 Not only is the selfie camera on your phone absolutely incredible for its size, but it probably has been for about the last 10 years. Which raises the question, what the heck is going on with PC laptops? It feels like not only have they not really improved in any meaningful way, but in some cases, they've even gotten worse. Now, my assumption here was that laptop makers figured, eh, webcam, that's an easy place to cut costs. But as it turns out, that is only a small piece of the puzzle. Just like our sponsor, Storyblocks is a small part of this video. Save time and money with Storyblocks by getting studio quality stock video clips for a fraction of the cost. Check it out today at the link below or learn more at the end of this video. [♪ Music playing. Music playing. Now I got a cop to this. Although I've been one of the most vocal reviewers trying to get decent webcams into laptops, we expect that you're just going to use your phone quality. Look how much better this phone looks. That's not even a current gen phone. The webcam falls considerably short of the Surface laptop. After chatting with some engineers at HP, I might also be partially responsible for them being so bad. But first, to understand what makes a camera bad, we have to talk about what makes one good. Starting with the sensor. This Sony FX6 features an enormous 35 millimeter wide full frame sensor. And when it comes to cameras, size matters. All other things being equal, the bigger the sensor, the more light it can collect on each pixel, improving color fidelity and greatly improving performance in low light conditions. So problem number one is that due to space constraints, webcams use super small sensors, typically in the range of about two to five millimeters wide. That's the bit I'm concerned I may have influenced. The thing is, as pressure from consumers and reviewers mounted for the bezels on laptops to shrink, so did the webcams shrink. I mean, we were stoked when Dell announced refreshed XPS models with top mounted webcams that didn't look up the user's nose. And I do still think that was a worthwhile trade off, but the results are not incredible. But does shrinking the bezel really make that much of a difference? Yes, actually. Let me show you. In the Dragonfly Max, HP actually increased the bezel size compared to the last model to accommodate a five millimeter sensor. Quick correction here. We said the sensor on the Dragonfly was five millimeters because, well, we were told it was a fifth of an inch and a fifth of an inch is five millimeters. In actual fact, it's 3.63 millimeters because camera sensors don't use actual units. Instead use the VidCon nominal size, which is about one and a half times larger than the actual dimensions of the sensor. This is something that was decided by camera marketers in the 90s to try and sell their super small sensor digital cameras. Still much bigger sensor than the Dell, but not quite as big as we originally thought. Anyway, back to Linus. Now, that's still only 2% of the size of the FX6 I just showed you, but it's also a whopping five times the size of the 2.2 millimeter sensor in the skinny bezel Dell's. This bigger sensor also allows more pixels to be packed in for 1440p recording, which delivers a noticeable improvement in sharpness compared to your typical 720p webcam. Another problem for laptop webcams is Windows Hello facial recognition, something that I have also championed loudly. It is the best way to sign into Windows, hands down, but because lighting conditions might be dramatically different from one sign into the next, it relies on built-in emitters that will illuminate your face using infrared light. Now, digital cameras are inherently sensitive to infrared, but most of them actually block it out on purpose because it causes issues with both autofocus and color saturation. Also, it travels through some kinds of clothing, which is a little awkward. That's why earlier implementations of Windows Hello used a separate camera dedicated to capturing IR. But then, in that same mad rush to shrink bezels, these have been combined in some models. And in spite of the software tuning that goes into these combined sensors, you can still get purple splotchiness and weird noise. On the Dragonfly Max, then, HP decided combined sensors were a pain in the butt they didn't want to deal with, so they included a separate IR and video camera to get you the cleanest feed possible. One thing they were really stoked about is a special coating they developed so you couldn't see the IR hardware. Apparently, it was very difficult to do, so good job, guys. Now, of course, you can have the biggest, baddest sensor in the world, and if the glass in front of it is bad, your picture quality is going to be bad. One of the roles that the lens plays, then, is to ensure that that tiny sensor gets as much light hitting it as possible. Now, the aperture of a camera, or more accurately, a lens, describes how