Closer Examination

The Arozzi Occhio RL is an unusual-looking webcam primarily because it is surrounded by a 6-inch ring light. That makes it fairly bulky, and you can forget about it going unnoticed when placed on top of your monitor. The ring light is a simple, donut-shaped lighting tool that provides the user with a uniform light that comes directly from the camera's point of view. Because of its shape and position in relation to the camera, as well as the fact that it diffuses light over the area it's pointed to, it effectively eliminates shadows from the subject's face, making it look more appealing. It also adds that recognizable circular sparkle to the subject's eyes; for many users, that in itself is a good enough reason to upgrade their setup with a ring light. As far as videography ring lights go, a 6-inch one is on the smaller side. In the case of the Arozzi Occhio RL webcam, integration is key; they want you to be able to take your ring light anywhere you go, which is why it's permanently affixed to the camera. There's no way to detach the two, which isn't necessarily something I'm too happy about, but it is what it is. You can of course buy a separate, external ring light for any webcam you might own, although you wouldn't enjoy the convenience of having the camera factory-mounted inside the ring light. The camera is generally supposed to be mounted in the center of the ring light's "donut hole," which isn't the case with the Arozzi Occhio RL. We'll examine if this off-center positioning causes any issues with the camera's performance later in the review.


The ring light of the Arozzi Occhio RL webcam is powered through a USB port. The USB cable, affixed to the camera, terminates in two USB plug. The second one is used for video and audio transfer. This is one of the areas where the Occhio RL differs from the less expensive Occhio. The "regular" Occhio is a standalone webcam, so it only needs a single USB port to operate.


The Occhio RL has a 7.5-centimeter wide plastic base that supports the camera and ring light. The ring light pushes the height of the entire contraption up to 18 centimeters, making a wider-than-usual base mandatory. The base can double as a table stand should you want to use the webcam that way. You have to be careful when using the Occhio RL this way though, as the ring light will topple it over once you go past the 30° tilt angle. The cheaper Occhio isn't nearly as top-heavy; it stays put even when tilted to a 90° angle.


The webcam can be rotated by 360° and even slightly tilted in all directions.


The front lip of the Occhio RL's base is quite wide and tall. If your monitor has thin, sub-1 centimeter bezels, the front lip will cover up a bit of the viewable area of the panel along its upper edge. This is less of an issue with the regular Occhio, whose lip is a bit shorter.


Arozzi's webcams can't be detached from their base, but the base at least has a ¼" mounting thread for placing it on camera mounts of all kinds.


Both webcams are exactly the same, with only the integrated ring light separating them in terms of design and performance. Both are entirely made from plastic. The overall build quality isn't very impressive. The cameras don't seem fragile, but definitely don't feel luxurious, either. The front-facing all-glass lens system comes with a magnetic cover. The cover snaps over the lens securely. Even though it will attach to other front areas of the camera, it shows an inclination to automatically center over the lens. I found this feature very helpful because I was able to reliably cover the lens without wasting any time on carefully aligning the cover. What to do with the cover when you're not using it, you wonder? Arozzi's user manual recommends attaching it to the rear of the camera. The magnetic cover is a welcome privacy feature, although one has to wonder if an integrated sliding cover would have been more convenient in practice.


Sitting below the lens is a manual microphone circuit breaker. It is essentially a simple on/off switch which, when pulled to the right, cuts the electricity flowing to a pair of built-in microphones, effectively disabling them on a hardware level. From a security perspective, this is of course a much better solution than a rudimentary software microphone mute toggle. Both aforementioned security features of the Arozzi Occhio and Occhio RL are robust and well-implemented.


Two green LEDs flank the microphone mute switch. The left one is for microphone activity, while the one on the right tells us when the camera is recording. Both are very discrete, and I didn't find them at all distracting while using the Occhio/Occhio RL for online meetings or OBS recording.


The two front-facing microphones have an omnidirectional pickup pattern and boast noise-canceling technology. More on their performance on the next page of this review.


The cable is permanently affixed to the rear of the camera, which means it cannot be removed or easily replaced. It is 1.7 meters long and completely rubberized.


The Arozzi Occhio RL has a touch-sensitive ring light switch on top, which is absent on the "regular" Occhio. Tapping the switch cycles through three available variants of the integrated ring light. Arozzi doesn't go into any specifics anywhere in the technical specifications of the Occhio RL, such as the exact color or temperature of the built-in LEDs, but what we have are two different yellow lights (warm and cool) and a cool white light. The exact cycle order is warm yellow – cool white – cool yellow – off. This touch-sensitive button has one more function: pressing and holding it changes the brightness of the LEDs. The implementation is sloppy. If you press and hold the button, the brightness will either gradually increase or decrease depending on where you last left it. If you then press and hold the button again, the brightness will change in the opposite direction compared to before. This puts you in a silly position where fine brightness adjustments are impossible. Let's say you increase it to a certain level but decide to increase it a bit more. As it currently stands, there's no way to do that because the next press and hold on the button will result in the brightness decreasing.

Changing the brightness of the ring light could possibly be made easier if implemented in the Occhio RL software. Unfortunately, the accompanying software package is scheduled to be released at a later point in October, so I didn't get a chance to test its features while working on this review.