Up until recently, Microsoft offered keyboards, mice and many peripherals but no webcams.  This has been resolved since last fall to the great dismay of previous leaders on this market: Creative, Logitech and Philips.   You may recall that in the entry-level all of these manufacturers propose basic starting products which sell very well: the Vista Plus, Messenger and SPC 210NC, respectively.  And what these three products have in common? We strongly recommend avoiding them.  The list of downsides is long: a lack of sharpness, they are blank when night falls, afterglow, and missing colors.  Now Microsoft arrives on the entry-level with an attractive design and especially a product of good quality.

No zoom but images are sharp

Even better, the small VX-1000 surpasses the Hercules Deluxe, our previous low priced favorite.  Its rendering is better in every aspect:  shapes are better respected (the Deluxe had the tendency of rounding things), superior sharpness especially due to softer and better image processing, increased visibility at night, and more natural colors with normal lighting.  You just have to look at these two webcams in the Product face-offs to understand these qualities in images.  While you are there, also take a look at the LifeCam VX-1000 compared to the model just above, the VX-3000 (also from Microsoft), which proves to be quite interesting.  Despite the 15 euro difference, the two webcams only differ by a digital zoom on the 3000 and a very slight modification of image correction which artificially increases sharpness (not overly impressive).  This price gap doesn’t seem justified in our opinion and between the two our obvious choice is for the 1000.