Laptop webcams are terrible: This webcam will make you look your back-to-school best

Razer Kiyo webcam on top of a computer monitor

(Image credit: Razer)

It's back-to-school season, which means stocking up on dorm room essentials and fleshing out your tech to keep pace with a demanding year ahead.

With much of that year potentially being filled with a mix of online classes and calls to those back home, there's a real argument to be made for picking up a new webcam — especially while there are so many impressive deals available on some of the best webcams out there.

One such deal highlights the impressive Razer Kiyo, now only $45 at Amazon. The Kiyo is a full-HD webcam with a built-in ring light twist that suits your needs no matter the time of day or lighting conditions.

That's a 55% savings against this much-loved webcam's regular $99 asking price, and it's one of the biggest savings on quality webcams you're likely to find in these back-to-school sales. Let's take a closer look at the Razer Kiyo.

Razer Kiyo: Look your back-to-school best

Fantastic savings aside, the Razer Kiyo is a solid option for those looking to invest in a fantastic webcam for all environments and uses. Even if it wasn't on sale, this webcam is well worth noting to any prospective webcam buyer.

The Kiyo offers a wide 81.6-degree field of view, ensuring you'll be well-framed even closer to your cam. Its 4-megapixel 1080p resolution will provide a crisp, detailed image that has you looking your best at the other end of a call.

With autofocus, you'll never have to worry about making manual adjustments on the fly to keep things sharp, though Razer's Synapse software will allow you to make fine adjustments to the picture, ensuring colors pop and there's a clear contrast at all times.

Razer Kiyo Webcam: was $99, now $45 @ Amazon
Now 55% off during the back-to-school season, the Razer Kiyo's excellent webcam performance is available for a price you shouldn't argue with.

The Kiyo webcam features a multi-step ring light and a wide field of view to ensure you're well-lit and well-framed while maintaining all of the critical details in each image with its autofocus capabilities and full-HD 8MP resolution.

Cap things off with a built-in omnidirectional microphone, and you will have a well-rounded product that will serve you nicely for years in video calls, streaming, and even media recordings.

It just wouldn't be a Razer product if it didn't have some lighting flair, and the Kiyo is no exception. While the Kiyo isn't beaming with RGB goodness, one of its unique selling points and features comes from its multi-step ring light, which eliminates any low light concerns by illuminating you with its powerful white LEDs.

Perhaps its only potential drawback is the lack of a real high-quality mic, though the Kiyo's omnidirectional offering is more than capable of maintaining clarity and audio quality across online calls and streams. While there's very little that's going to beat a dedicated microphone, the Kiyo's offering is at least above and beyond the average laptop's built-in solution.

Overall, Razer's Kiyo is a fantastic all-around option that can provide an excellent accessory that's great for video calls, streaming, online meetings, and even direct recording video. No matter what you have in mind, the Kiyo can provide.

See our full Razer Kiyo review for more.

More great back-to-school deals on webcams

If your budget is a little broader, or you're looking for something high on function and low on price, then don't panic. The Razer Kiyo isn't the only webcam you'll find for an impressive discount this back-to-school season. In fact, it's not even the only Razer Kiyo webcam on sale.

Razer Kiyo Pro Webcam: was $199, now $84 @ Amazon
During Amazon's back-to-school sales, you can save an incredible $115 on the Razer Kiyo Pro webcam and unlock a pro-grade webcam for a fraction of its regular price. Razer's more premium webcam ups the ante and improves on its beloved Kiyo to ensure you always look clear, crisp, and camera-ready.

If you're a student interested in content creation, most 1080p webcams will give you reasonable results.

However, if you want crisp and vivid excellence when presenting yourself in online calls or videos, then something like the Razer Kiyo Pro, with its high-performance adaptive light sensors and uncompressed wide-angle, 1080p, 60 FPS, HDR video capture, is the way to go.

On the other hand, if you're looking for something sweet and simple, there are a ton of webcam deals to choose from that will undoubtedly suit your needs and your budget. While you could keep it in the Kiyo family and opt for the trimmed-down Razer Kiyo X for just $39 at Amazon (a saving of over 50%), there are even more affordable options available in the back-to-school sales, including this ultra-affordable gem from Logitech.

Logitech Brio 100 Webcam: was $40, now $25 @ Best Buy
With Best Buy's back-to-school savings, you can save $15 on the Logitech Brio 100 webcam. The Brio 100 is an incredibly affordable external webcam that does away with many of the bells and whistles offered by more expensive models to focus on providing a straightforward, full-HD webcam and microphone combo backed by Logitech's RightLight tech, which improves brightness by up to 50% in low-light conditions.

It's completely plug-and-play, ready to work with Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom right out of the box, with no confusing setup required.

Better still, the Brio 100 is also fitted with a privacy slide so you have complete peace of mind about what it can and cannot see at all times.

Why should you use an external webcam as a student?

Video calls and online classes go without a hitch when you have a solid, dependable webcam to rely on that won't turn you into a pixelated mess or a dimly lit silhouette during these face-to-face moments.

Fortunately, you'll be hard-pressed to find a laptop that isn't outfitted with a webcam nowadays. Unfortunately, you can't always bank on that webcam being any good. Laptop webcams are notoriously an afterthought for many laptop manufacturers — meaning finding a laptop with a great webcam is more of a challenge than you'd assume.

Thankfully, some of the best webcams can solve all your woes entirely, offering an external option that you can use across devices and that often delivers a much brighter, smoother, and sharper picture than your built-in cam.

More from Laptop Mag

Rael Hornby, potentially influenced by far too many LucasArts titles at an early age, once thought he’d grow up to be a mighty pirate. However, after several interventions with close friends and family members, you’re now much more likely to see his name attached to the bylines of tech articles. While not maintaining a double life as an aspiring writer by day and indie game dev by night, you’ll find him sat in a corner somewhere muttering to himself about microtransactions or hunting down promising indie games on Twitter.