WyreStorm Focus 200 Webcam Review: Bringing 4K To Work
Retail Price: $159.99
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees and support our channel by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Disclaimer: Wyrestorm sent us a unit of the Focus 200 free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this video are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
Product Specs +
- 4K resolution at 30 FPS
- 8x digital zoom
- 720p resolution at 90 FPS
- Privacy cover
As many of us have adjusted to remote or hybrid work life in this semi post-pandemic world, it’s important to have a good webcam for those many hours that we spend on Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Sometimes your laptop camera just doesn’t cut it. Other times, if you’re using a larger monitor like me, it’s more convenient to attach a separate webcam to your primary monitor to have better angles of your face. It’s also quite rare to have an affordable 4K resolution webcam. That’s where this AV specialty company, Wyrestorm, comes in. Thank you to WyreStorm for sending us the Focus 200, which is a 4K wide angle webcam with built-in dual microphones. We received this item free of charge to review but all thoughts and opinions are our own and the company did not see this video prior to publishing. Let’s take a closer look.
Quick and Easy to Setup and Install
Out of the box, the Focus 200 webcam comes with an included USB-C to USB-A cable that supports USB 3.0 speeds. There’s also an adjustable mount that you attach to your monitor with, and of course, the webcam itself, which measures 140 mm x 30mm without the bracket. There’s nothing particularly unique about the appearance of the Focus 200 camera. It’s a sleek matte black color with the WyreStorm logo on the bottom left. It’s fairly thin in a convenient rectangular shape that should comfortably sit atop most standard sized monitors. You can also place the webcam onto a tripod through a tripod thread if you so choose to. Also attached to the webcam is a rubber cap for the lens that functions as a privacy cover.
Setting up the webcam is truly easy, except for the silly mistake I made which took an additional 30 minutes plus Alex’s help for me to figure it out. Simply place and then adjust the webcam on your monitor first, plug in the USB-C side of the cable to the webcam port, and finally plug in the other side to your computer. A green light illuminates from the front of the webcam to let you know when it's in use. I highly recommend double checking to ensure your cables are fully plugged in to both sides of the ports, as I learned the embarrassing way that the cable was not pushed down all the way into the webcam and despite the light turning green when I turned on the webcam, it was continually disconnecting. This took me down a spiral of downloading software and firmware thinking there was something wrong until we finally realized that my cable was not fully plugged in. Add that little bit of force for the final push in.
Webcam Functionality
Using Zoom or Microsoft Teams with a separate webcam is very simple. You simply go into the settings of the app you’re using and select the WyreStorm Focus 200 for both the webcam and the microphone. It truly is plug and play. The Focus 200 is WyreStorm’s mid-tier webcam and has a fixed focus 106 degree ultra-wide lens. Its max resolution is 4K at 30 fps and has a digital zoom of up to 8x. If you drop the resolution down to 720p, you can even record at up to a smooth 90 FPS. That’s something that isn’t too common with webcam usage currently. The image quality of this webcam is pretty good. For about $130 (at the time of this review), this 4k webcam veers on the slightly more affordable side and would work great in a larger meeting room or for those in big office spaces. In my home office, the ultra-wide lens was able to encompass the majority of my office width and is very distinguishable when compared to my MacBook Air webcam. I love the ability to capture so much width at a high resolution so I can manually crop into whatever frame I desire to show. The flexibility in the image you want to display for the viewer on the other side is so versatile the higher resolution and wider field of view you are at.
There’s also a specific WyreStorm app that you can download on both Mac and PC that allows you to make color adjustments on your webcam image. Here, you can adjust settings like brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and more. It’s pretty awesome how customized you can get making these adjustments to fit virtually any setting. Although there are other programs people use for this, streamers or live internet broadcasters looking to have more advanced settings with your webcam without much effort may find this is extremely convenient to use. According to its website, WyreStorm uses a wide dynamic range technology to enhance lighting and make images clearer when in lowlight areas. This is supposed to make things easier in locations that don’t have much light.
Buggy Microphone Experience
There’s a lot of good traits about the WyreStorm Focus 200 webcam, but the biggest aspect I was most disappointed with was the inability to use the dual microphone system on the Focus 200. Every time I tried using it when paired to my personal MacBook Air or my work MacBook Pro, I received feedback that I was either echoing or constantly cutting out. This kept happening across both my devices and multiple platforms including on Windows 10 that I was confident something was wrong with either the software or the hardware. For quite some time I ended up just using my MacBook’s microphone while the camera was broadcasting from the WyreStorm.
I ended up reaching out to our contact at WyreStorm directly for a statement regarding this and they sent me a firmware package to download that I launched after performing a factory reset. This actually did end up fixing the microphone issues. After that, audio quality seems clear and precise and I have not had issues with audio since. Unfortunately, this was something I still wanted to mention in my review because if it weren’t for us contacting WyreStorm directly with an inquiry, I may very well have given up troubleshooting the issue as none of the publicly accessible firmware updates at the time fixed the issue. Regardless, I’m happy to see that it was a software fix and not a hardware problem.
Is it Worth It?
Buggy microphone issues aside, I am really pleased with the overall quality and image that the WyreStorm Focus 200 produces. It’s truly easy to plug and go for someone like me who is always on the clock in Zoom meetings most of my day. It's nice being able to have control over things like webcam settings and angles that give me better results than my basic laptop camera. I can see the Focus 200 being used in multiple settings like offices and conference rooms too for small businesses with multiple people around a table. For the price point of $130, it’s hard not to recommend a 4K webcam that undercuts most of that market by nearly $70.
Related
Lida
Always the number cruncher, the former narrative journalist turned data scientist, can’t help but find herself bursting with excitement with each new generation of tech gadgets. After all, predicting future trends is Lida’s forte. Any gadget that survives Lida’s torturous, adult working woman itinerary of over 700 notifications a day deserves praise!