Short version

Can anyone recommend a webcam that you have personal experience with that is good for MS teams meetings on a Windows computer working at home, sitting on a 25" monitor across a fairly wide desk? Field of view ideally narrower than average, 60 to 70 degrees, up to 80 ok.

Long version

I've been working mostly remotely for a few years, doing online meetings every day. I've been using a Logitech C270 webcam, an old design released in 2010, which I purchased about that time. It's ok, 720p, one microphone. It has a 60 degree field of view, so I'm fairly large in the frame, but it's ok. It's getting old and it's not as reliable as it used to be.

I decided it was time for an upgrade. I purchased a Logitech Brio 500 1080p. Nice webcam, better microphones, better white balance, copes with a bright background better, better everything, more reliable, but with one significant problem for the way I use it. The detail from the webcam is really poor - significantly worse than the old 720p webcam. It's most noticeable in meetings with one other person. This seems to be because it has a super wide 90 degree field of view, and I sit a bit more than one meter from the webcam. Because of that it effectively does digital cropping to make me larger in the frame, throwing away a significant number of the pixels. I've returned it.

Can anyone recommend a webcam that's good for MS Teams meeting that has a narrower field of view? Based on some experiments I think a 60 - 70 degree field of view would be pretty good, up to 80 would probably be ok - 78 looks to be common.

Summary:

• Webcam for teams on Windows
• Narrow field of view, ideally 60 - 70 degrees, up to 80 probably ok
• Decent microphone quality
• Sits on a standard monitor ok (not a laptop)
• I doubt this exists at a reasonable price, but optical zoom if reasonably priced could be good

I've looked at a few "best webcam" articles but there's so many options personal experience can be best.

Chat GPT helpfully provided me with a list of webcams fields of view, but it's limited to what was available in September 2021. Bing couldn't help.