Very poor quality webcam on cb060sa (HP Wide Vision HD webcam)

[Disappint3d]

I bought this HP Pavilion 15-cb060sa laptop a few months back. The webcam on this machine has been terrible from day one. It shows dark shadowy image with poor resolution and horizontal waves on the complete image.

I have tried the following:

1. Install all updates including Windows updates, BIOS chipset etc.

2. Uninstalled and reinstalled the driver multiple times.

3. Removed the webcam, searched for it and installed it again.

4. Tried softwares like YouCam, Skype etc. to improve image using settings.

I blieve the webcams on these machines are actually really really poor quality even though the machines cost £700+.

If that is the case could you please confirm that HP has put the cheapest possible webcams in these machines and they are neither wide vision nor HD?

I am not requesting to be sent on a wild goose chase to do things which will actually not make any difference. I have read various forums and all of them seem to finish with no solution to the webcam issue.

If you can just say that the webcams are actually very poor and won't show better images then it will save a lot of time and misery to us already miserable customers.

Thanks

[David_J_W]

Laptop webcams are pretty poor across the board - there are some exceptions, but the industry standard is a 0.9 megapixel / 720p video camera (which is HD but not full HD) with typically rather poor light sensitivity and often questionable white balance. This issue is not limited to HP.

The webcam in my £4000 ZBook Studio x360 G5 is fairly rubbish, too - it's not as bad as you describe, but it's 720p and very noisy in low light situations. I didn't expect much from it. If I want a device with decent cameras, I use my Microsoft Surface Go, which has excellent front and rear facing cameras.

Though it was in a slightly different context, I wrote a longer reflection on webcams in a previous thread (click). It would be worth discussing the situation directly with HP Support UK (the business part of which is pretty good, but I've never spoken to the consumer notebooks part). Even by the rather miserable standards of laptop webcams, yours sounds particularly bad, especially the horizontal waves. There might be a firmware update HP can apply to your machine or perhaps a new camera will help.

[Spokje123]

I have the exact same symptoms (dark shadowy image, poor resolution and horizontal weaves flashing constantly).

Is there anything that can be done (The specific HP Pavilion Laptop was around EUR 1000, way too much for a non correct working webcam)

[David_J_W]

As with @Disappint3d, I recommend that you contact HP Support in your country @Spokje123. They might have access to otherwise unreleased firmware and/or drivers that could improve the situation, also they might have possible resolutions available to them that no volunteer answering forum posts does.

That said, I fear that the answer is that the camera is performing as intended and all that can be done is to note your concern, in which case it is worth expressing your respectful disappointment at the low quality of the camera.

I appreciate that €1000 is a non-negligible amount of money, but the chances are that very little of the Bill of Materials cost went on the camera. As I explained in the thread I linked in my earlier reply, laptop manufacturers typically operate on the understanding that buyers want a webcam, but are not prepared to pay extra for a premium webcam. The demands for small, lightweight devices with minimum possible bezel widths mean that the volume and mass of the webcam are constrained, too. The result of all this is that the industry standard for laptops is 720p webcams, often with fairly miserable light sensitivity and questionable white balance. There are some exceptions; the cameras in Microsoft Surface products, including my Surface Go, are rather better than the 720p norm and there are some other examples across the wide range of Windows laptops available. That said, Surface devices are expensive for their headline specification, though for good reason in my opinion. All the regular laptops I use, including some premium examples from HP and one of their competitors, have 720p cameras that are merely acceptable.

If this is going to change, manufacturers need to understand clearly that buyers would place sufficient value on a better camera for it to influence their choice of device and/or the price they are willing to pay.

I'd prefer my ZBook had a better camera, but the truth is that it's rare I use a laptop webcam. For video conferencing I'm far more likely to use my Surface Go or phone than my laptop. When I'm at my desk, I have an external webcam on my monitor as my laptop screen is off to one side.

[Disappint3d]

@David: Appreciate your response and time you have put in.

720p webcam is what I expected! Have had various laptops before none with higher than 720p webcams and even a few HP ones like DV8000 etc. This one is an exception and unfortunately this is the most expensive one of the lot.

Reading a few other forums and from comments like from @Spokje123, I now understand they have actually put in horrible webcams in this model at least. The annoying this is that they even brag about it saying "HP Wide Vision HD Webcam" when they should actually say "Basic webcam from supplier".

Anyways David thanks for your response!