---
title: 'The Best Webcam by Far! Yolo Live S7 Review'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=QnQz8JLgwj8'
video_id: 'QnQz8JLgwj8'
date: 2026-08-06
duration_sec: 1111
---

# The Best Webcam by Far! Yolo Live S7 Review

> Source: [The Best Webcam by Far! Yolo Live S7 Review](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QnQz8JLgwj8)

## Summary

The video is a detailed review of the Yolo Live S7, a professional live-streaming camera that blurs the line between webcams and mirrorless cameras. The reviewer unboxes the camera, tests its features, and provides an honest assessment of its performance, build quality, and value.

### Key Points

- **Introduction and Context** [00:03] — The reviewer introduces the Yolo Live S7, noting that the company previously made the S3 webcam, which was criticized as a scam due to its quality. The S7 is positioned as a bridge between webcams and mirrorless cameras.
- **Unboxing and Build Quality** [01:01] — The S7 features a full aluminum body, weighing 439g, with ports including HDMI out, USB-C out, USB-C power, and an audio input. It has a hot shoe mount and a 1/4-inch thread, making it versatile for mounting.
- **Interchangeable Lens and Sensor** [02:36] — The camera uses an M43 lens mount with a 4/3 CMOS sensor. The included lens is an 18mm f/1.4 prime, which is noted for its quality and light-gathering capability.
- **HDMI Out and Connectivity** [05:41] — HDMI out allows for direct recording to external monitors or recorders, eliminating the need for a capture card. The camera also supports USB-C connections for power and data.
- **Software and Controls** [06:26] — The Yolo Live Compose software offers extensive controls including color styles, white balance, exposure, aperture, focus modes, and zoom. The digital zoom maintains quality without loss.
- **Audio and Additional Features** [09:24] — The camera includes a built-in microphone with controls for gain, noise reduction, and latency. It also supports hotkeys and presets for quick adjustments.
- **Price and Target Audience** [14:31] — The camera body costs $699, and the lens costs $299, totaling around $1,000. It is aimed at professional live streamers and content creators who need reliable, high-quality streaming without overheating.
- **Final Thoughts and Considerations** [17:14] — The reviewer notes the cropped sensor means the 18mm lens is effectively more zoomed in, which may require a wider lens for close-up shots. Overall, it's a solid investment for professionals.

### Conclusion

The Yolo Live S7 is a professional-grade live-streaming camera that offers exceptional build quality, interchangeable lenses, and robust software, making it a worthwhile investment for serious content creators, despite its higher price point.

