Arozzi Occhio RL Ring Light Webcam

[Inle]

Arozzi is joining in on the webcam game with two interesting products. We're reviewing the $129 Arozzi Occhio RL, a Full HD webcam with an integrated ring light, as well as its $79 sibling Occhio, which doesn't have a ring light but is otherwise identical. Both cameras offer two robust privacy features.

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[bug]

Wth, only FHD? I want my girls conferences in 4k!

 

[InhaleOblivion]

Nice review.

 

[ZoneDymo]

physically this thing looks like it came from the 90s

 

[Valantar]

Nice to see a review like this, certainly an interesting product - if a bit janky in its execution.

One note on the testing: the videos are IMO far too fast-paced. The main point of interest in webcam quality is how the person in front of the camera looks, which the various image quality/lighting samples barely give us any chance to look at in-between the various "hold random objects up to the camera" tests. I see how these have some utility, but not when they dominate the time so that I actually had to pause the video in order to get an impression of how a person on camera would look (which of course becomes misleading, as a still will overemphasize compression artifacts and noise). So in the future, could you just sit still for 5-10 seconds for every test scenario? Or pretend that you're talking in a meeting or something, to see how it tracks natural motion? That would be great

 

[TheUn4seen]

While this product is not something I care about, I'll touch a bit on the privacy features. Why do people obsess about cameras? As someone who wrote a malicious RAT years ago, I can tell you that no one cares about looking at you when you pick your nose while watching cat videos. On the other hand, many people spell out passwords under their nose when they type them, discuss personal details with their relatives and so on, and you know, your laptop has a microphone right in your face - without any status lights, privacy covers and such. "Back in my days", when RATs were very popular, there was a big community of people who paid good money for access to RATs with camera streaming installed on devices belonging to attractive females (there still is, in fact), but by far the single most requested feature was, and probably still is, microphone access.
This thing has a physical microphone switch which I consider the most important privacy feature a device like this can have. RATs had a peak of popularity in early 2010's and I'm not in this market for years now, but I sometimes talk to people who still are and it seems that with so many people building elaborate audio/video streaming rigs with mediocre security this market is bouncing back.

 

[Inle]

Nice to see a review like this, certainly an interesting product - if a bit janky in its execution.

One note on the testing: the videos are IMO far too fast-paced. The main point of interest in webcam quality is how the person in front of the camera looks, which the various image quality/lighting samples barely give us any chance to look at in-between the various "hold random objects up to the camera" tests. I see how these have some utility, but not when they dominate the time so that I actually had to pause the video in order to get an impression of how a person on camera would look (which of course becomes misleading, as a still will overemphasize compression artifacts and noise). So in the future, could you just sit still for 5-10 seconds for every test scenario? Or pretend that you're talking in a meeting or something, to see how it tracks natural motion? That would be great

For sure, thanks for your input! I've of course recorded hours of footage (business meetings, chats with friends, random experimenting) but aimed to keep the sample videos as concise as possible, keeping in mind the short attention span of most of us. I can definitely make the videos slower-paced, with longer 1-person shots!

Suggestions like these are very welcome. Do feel free to share what you'd like to see in my future webcam test samples, I'd be more than happy to oblige