[00:00] Buying a webcam sucks. You're going to spend your hard-earned cash, so you better research all the different brands, figure out which features you need and don't, until you finally pick the one you're going to stick to. You purchase it, you wait anxiously for it to arrive, it arrives, you plug it in, and it's just...
[00:15] Sorry about that, I've made a lot of expensive mistakes. That's why today I am showing you this, the newly released Insta360 Link 2 Pro. I've been using and testing this webcam for two to three months now,
[00:28] and personal opinions aside, this is probably the best 4K webcam on the market right now. This little guy has amazing low-light capabilities with real 4K that gives you an incredibly sharp image
[00:40] with actual depth of field to separate you from the background, all built onto a two-axis gimbal for tracking and motion, and it can even be used in a multi-camera setup that can be controlled wildly. But I don't want you to take my word for it.
[00:53] No, I want you to look at these images on screen right now, and I want you to take each other's word for it, because I am technically sponsored. So I want you to watch till the end of the video, and then comment your thoughts on the image quality so that other viewers can feel more confident about whether to buy this webcam or not.
[01:09] Let's talk about image quality and low light. The Link 2 Pro is the upgraded version of this, the Insta360 original Link 2 webcam, and much like the original, the Revolution maxes out at 4K 30fps, but that doesn't mean the image is the same.
[01:23] This Link 2, the original, had a sensor size of half an inch, but the Link 2 Pro has a massive jump all the way up to 1 over 1.3 inches. That's a lot of numbers, so instead I'll just put some 4K footage of both up side by
[01:38] side and hope YouTube's progression doesn't destroy it. But for me, when I have this on my computer, it's pretty easy to see the image quality jump in the Pro, especially when we zoom in, which you'll see more of later.
[01:50] This is actually one of the biggest sensors on the market right now in this price range. For fairness, it's probably important to mention the YoloCam S3 does have the same size sensor, but of course, this doesn't have a gimbal built into it, which you'll see more of that later.
[02:03] First, we have to talk about why the hell does this sensor size even matter? What does it do? Well, your sensor size is directly related to your image quality. Specifically, larger sensors can capture far more of the light, making it through the lens.
[02:16] which gives you a sharper image it creates less digital noise it has better depth of field and of course far better low light performance especially when you combine the fact that this little Linktube Pro has an f1 lens meaning it is really focused on letting in and capturing as much light as possible
[02:33] to give you the best image possible. If we did what I am now calling the No Light Challenge, meaning I turn all my lighting off and raise my ISO slowly, you'll see the Linktube Pro only needs about 1000 to 1250 ISO
[02:46] in pitch black darkness before it becomes usable, Which is shocking because previously when we've done this exact same test multiple times across dozens of webcams, we found that the OBS Neat 2 4K, which had an f1.8, needed 4,500 ISO.
[03:01] The YoloCam S3 needed 2,500 ISO. The previous Insta360 Link 2 needed 1,800 ISO. And of course, the Elgato FaceCam 4K needed 7,500 ISO and had some wild digital noise.
[03:15] Of course, for anyone who doesn't understand why ISO is important, the goal of any webcam is to have the lowest ISO and the least digital noise. Speaking of noise, if we look again at the Link 2 Pro in this extreme example, there is, of course, digital noise.
[03:28] There has to be, it's pitch black. But it's not horrible noise. And if I set my ISO down to 250 and then turned my lights off and slowly raised just one of my 2800 lumen newer lights, I actually become properly exposed at 30% power.
[03:42] meaning the LinkTube Pro only requires about 840 lumens to light me. And there is very little noise, even at what I would still consider a low-light situation, which, let's be real, low-light is what most of you guys, as new creators, are shooting in,
[03:57] making this webcam perfect for you. But you've seen all of this before. However, what you haven't seen in a webcam is this much depth, quality, and sharpness. Take a look at this 4K 30fps. Look how clean and sharp that is.
[04:10] I can't express just how blown away by the sharpness of this camera I have been. But now, let's zoom in a little bit and look at that squirtle. Look how it blurs out nicely. This is a wide-angle webcam that, because of the huge sensor,
[04:24] has managed to actually create depth of field and blur, even if it is, of course, just white. And as you'll soon see, even though it has depth of field, it still has amazing and confident autofocus. But before I show you that, let's do a 2x digital zoom with Insta360 software.
[04:39] Now, with any digital zoom, you'd start to expect major quality loss, but it's still incredibly crisp Pushing it even harder at 3x digital zoom it still beautiful You can even see my individual eyelashes and the colours shifting in my iris without there being any digital tearing
[04:56] You really don't start to see quality dropping on this camera at all until we're at the 4x digital zoom, and even then it's minimal, showing that this huge sensor is really working to make the most of that 4K resolution.