## Transcript

This is cool. I'm not going to lie, this is pretty cool. On Yolo Live is that quality. Let me try to switch the color style again. Oh, actually, that's way should probably check the price. The last time I reviewed a webcam from this
company, I got called all sorts of names. It was the Yolo Cam S3, and I guess it looked a little too good to be true. And also, I look the way that I I was a scammer. I also got accused of doing a non-disclosed paid
understand. But anyways, the same company decided to totally bridge the gap between a webcam and mirrorless cameras. Because what is this? What is this? This does not look like a webcam at all. And if their webcam can look
that good, I can't even imagine what this is going to be like. So, this is the Yolo Live S7. Um, Yolo Live is not a new company just actually been making hardware for the sole purpose of live streaming for years
professional gear. If you want to see my review for the S3, check it on my channel, and let's unbox the S7. And if you're wondering which camera you're looking at right now, this is the S3. 4K 30 FPS right now. So, maybe you can
understand why people thought it was a scam cuz it looks good. I called it the best webcam I've ever used, and I was not lying. I also said that it was sent to me for free, just like the S7. I do not have an affiliate code. I could
probably get one if I wanted to, but my purpose with those videos is to just show you technology that just exists. I don't work for them. I literally gain nothing from you buying it. I'll never understand the weird tribalism with tech
companies. Some people were mentioning, "Oh, yeah, like the Elgato looks better. The The Insta360 looks better." Wow, this is heavy. Oh my. And it's funny to me because I am literally an Elgato partner. I do have their latest webcam.
pretty sure I'm affiliate with them. So, I would gain way more by just selling obscure tech that you didn't know about. But hey, that's on me. That's on me for hating money, apparently. I am a kind of shocked with just how heavy this is. I
got to find exactly what the weight is because wow. So, in the back here, you'll see HDMI out, type C out, and then type C for power. And there's also an audio port for your microphone, so you can plug in a microphone directly
into this. This is again, like this nothing about this screams webcam. This is a full-fledged camera. There's even a tiny camera in here. It has a hot shoe mount right there, so you can place it on top of a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
elephant in the room is the interchangeable lens. Yeah, I'm going to stop calling this a webcam. Bottom here, we have our 1/4 in thread, so universal on top of the hot shoe. That's cool. Now, from a company like Yolo Liv, the
immediate advantage of getting something like this as opposed to something like a Canon or Sony camera is, well, this is a company made for live streamers, basically. The fact that the full body is aluminum, I would be very, very
problems. I'm guessing no heating problems at all. All right, we have a problems at all. All right, we have a very robust USB-C to USB cable here. You can have this mechanism to really lock it in place, so it's not going to wiggle
out. Very professional. And in here, we have a USB-C to USB-C, and this one is one will go on your computer, and that's the USB-C power. I was also sent this, adapter for the USB. And it has all
sorts of uh adapters, power adapter here. That is classic European. That is this is what I would most likely use. just put it together like that, and then twist, and it's locked in place. The
weight is 439 g. So, almost half a kilo. The ISO is g. So, almost half a kilo. The ISO is between 100 and 9,600, which seems to be a little low, but I've tested their cameras before and the way their
software handles everything, I am not worried at all. The lens mount is M43 and the sensor is a 4/3 CMOS sensor. Now, they sent me a lens with it and it's an 18 mm f/1.4, which is pretty awesome. I've done photography and I can
tell you that a 1.4 18 mm lens, first of all, is not easy to come by, but is usually very expensive. 1.4 actually lets in a lot of light and I'm guessing it's going to be a prime lens, right? Ooh. Oh, that feels great. Wow, that
feels great. Again, this feels really solid. Let's remove the lens cap. All right. It's at 18 mm. I can't stop twisting the focus ring. It feels so nice. What? I've owned like I have Canon lenses and none of them feel as great as
this. Okay, I got to stop. Let's mount it. All right. So, we'll try to align that red dot with this red dot. I believe that's an indicator, indeed, and then we'll twist until we hear a click and here we have it. Oh my, this is This
has so much weight to it. This might be actually my heaviest camera. Like I'm shooting on the Sony ZV-1 right now and it's definitely nowhere near as heavy as this. Look at that. All right, let me give you another look. This camera has
like filters on it. You can see on the side I have like this big vignette of very bright colors, but uh this is what it looks like. Absolute professional. The hot shoe is on this side, the thread is on this side, and then the ports are
on the back right there. Let's plug it in. The cable tells you which one is you can see that little screw in the back to secure it, so it's not going to get ripped off accidentally. I'm telling you, they make professional stuff. Also,
we got to talk about the implications of having HDMI out. It means that well, you can actually put this on a monitor while recording, you can also record directly from the HDMI out. So, if you're using a capture card or an HDMI splitter or
practical. All right, let's plug in the power. Look at that. I was also sent camera on. So, since the thread is on the side, the camera would sit here. I could screw it in and then this could go on a tripod. Oh, what? What is
