Peripheral manufacturer Anker recently jumped into the video conferencing market with the PowerConf C300, under the company’s AnkerWork line. This $129.99 webcam offers one of the widest angles we’ve seen in a consumer-priced model, capturing a 115-degree field of view. It’s a strong performer across the board, though individual users might find the camera’s lens to be a bit too wide. For small conference rooms or video calls where you want to fit multiple people in the frame, however, the PowerConf C300 is an excellent value.
A Very Wide View
The C300 is a 1080p webcam that’s also capable of 720p or 360p capture at 30 or 60 frames per second. As mentioned, it features a 115-degree lens, which is much wider than we usually see; most webcams tend to hover around 80 degrees. It’s compatible with Windows 7, 8, and 10, as well as macOS 10.13 and above.
The PowerConf is a simple, rectangular black box with round corners, measuring 1.2 by 3.9 by 1.3 inches (HWD). The lens sits in the middle of the front panel, with pinhole microphones near either side. A status LED sits to the right of the lens and to the left of an Anker logo, lighting up when the camera is capturing video. The back panel features a recess with a USB-C port for connecting to your computer.
The camera is permanently attached to a hinged black clip. The clip folds back to brace against the back of your monitor or laptop, with a smaller fold-down foot for secure positioning. The camera is mounted on a small, separate hinge that lets it tilt down from a forward position, with a short neck so it can freely pivot left and right. A tripod screw mount sits on the bottom of the monitor clip when folded flat.
An included USB-C-to-USB-C cable is three feet long, and comes with a small USB-C-to-USB-A adapter for plugging into your computer’s USB-A port if a USB-C port isn’t available. Anker also includes two stick-on privacy shields that attach to the front of the camera to provide plastic sliding doors that can be moved in front of the lens.
Anker’s AnkerWork software lets you adjust the C300’s settings, including resolution, frame rate, lens angle (a fixed digital zoom), and color balance. It also lets you enable automatic face-tracking (a dynamic digital zoom that follows your face) and update the camera’s firmware. It isn’t capture software, though, so you can’t use it for recording or streaming.
PowerConf C300 Video and Audio Performance
Video quality is quite good on the C300, with sharp detail for a 1080p camera. Well-lit rooms look balanced and nicely exposed, and the texture of my hair showed up clearly in a test recording. It isn’t quite as sharp as the $100 Razer Kiyo, but it’s very solid performance.
The C300 also excels in terms of low-light capture. In a dark room, illuminated only by my monitor (which was also relatively dim due to the dark background of OBS streaming software), the camera captured both my face and my surroundings with surprisingly well-exposed video. As you can see, my face stands out clearly and is lit well in the shot below, better than I’ve from many other webcams in their low-light modes. That said, the Razer Kiyo’s built-in ring light can brighten up your face much more if you’re primarily working in dark rooms.
The camera’s wide angle, while good for small groups and conference rooms, is almost a bit too wide for a single user. This is where the C300 falls short, as it doesn’t have an optical zoom lens. If you want to reduce the angle or otherwise keep the picture framed on your face more than the room around you (and the automatic face-tracking works quite well in this respect), you have to rely on digital zoom. Digital zoom is going to significantly reduce the detail of your picture, as it’s just a crop and enlargement of the camera feed, which results in a fuzzier shot. Of course, this isn’t an issue if you’re using the camera in a conference room or you want to keep a few people in frame for a video chat.
The dual microphones on the C300 also perform quite well. My voice was full and easy to hear in test recordings, giving the camera an audio edge over the Razer Kiyo’s muffled, soft microphone. The microphone even picked up some bass in my voice, which is technically impressive though a slight detriment to the overall sound balance—the low frequencies captured by the camera sound a bit muddy, and got in the way of the otherwise clean higher-frequencies of my speech. The $130 Poly Studio P5 wins out here, capturing the clearest audio we’ve heard from a webcam.
Great for Groups
The Anker PowerConf C300 is a very capable webcam, but one perhaps better suited to small conference rooms than individual users. It has one of the widest angle lenses we’ve seen on a webcam, which is great at capturing a whole room, but a bit of overkill for framing one face clearly. It stands alongside the Poly Studio P5 in terms of performance, but the P5 is a bit more appealing for single users due to its cleaner audio and more comfortable 80-degree field of view. We’re also fans of the Razer Kiyo for its very crisp picture, though it suffers from a soft microphone, and should really be augmented with a USB mic. If you’re looking for an affordable camera for group meetings, however, the C300 should be at the top of your list.
