HuddleCam Go: Review & Logitech BCC950 Comparison
(March 2018)
The HuddleCamHD Go is a new entry into the growing segment of smaller camera/speakerphone combination devices for small team video conference meetings. It can be ordered from Amazon for $299. With dimensions of 2.8 x 2.8 x 9.25 inches and just one USB 2.0 cable, it is neatly compact, making it very portable and simple to set up. It comes in black or white. The USB cable is 5 feet long, and it comes with a 6 foot USB extension cable.
It has 3 touch sensitive buttons on the front, volume up and down, and mic mute. When the unit is connected, a green LED ring lights its ‘neck’, which turns red when the mic is muted. When the camera is active, a tiny green LED dot displays under the camera lens.
The HuddleCam Go is very travel-friendly, easy to tuck into a bag. Just be careful to protect the camera face. Don’t scratch it from being among other hard objects in your bag.
Camera:
The camera has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and has a 110° field of view - one of the widest at this price point. The camera head can be tilted up approximately 30° to better view a person sitting close to it. There is some distortion around the edges of the image due to the wide angle lens. The color rendering and crispness of the video image looks quite good.
Photo: HuddleCam Go at 7 feet away from me.
Microphone:
I was somewhat surprised that they advertise the microphone as “360° omnidirectional” when the camera only points in one direction. That just means that the microphone is on the top of the unit, and not facing the same direction as the camera. Anyone sitting outside of the viewing range of the camera will still be adequately picked up by the microphone, up to 10 feet away according to the spec sheet.
In my testing, the microphone sounded good and I could hear the person that was sitting 10 feet away. However, when another group tested it in their Zoom meeting, they reported that the remote person said that it wasn’t loud enough. It wasn’t cleanly picking up the farthest person sitting about 8 feet away. So they switched to their usual speakerphone, a CHAT 150 positioned in the middle of the table with the farthest person only 3 - 4 feet away. I don’t know the level of the Zoom microphone, how softly the person was speaking, whether the remote person didn’t turn up his volume enough, or even if the remote person’s headset couldn’t produce a loud enough volume level. Your experience may vary.
Speaker:
The HuddleCam Go’s loudspeaker got decently loud enough for a small to mid-sized conference room. For the purposes of reproducing the human voice, it does a good job. Just don’t expect it to be a ‘hi-fi’ loudspeaker for music with sparkling highs and booming lows.
Comparisons:
The HuddleCam Go’s price (~299) fits between the Logitech BCC950 (~$174) and the Logitech ConferenceCam Connect (~$360).
The BCC950 has a pan/tilt/zoom “eyeball” camera with a 78° field of view, 180° pan, and speakerphone with remote. The remote is handy for controlling the camera, but I feel that the camera movement is a bit too fast. You can easily overshoot where you want to point the camera. The camera stalk is a bit wobbly - moving the unit around during a meeting could disconnect the camera, and it may not come back until you completely restart the unit. You can mount the camera directly on the speakerphone (no stalk), but you’d want to elevate the unit. Otherwise the camera would only be 4 inches above the tabletop.
The BCC950 has 2 cables, a USB data cable and a second cable for power (either DC ‘wall wart’ or a second USB for power, it comes with both). If you don’t plan to move the BCC950 among locations, and have someone to control the camera to point at whomever is speaking at the moment, it works fine. If you travel with the unit, you are dealing with 2 (or 3) cables and 4 components - eyeball camera, stalk, speakerphone, and remote.
Photo: Logitech BCC950 at 7 feet away from me.
In a quick direct comparison between the BCC950 and the Go, the Go’s image is much clearer and brighter, along with a much wider view. It’s obvious that someone would need to pan the BCC950 camera left and right to show whoever is talking. Interestingly, the BCC950 sounded a little better playing music, but the Go sounded much better for my voice. My voice sounded very thin on the BCC950. However, the Go’s microphone amplified the room’s HVAC noise, while the BCC950 filtered most of that out. In a different room, the Go had no problem with the room’s lower HVAC noise.
The ConferenceCam Connect is similar in size to the Go, but 12 inches tall compared to the Go’s 9.25 inches. We have not tested this model. It has a 90° field of view, remote, digital pan/tilt/zoom, 3-hour battery to run wireless via bluetooth, as well as USB and power cables.
Conclusion:
The HuddleCam Go fits nicely in the the line up of various camera/speakerphone options. It’s very easy set up and use. It’s very wide angle lens reduces the concern of having to adjust its position so that remote participants can see what is going on in the room or who is talking. It’s nicely compact for traveling or just moving it from room to room. But, it was less tolerant of ambient noise (HVAC in my testing). You’ll need to be more aware of your environment whether its microphone will work for the remote people in your video conference.