M1210 Integrated Webcam, Is it just me?

Am I the one? I upgraded my notebook last week from the 700m to the M1210. Overall, I think this a great laptop and I am happy with my purchase...except for the integrated webcam. I am blown away by how poor the quality is. So much so that Dell sent a tech guy to my house to change the cam (we thought that it was not functioning properly). Once it was swapped out and retested, it turned out that there was actually no problem with the original. Funny thing is, even the Dell tech guy was blown away by the poor quality. In moderate to low light, the picture is very grainy and there are, what seeems to be, grainy strips running across the display box. When I try to use the low light boost setting, the refresh rate becomes very slow (I would think that conducting a video chat over the internet with this setting on would be impossible and quite annoying for the other party). On my 700M (which I still own) I used a Logitech Webcam Deluxe which is not even the best model). In a side by side comparison in a low light environment, there was no comparison and the integrated webcam was a disappointment to look at. If I had known this, I would have opted out on the AV package and just used an external webcam since convenience should not be a reason to do away with quality . Maybe it's just me, my expectations could have been too high. In my opinion, this is a very poor webcam for today standards.

 

Sorry, I meant to say, am I the only one?

 

i do agree, but then (apparently) the quality's great if/when there's plenty of light? i've never tried it myself since i live in a cave, but then ya, that's apparently the case.

 

yes its great when there is a lot of light. Just got to live with its quirks. And its better than all the other built in webcams ive seen to date.

 

You are not the only one the cam on mines sucks as well

 

If you're still not happy within the 1st 21 days, you can return it & order one without the AV package....

 

yeah the webcam sucks, i had high expectations of it because of the video in the review on this site.

then again, his lighting was awesome.

 

its not awesome lighting, its just daytime. If you are in a dim area, it sucks, plain and simple. But the convenience of having it at all times outweighs the negatives imo

 

^^agreed.....

 

This is the nature of the beast. Those tiny webcams have tiny sensors meaning they needs lots of light to output decent video. I haven't seen the m1210 in action, but I could only imagine that it would need quite a bit of light.

Mike