[05:08] I'm actually really desperate to find a floor in this webcam, so I am adding a new test for auto focus in particular where I switched the camera to manual focus and completely shifted out of focus towards the front switch back to auto and it just locks on immediately so let's go
[05:23] the opposite direction all the way to the background back to auto and again it just locked on to me immediately there are no jitters no lack of confidence even with the large sensor and the lower stop the auto focus is insanely quick so you'd think you would have to sacrifice
[05:38] something somewhere, maybe even color accuracy, but that actually feels amazing to me as well. I haven't had any issues with the Link2 Pro in that regard. If I match my white balance to my light temperature, I look like myself. I look human. My skin looks normal, but it goes further
[05:55] than that. The colors are so clean and natural, I can push my white balance to be warmer, and it doesn't make me look aggressively orange. Instead, it just makes me look nice and warm. I've actually had a lot of fun playing with the color grading of this webcam because the colors feel so punchy,
[06:10] crisp, and clean. There's no real issues with it. In fact, the image you're looking at right now is the Link 2 Pro 4K 30fps with my mirrorless camera filters pasted on top of it and then chucked into a 1080p OBS, and I think it looks pretty damn good. I want to show you guys how I
[06:25] managed to create this multi-camera setup that you can see on screen now that was controlled wirelessly using these cameras, but first you have to talk about the 2-axis gimbal and of course the tracking. These two axis gimbals are becoming a staple in webcams these days. They're giving you
[06:37] the flexibility to manually control your webcam shot and where it's looking, or you can even use it to automatically track you around the room. And like many webcams, you can even ask it to change the size of the shot, such as a close-up medium or whole body track. Now, I rarely use
[06:51] the close-up on a lot of these gimbal webcams because the quality loss of zooming in digitally was always quite noticeable, but as we discussed, that's not really going to be a problem with the Now, being up front, I don't think everyone uses a webcam with a gimbal that can auto
[07:05] track, which is why if you don't feel you need it, I could heavily recommend the Link2C Pro instead. It is a far cheaper option that uses the exact same sensor and gives all the same image quality as discussed earlier But honestly I have to admit something I personally never wanted a gimbal on my webcams
[07:21] I never thought it was important and I never thought I would bother using it. And then I got one and I fell in love with it. I spent years as a streamer stuck dealing with a locked off shot that hurt my ability to get up, move around and do physical comedy, charity events or cooking
[07:33] streams. But nowadays, no matter where I go in my stream room, I can immediately have a clean, high resolution image to show viewers. Like this desk cam which is shooting entirely in ambience low light without any real lighting for itself and it still looks amazing. Or like this multi-camera
[07:46] setup that I can control entirely wirelessly from my phone. Well I'm saying control wirelessly because it is still plugged in through wires. I've taken a few of the Link2 Pros and the older Link2s and then used their magnet bottom mounts which I absolutely love how simple that is. I don't need a
[08:00] fancy mount it just magnetizes to any metal surface in my office. I have long fiber optic USB-C cable to cost me 25-30 bucks and then all I have to do is scan the QR code in my Insta360 software which is great by the way very intuitive and easy to use software and once I scan that QR
[08:15] code ta-da I can control multiple cameras at the touch of a button from my phone but not just control their exposure or white balance I can change their shot size their preset shots to swap between quickly change how it tracks me if it's in focus literally three different cameras
[08:28] all in the palm of my hand with zero delay zero latency it's just amazing because what you're are seeing right now on screen, this isn't edited in post, it's a raw recording directly from OBS. And it's not limited to three either, Insta360 has said they haven't found a max
[08:43] number, and really, you can start as many multi-camera shots as possible and control them all from your phone as long as your PC can handle it. I think really the only snag for this camera is probably that I can't call it a budget option because out of the community voters, a determined budget for most of you is roughly 100 USD, whereas the
[08:58] The Link 2 Pro sits at the 250 USD price bracket, and the non-Gimbal version that still has again the same sensor and image quality is 200 USD. But for everything packed into it, the price feels kind of amazing, especially because
[09:10] even at my size now with a mirrorless setup, I'm still going to use this webcam. It's not going in the drawer to collect dust because it's so good, and then you have to look at the competition. Elgato are charging 200 USD for their Facecam 4K, the YoloCam is charging 220 USD, and neither
[09:25] of these have Gimbals. And then of course there's the OBSBot Tiny 2 4K which is 330 USD. But it's not up to me, my opinion doesn't really matter, it's all up to you. I'd love to hear in the comments what you think of the image quality, the features,
[09:37] the price and let me know what I should review next. I'll see you guys next week.