big of an opening you have. So, the bigger the opening, the more light you can get. And since we already have problems with low light on such small sensors, well, then, we should make the aperture on the lens for your webcam as wide open as possible, right? Well, yes, but also no. The size of your aperture not only changes how much light is let in, but also the depth of field. LTTStory.com, by the way, buy a shirt. So, if we were to really open up the lens on the laptop, it would need to have exceptional autofocus to make sure that you don't go all blurry every time you shift around in your seat. Now, there are many ways to do autofocus. Probably the best way is demonstrated in Sony's Alpha lineup. Like, look at how it instantly grabs focus on the keys in the shot from our Ticam review. It uses parts of the sensor to detect the phase of the incoming light and uses that to focus. Modern phones use similar tech, probably at least partly because Sony also supplies the sensors for Apple and Samsung, with these super small microelectromechanical systems or MEMS that can super accurately focus the lenses. As for how laptop webcams focus, well, they don't. There simply isn't enough space. Like, think about the thickness of your phone. I mean, sure, it's not super chonker or anything, but compared to the thickness of a laptop display, phones are enormous. Throw in that most laptop designers want a smooth, sexy curve at the edge of the display, and then the cabling from the webcam, microphone, and Wi-Fi antennas that are usually back there, and you don't have the space that you would need for multi-element lenses. So, just a single focus point has to be picked, and that's what you're stuck with. So, even for the Dragonfly Max, which is supposed to be our shining star today of a decent webcam, HP focused the lens at 50 centimeters, which is the average distance that someone sits from their computer during a video call, and figures, well, you'll get acceptable focus anywhere from 30 to 90 centimeters. All of this means that due largely to space constraints, this is as good of an image as you can expect to be getting out of a webcam on your laptop. But what if you didn't have size constraints? Here, we've got the Dell UltraSharp webcam, which not only uses a larger five millimeter-ish sensor, but also has a multi-element lens to improve the image quality. With that said, it does still lag behind the rear camera of a phone, because the third critical step in squeezing the best possible image quality out of these tiny sensors is post-processing. Apple and Google, for instance, use techniques like sharpening and AI upscaling to enhance their performance. Dell apparently has not sold enough extended warranties to match Apple and Google's R&D in this area, but on a Zoom call, it is more than acceptable. Of course, you can get away with mediocre video just fine if your audio quality is good. Now, simple laptop microphones have one or sometimes two little holes, usually near the screen to capture your voice, while better ones can use more. The Dragonfly Elite, for example, has two super tiny holes in the lid that have mics behind them that sample the noise in your room and then try to cancel it out. Now, in the past, noise cancellation was only really good for removing constant noises, like a loud air conditioner, not as good for short noises like a dog barking or police sirens. To combat this, AI noise cancellation can also be used, which we demonstrated in this video about RTX Voice. It's kind of amazing how good it is at removing random noises. And I'm going to be very impressed if RTX sales get rid of that. So then the bad news today is that there are serious constraints to improving webcam quality in laptops. But the good news is that they can get better, and some laptop manufacturers are beginning to take the problem seriously. All it took was everyone working from home due to a global pandemic. I will have to be more careful what I ask for in the future. That is some real monkey paw stuff right there. Thanks to Storyblocks, by the way, for sponsoring today's video. Storyblocks helps you bring your stories to life without sacrifices due to time, budget, or other resources. They feature over one million different stock assets, and you can save even more time using Storyblocks' in-browser video editor. It features pre-designed templates, animations, and outros, and Storyblocks uses an affordable subscription model. Their unlimited all-access plan gives you unlimited video and audio downloads, instead of a costly pay-per-clip model. We use it all the time on TechQuickie because we don't always have the time to go out and shoot the perfect B-roll footage. So check out Storyblocks today at storyblocks.com slash linustechtips. If you guys are looking for another video to watch, maybe check out our first look at Sensel's Force Touch trackpad. It is going to straight up change how we use laptops in the coming years.