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Everything You Need to Look and Sound Good on a Video Call

Logitech

You’ve probably been doing a lot of video calls recently—both business and personal. And while the webcam and microphone on your laptop are fine, you know things could be so much better. With just a few pieces of gear, you can upgrade your video conferencing setup significantly.

First Off, Look Behind You

No one likes a messy room, and the same goes for backgrounds. Keeping the area within view of your webcam clean goes a long way to improving the overall image. You could always use a virtual background if you don’t want to mess with anything in your room, but that requires either a green screen or a decent graphics card to work.

Besides keeping the area clean, you should also watch out for the lighting and camera angle. The major things to avoid are sitting in dark parts of your room or having windows and bright lights located behind you—those all look pretty bad on camera.

When it comes to the camera angle, try to make sure you’re not looking down at the camera. Preferably, your webcam should be at eye level or slightly above, depending on your setup. When it comes to raising your camera, you could get a simple camera tripod (make sure it’s compatible with your webcam), or just stack some books on your desk.

 A Dedicated Webcam

Logitech

This will be the most “bang for the buck” upgrade. Jumping from a bad to even just a decent webcam is a major improvement, and there are plenty of quality options out there.

Lighting

Neewer

A dark room is obviously harder to see in, but it also heavily affects the quality of your webcam. When webcams have to record rooms with dark lighting, the image appears grainy—proper lighting can fix that.

A Proper Microphone

Samson Technologies, Blue

Your video is covered, so let’s switch over to audio. No one wants to use a bad microphone—it’s unpleasant to listen to and makes understanding what you’re saying difficult. While most webcams will come with a microphone built-in, these are rarely above passable and often experience echo. It’s worth it to get a dedicated microphone if you want to be heard loud and clear.

Headphones

Sennheiser

When you’re using a dedicated microphone, wearing headphones is important. After all, your microphone might pick up the sound coming from your speakers over your voice.

Just a couple of pieces of gear are enough to boost your video conferencing game from passable to fantastic. And those improvements not only help you, but the people you’re talking to as well.

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