Logitech has just made an amazing Windows Hello-ready biometric webcam for your Windows 10 PC
Microsoft Windows 10 lets you login using a variety of secure methods, including fingerprints, iris, and face recognition. While getting used to pressing your thumb on a tiny scanner may not be for everyone, face recognition can be a more intuitive and seamless way to get past Windows 10 lock screen without passwords or pins.
With that said, Intel RealSense cameras, namely the most secure way to log into Windows 10 via facial recognition, are still very much bundled with existing devices, with little hope of being able to buy them as standalone products, anytime soon. There are however, alternative devices that allow a certain degree of security, and can be used and set up just as easily.
Logitech has been a long time pioneer in PC accessories, and has been designing webcams for decades. Those who remember the little white eyeball-shaped Logitech QuickCam Express, with the iconic pyramidal stand, and the thick white USB cable sticking out of the back like an optic nerve, will probably remember a time when Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger were as popular on desktop PCs as Whatsapp and Skype are today on smartphones.
The quality of early webcams was rather terrible, often restricted to the grainiest postage-stamp resolutions, with even worse performance in low--light conditions.
Fast forward to 2017, the Logitech Brio is simply a thing of beauty. For those looking to add a webcam to a desktop PC that doesn’t have one yet, Brio is slick, beautifully designed, and easy to install and operate.
There are at least two reasons to consider this accessory: first, this is one of the rarest webcams available on the market with 4K support, albeit at a considerably higher cost than the average webcam, set currently at $200. With that in mind, this webcam is capable of recording 4K video at 30fps, which is pretty amazing considering that similar performance is rare even in consumer devices as sophisticated as the Apple iPhone.
The second reason is that this webcam is built to work with Windows Hello, as a face-recognition device, using infrared sensors.
While infrared sensors alone do not guarantee the same amazing accuracy and quality as Intel RealSense, Logitech did a great job creating a webcam capable of handling both 4K video recording and biometric authentication.
The other perks that come with this model, are the ability to record video at a much higher frame rate, when downgrading from 4K to HD, resulting in 60fps videos, and up to 90fps, when downgrading the quality to 720p.
For $200, this product really is exceptional, but there is a downside too, which is the lack of support for 4K HDR in currently available displays for PC. While there are plenty of 4K and 5K choices, HDR requires a wider range of colors, which is something that is not yet widely available.
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