happening? I Okay. Okay. Okay. What? What is this? Yo, this quality. Okay, cool. Listen. Listen. Listen. I'm going to show you I need to capture the the software, which is a little Yolo
Live Compose. So, I'm used to it because of the other webcam. Clearly, my white balance is off. There's a couple of things going on, but already, wow, I'm really liking what I'm seeing so far. Okay. Yeah, that 1.4 is really showing.
Look at the bokeh I get in the background. I'm a little jealous. My My my main camera? I mean, I guess it does, but damn. All right, let's adjust it. So, what we're seeing on the left here, first of all, we're at 60 FPS, 4K. Color
style, I can change that. Oh, so the color has changed a little bit and then we can go back to warm colors. I don't know if that's better. Then we have typical sharpness, contrast, saturation, distortion correction. I don't see any
distortion on the extremities. Let me make sure I don't have any filters on in OBS. No, I don't. Okay. Vignetting correction, that's also on. That's fine. Now, focus, there's a focus channel. There's multiple types of focus that you
can have different focus ranges and different focus speed. So, that's important. So, I'm going to go find the white balance because I know that how things look is going to play a lot before I show anything else. So, I'm
That's the user manual and we're just going to hold it up to the screen. Then I'm going to switch the white balance to manual and then back to auto, see what that does. Not convinced, we're going to keep it on manual. And this is more of
honestly. If I play with the slider, you can see I can add a little bit of warmth, but yeah, something like that is where I would keep it. Now, exposure you have Now, exposure you actually have access to the aperture of the lens. So,
if you want your lens to go all the way down to 1.4, and you can see the bouquet in the background right there. You can see that's going to be changing because, well, that's dependent on that, basically. And we get stopped at 1.4,
which is super like shallow depth of field type of ex- This is cool. I'm not I'd like for this to be a little bit brighter. So, EV here, I'm going to bump that up. Now, you can tell that with my lights, those might be a little too a
little too harsh. So, for example, for the purple, in real life I would probably lower that drastically so I can get better better colors, okay? Let's check out zoom real quick cuz I thought I would have, I don't know, a wider
perspective, but this is completely zoomed in. And I'm guessing the tiny camera that is within it is probably helping if you want to have like a face something like that. But again, something amazing with the software on
this um on Yolo Liv is that when you zoom in, you do not lose quality. I don't know what's the what's the post-processing happening here, but this is so impressive, always. It's a digital zoom. Like the camera itself is not
doing anything physical, and you get to that level of details. But again, we're working with a way better camera now, so it's less impressive than with the tiny camera. And then at the bottom, usually I would skip the audio part, but this
microphone you want in there. So, you actually get a little bit of control in there. You can also add latency if you need to, automatic gain control, and noise reduction. Now, there's something that I saw on exposure here, which is
blurring. And you can pick middle, low, let's say low blurring. Okay, so all that does is basically automatically change the aperture, so it matches. So, this is a good lesson. Do you want like little blur in the background, or do you
want high blur in the background? High blur means, you know, wider aperture, everything else. I feel like I can't seem to get the um white balance completely right. There you go. I'm going to keep the aperture to F 1.8,
cuz it reminds me of my uh nifty 50 lens from Canon. So, let's test the focus speed. Right now, it's on slow, so boom, I put that and it focuses, and then I do that, it focuses back on my face. Not bad. Try uh middle. And if you see like
the exposure changing, I'm kind of tweaking it. I'm still trying to make it look like what I'm used to. So, this is medium speed for the focus. Oh. Oh, medium speed for the focus. Oh. Oh, okay. Wow. All right. That is Yeah,
okay, that's working way better than I thought. Okay. Interesting. And then thought. Okay. Interesting. And then fast, let's see that. not bad. Not a huge speed difference between middle and fast, like medium and
fast, you can see it. And then there's multiple types of focus, including face. So, it should just be tracking my face wherever I go. What if I get really, really close? Hello. I can see all my pores. I did not like that. So, I said
before, this particular color of light, it doesn't seem to be handling well. So, let's see what happens if I turn it off completely. There we go. That's a that's a way better look already. So, I would probably adjust my lighting to the
camera, so I can get the best result possible. But, I got to say, so far, I'm by the way, the exposure is set to automatic. You're not getting those big, drastic, you know, black and white changes. It's still pretty neutral and
change it to manual, so you can have full control. And here you can see like the HDR coming out a little bit. Remember I talked about the ISO? I think 9,600 was the maximum, which I felt like wasn't a lot, but with everything else
with the 1.4, as soon as you hit 640, you're good. Yeah, you're basically good. And then of course there's the shutter, which is at 160, which is especially if you're going to If you're going to be recording at 60 fps,
actually 120 would be the best, but 160 already does the job with a good amount right, I could spend hours just showing you everything. I feel like I've shown a lot in the other review already. You can set up hot keys for different sets of
like for different parts of the zoom. If you want to quickly zoom in or something the Stream Deck. There's a tab for colors here, where you can literally capture an image and then show you some sort of color preset that it would could
