform is curve carry, which really efficiently brings out particulars in extraordinarily textured hair.
There are two camera settings on the market for use, the Lumina Raw and Lumina Plus. The Lumina Plus camera requires a product key to unlock all through software program program arrange, nevertheless as quickly because it’s accessible, you presumably can change between the two cameras, alongside together with your customary laptop camera, at will. The Lumina Plus camera is the full-featured setting, which supplies you entry to image enhancements, zoom, and far more.
The Lumina Raw setting is solely the best way it sounds. The lens itself and no additional. The addition of the Raw setting is good, notably when you’re trying to get a grip on how good this camera really is, open air of any software program program touch-ups and optimizations.
It is also doable to toy spherical with the Lumina app settings privately, using the retractable open preview risk or whereas reside on a video chat inside the app of your choosing.
App compatibility
Whereas the Lumina webcam is helps every House home windows and Mac, there could also be quite a few varied app compatibility between the two cameras and the two working applications.
For example, the report of apps that the Lumina Raw camera is appropriate with embrace Zoom, Google Meet, OBS, Webex by Cisco, Skype, Discord, Microsoft Teams, Slack, FaceTime, QuickTime Participant, {Photograph} Gross sales house, iMovie, Ecamm Keep, mmhmm, Loom, Riverside.fm, WhatsApp, BlueJeans, and StreamYard. That’s a robust amount of apps, and persons are all on the market for every Mac and House home windows.
Sadly, with regards to Lumina Plus, points get way more messy. The Lumina Plus camera for Mac is appropriate with Zoom, Google Meet, OBS, Cisco Webex, Skype, Ecamm Keep, mmhmm, Riverside.fm, BlueJeans, and StreamYard. There are some notable holes proper right here, along with Teams, Discord, Slack, and FaceTime.
Lumina Plus has greater compatibility for House home windows apps, nevertheless as a result of it at current stands, it’s missing far too many very important apps on the Mac facet.
Video top quality
Whatever the nuances between the camera settings and dealing applications, video top quality is the place the Lumina webcam shines. I examined the webcam associated to a Panasonic Toughbook House home windows laptop. No matter being merely HD determination, it has sturdy image top quality for an inside webcam of its kind.
Nonetheless, as quickly as I began testing the Lumina webcam, I really began to see the variations. I notably well-known the halo influence I acquired from my ring mild, which is obvious inside the image on my HD internet camera.
With the Lumina webcam, my screenshots are way more fixed, no matter how I switched the camera from Raw to Plus or tweaked the settings. Beneath, I’ve included an image the place I’ve set the zoom and blur, and one different the place I’ve toyed with the blue and purple lighting, along with the saturation, and there is no indication of my having additional lighting inside the background.
The Lumina Plus camera examined in Zoom.
Very similar to a DSLR camera, the Lumina Raw camera has basically essentially the most elementary settings, whereas the Lumina Plus camera has a few tweaks already added to make for typical very good settings with out calibration. Each method, the Lumina webcam carried out at a extreme diploma of top quality and left me utterly impressed.
The Lumina Raw camera examined in Zoom.
All through my session, I was actually useful some tweaks to hue and saturation, together with the curve carry perform, in lieu of the AI calibration, to highlight my pores and pores and skin tone and hair texture.
With some tweaking, I was ready to get a really clear and complimentary image. Don’t get me mistaken — correct out of the sphere, the Lumina camera appears to be good. Nevertheless with some time, you presumably can really take the imaging to a unique diploma that is personalised correctly in your specific face.
Our take
The Lumina camera goes inside the route of many gadgets, mixing high-tech choices with a clean and stylish design. It’s good that the camera top quality stands out correctly, even sooner than considering the app. Often, such choices can turn into forgotten by these that won’t be fanatics. Nonetheless, benefiting from the complete settings and suppliers Lumina provides with its webcam can solely elevate the individual experience.
Are there any alternate choices?
The Logitech Brio might be an trustworthy varied as a 4K webcam that is extraordinarily regarded and well-reviewed inside the commerce. It is equally priced at $200; nonetheless, it has been accessible available on the market prolonged enough that it is starting to see reductions. The Logitech C920x Skilled HD webcam won’t be 4K, nevertheless is price-friendly at $70 and likewise comes extraordinarily actually useful.
How prolonged will it closing?
The Lumina webcam comes with a 14-day commentary interval, whereby it could be exchanged or returned, and likewise has a one-year assure, beneath which the mannequin will assist with mishaps inside motive. Its aluminum assemble should be sturdy enough to resist a protracted lifetime of quite a lot of years. One plus of its beta standing is that builders are persistently engaged on the software program program and striving for ideas. Clients are impressed to attain out.
Should I buy it?
At $250, the Lumina webcam is actually a splurge. The webcam is at current being marketed at a sale price of $199, nevertheless there is not a telling how prolonged the sale will lengthen.
I say buy it once you’ve obtained a robust perform, similar to fixed streaming, or a distant job that requires you in your absolute A sport the complete time. The video top quality alone is enough to say positive, nevertheless solely as long as the value stays in step with the rivals.
Editors’ Strategies
