Poly (formerly Plantronics) is well known for its Bluetooth headsets, both for personal and professional use. But until now, the company’s webcams have been primarily focused on business solutions, designed and priced for teleconference meetings in offices. The Poly Studio P5 is a simple monitor-mounted webcam that’s easy to set up and use, and at $129.99, it’s far less expensive than Poly’s larger, enterprise-minded cameras. It doesn’t offer the sharpest picture we’ve seen, but it’s much better than most built-in laptop webcams and has far better low light-performance. It also offers some of the best sound quality we’ve heard in this segment, making it a good choice for video calls where audio clarity is of utmost importance.
A Simple Clip-On Design
The Poly Studio P5 is available on its own for $129, or in a variety of kits that include the camera and a Blackwire 3210 wired mono headset, a Blackwire 3325 wired stereo headset, a Voyager 4220 UC wireless stereo headset, or a Poly Sync 20+ speakerphone kit. The kits start at $149.99 for the one with the Blackwire 3210, and are available primarily through B2B vendors.
The P5 is a fairly simple webcam. It’s small and white, with a tapered barrel shape permanently mounted on a hinged monitor clip. A three-foot cable runs from the underside of the camera, behind the clip, and ends in a USB-A plug. A small, fin-like LED sits on top of the camera and glows red when powered and the lens is covered, white when it’s powered and the lens is open, and green when actively capturing video. A small door on the back of the camera comes off and exposes a USB-A port, so you can plug in wireless dongles for headsets without using two USB ports on your computer (a very nice touch for laptop users with limited USB ports).
The lens on the front of the camera has an 80-degree field of view, a f/2.0 aperture, and autofocus. A ring around the lens opens and closes an iris-like cover, physically blocking the lens for privacy. The cover is an unexpected treat; few webcams have them by default, and we certainly wouldn’t expect one on a model aimed at bulk deployment in businesses as much as at individual users. Behind the lens is a 1080p sensor.
The monitor clip has a stiff enough hinge that can be set at a range of vertical angles, but that’s it for tilting the camera up and down. It can rotate left and right on the clip, but it has no tilt adjustment aside from the clip itself. The clip can technically be folded flat so the camera can be placed on any surface, but the outside of the bottom of the clip, which would be on that surface, lacks rubber grips like the jaws of the clip have. The camera also lacks any screw mount for tripods or other stands, which cameras like the Logitech StreamCam and the Razer Kiyo offer.
Poly Lens App
You can make exposure adjustments or update the firmware on the P5 through the Poly Lens app, including multiple exposure profiles for different lighting conditions. This isn’t the primary purpose of Poly Lens, though. Ultimately, the software is designed to integrate with IT departments to provide technical support and manage multiple devices in an organization.
Individual users probably won’t need the Poly Lens app for anything other than firmware updates and exposure adjustments. Of course, as a standard USB webcam, the P5 works with any video conferencing, recording, or streaming software.
P5 Studio Picture and Sound Quality
The picture from the P5 is certainly better than your average laptop webcam, and the wide-aperture lens catches a good amount of light, with strong low-light compensation. However, the autofocus lens seems to favor my backgrounds over my face, capturing sharper details from the bed and shelves behind me than, say, the hairs of my beard.
I can get a slightly sharper picture recording video in OBS and manually adjusting the focus in that software, but there’s no such setting in Poly Lens, and few video chat programs can tweak focus. Dark parts of the image, even in a well-lit room, also look a bit noisy. It’s not a bad picture at all, just a bit soft at normal desk distance.
The P5 is better in low-light situations, particularly where the background is dark and your face is illuminated by your screen. The low-light compensation on the camera is strong, and test recordings in a fairly dark room were about as sharp as recordings under brighter light, if slightly noisier. The picture is also noisier than what you get with the Razer Kiyo, with its much brighter built-in ring light, but it’s still quite usable.
The microphone on the P5 is very good—it’s actually my favorite thing about the camera. Test recordings sounded quite clear, though they did pick up the fan of my laptop (a gaming laptop, which tends to be louder than work laptops) and a bit of room echo. Still, it’s one of the best webcam microphones we’ve used; it’s leagues better than the Razer Kiyo, which offers very muffled sound.
If you want better audio than this, you’ll need to consider getting a USB microphone to use with your webcam.
A Good Webcam for the Clearest Audio
The Poly Studio P5 is primarily aimed at businesses looking to equip a large number of workers at once, but it’s still a very capable, reasonably priced webcam for individual users. Its picture is a bit soft, but its low-light performance is strong and its microphone is excellent. The Razer Kiyo is less expensive at $99.99 and has a sharper picture thanks to a built-in ring light, but its muffled microphone means it should really be paired with a USB mic for quality sound, and that will put the total cost above the P5. The $169.99 Logitech StreamCam is pricier than the P5, but it features more accessories (including a mini tripod), a sharper picture, and many more options for tweaking your picture, so it reamins our top choice. But if you you’re looking to spend a bit less and/or get superior audio quality, the Poly Studio P5 is a very good alternative.
