For TV appearances from my work-from-home office, I sometimes use my phone mounted from an eye-level tripod clip. Either the front or back cameras will be better than any laptop you have. One option is to use your phone's camera. Especially for a smaller, low-slung laptop like the Air, your camera isn't going to be at an optimal angle if it's sitting on your desk or kitchen table and aimed up at you. There's at least a reasonable chance you're beaming into an online Zoom meeting (or other video meeting) from a pre-2022 MacBook Air or something similar. And that means your Zoom or other video meetings are not going to look great, both because of the camera and because many people don't have their laptops set up to capture a decent-looking image.

The side effect of MacBooks being in wide circulation and tending to last for many years is that there's a lot of older hardware out there. However, many Windows laptops were even ahead of Apple in adding better 1080p webcams over the past few years. Many MacBook owners are still using either older Intel versions or the 13-inch M1 MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, and all of those systems are held back by one unfortunate quirk: a flat-looking 720p-resolution webcam with lots of noise and a lack of depth-sensing technology.Ī lot of Windows laptops are barely better, many with similar outdated webcams, but at least some have better light sensitivity, color accuracy or depth sensing for facial-recognition logins.

Almost every new MacBook sold today has an upgraded high-resolution webcam, but that only helps if you've bought one in the last year or so.

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