Webcam Review: Aukey FHD Wide Angle Webcam

I purchased the Aukey FHD Webcam based on a recommendation by someone on an online streaming teacher's group; and after reading reviews, it looked promising. I got mine at a steal of a price ($30) and super quick delivery and I was so excited to try it. As of this writing it is shipping overnight to my area for even cheaper, only $24. However, I do not recommend this camera.

I got it set up easily--plug n' play as expected--and while the wide angle was excellent and not too fish-eye, the colors were a little off (orangey) and the whites blew out. When I say blew out, I mean just the light from my monitor was making me a complete ghost. I had to turn off all the lights in the room sit 4 feet back from my computer to stop it from making me look like a glowing, featureless figure.  Any natural light in the room made it even more terrible. Worse yet, I was getting wavy lines on my video, we believe because the framerate is matching the same as my LED smart bulbs.  That I could tweak, with different lighting, but the color being off and the whites blowing way out in even low lighting, I decided to exchange it in hopes it was just a defective model.

No such luck. I got the replacement in two days (thanks Amazon!), but this one was ALSO blowing out the whites, the color was off in a different direction (a distinct green cast), and the issue with the wavy lines was worse. Rather than keep taking my chances, I am just returning the second one also. If you need to do video in the dark, and don't care about colors being off (and use different light bulbs, I guess!), I guess this would work okay. Here's a screencap of me with the orange-tinted camera. I have my lights set to as low as they could go and am sitting back from my computer screen, but you can see the orange (for sure), as well as how bright the left side of my face toward my monitors is. Any more light than this and I was washing out. I mean, I KNOW I am a super pale white chick, but still!

Based on the near-identical form factor to the C920's, these may very well be chips and lenses that just didn't pass Q&A with Logitech, being resold as a random Chinese brand. Some people are getting lucky, and the ways they are defective don't effect the video quality enough to be an issue. In my case, both ones I tried were complete deal breakers. Luckily the return policy is excellent, so I guess it won't hurt for you to try, and you might get lucky as some reviewers on Amazon seem to have been. But burned twice was enough for me. A definite DO NOT BUY for me.