that it could generate based on what you captured. And of course you can save your presets top right here and call it whatever you want. So next time you'll come back to those exact presets. Or just load them up or create different
profiles. Especially if you're streaming during the day sometimes and daylight exposure, maybe a different white balance. And of course if you're filming have different focus profiles and all
negative-ish thing that I have to say about the software, the camera is great, and the software is great, too. But it It feels like they could give me more control. Like I can tell the double tone HDR going on here and I don't really
there's definitely some post-processing happening that is not showing or that is not giving me control over. Let me try to switch the color style again. Oh, actually that's way better. That is way, way better. So the color style here is
V1 cool colors. I like that. You can always lower the contrast, the sharpness, the saturation. Let's bump that. Boom, boom. And then play around with the white balance even more, like this. Yeah, I think I I like this a lot.
like a LUT and some more color correction in my broadcasting software. Well, I got to say, all in all, um I don't want to call this a webcam. Like this this doesn't feel right to call it a webcam. This is a full-fledged camera.
In fact, it's way bigger and way heavier than my Sony ZV-1. And my Sony ZV-1 is a vlogging camera. Well, right now it has a bunch of effects on it, so don't pay too much attention. Let me see if I can lower that a little bit. If I paid you
to tell me which one is the mirrorless camera between this one and that one, between this one and that one? To be fair, the ZV-1, this one, was made for wide-angle. It's not necessarily going to be this beautiful sitting down shot
camera, but still still we are talking about something that plugs into your computer for live streaming. Okay, I added the purple light back on. I just lowered the power so it wouldn't blow out like it did earlier. So, who do I
think this webcam, this camera, is for? Well, before I say that, I should probably check the price. This camera goes for $699, and that's just the goes for $699, and that's just the camera body. The YoloLiv lens, the 18 mm
1.4, which is an amazing lens, goes for $299. So, a fully functional kit will run you about $1,000, which is more expensive than the Sony ZV-1, to be fair. Now, based on that alone, I cannot say that this is for the beginner live
wants to play Fortnite on stream, on Twitch. Absolutely not. I would really say that if after like a couple of years you really do this professionally, you're you're raking in money, and you want like a professional professional
setup, that is a solid investment for a camera that's not going to heat up and turn off, like DSLRs and mirrorless cameras will do. For a camera that is literally built for live streaming, but also interchangeable lens means that,
want, whenever you want. Swap out the lens for like a fisheye or a super wide lens, and then you can live stream events, for example. That's the other for. If you are a professional, you're you have a company, and I don't know,
you're doing you're at a convention, for example, if you're holding a conference, and you really want something reliable for live streaming, there you have it. expensive than the some of the DSLRs that would be recommended for live
streaming, like the the Sony a5100 or something like that. But this time something like that. But this time you're guaranteed to have your 4K 60 FPS with great autofocus, no heating problems whatsoever, no capture card
required, the possibility to attach a monitor to it, the possibility to attach recorders that you can buy, HDMI recorders, by the way. So, you can So, you can technically plug this into a recorder and have and basically use this
as a vlogging camera or as a YouTube studio camera without doing the whole PC tried that yet. Anyways, if you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below. If you want me to test certain things, I'm going to keep this.
looks I really like the way it looks. There will be a link in the description if you want to buy one. If it's an Amazon link, it will be affiliate because I'm an Amazon affiliate. I am not a Yolo Live affiliate. If it's not
affiliate. Again, I'm not trying to sell you this camera. It was sent to me for free. I got to test it and show you what's on the market. I think that it's a pretty interesting that we're getting to this point where webcams are meaning
being said though, if you are interested in like professional and high-quality live streaming stuff, I definitely check Yolo Live because, again, they make that It's the whole professional high-quality stuff, which is why I never really
reviewed too many of their products. A while ago they reached out to me about like the Yolo Box, which is like a like a 5G streaming box where you can plug in a bunch of HDMI stuff. And I was like, I I don't think any anyone in my audience
that they're making straight-up cameras, it's it's worth taking a look at. And if this video did convince you to buy one, please do keep in mind that this is a please do keep in mind that this is a cropped sensor. So, it's a 4/3 sensor,
which means that the 18 mm, which would be, you know, pretty wide angle on a full sensor, is this. This is the most zoomed out it is, and it is about arm's length, okay? So, if you don't have a lot of space and your camera needs to be
like super close to you, it might be a lot of like it might be pretty zoomed the lens, which means that you would look for, you know, a 14 mm, I guess, or something like that to give you more distance. If you get like a 24 mm, it's
it's going to be cropped in a lot at this distance that is. Again, arm's this distance that is. Again, arm's length. But yeah, that's it. Bye-bye.