Verdict:
A good-quality cam if you can sit still. Quality optics and high specifications, but not the perfect webcam.
Carl Zeiss is an East German company with over 160 years' experience making lenses. They usually end up in cameras, telescopes and so on, but you can now find one of them in this webcam. Like the Creative Optia AF, the Pro 9000 also has a 2 megapixel sensor, and with the addition of Logitech's RightLight 2 technology and autofocus, all the ingredients are in place for really sparkling picture quality. Our expectations were very high.
Things started off well: the autofocus followed our fast-moving subject pretty well, and video looked bright and relatively clean. The top video resolution of 1600x1200 isn't quite 2 megapixels (the spec refers to still image capture), but very near. On closer inspection, however, video from the Logitech just wasn't as crisp as from either of the Creative cams.
In practice, results are further hampered by the fact that the camera's mounting only allows for up and down movement, not side to side. This forces you to stay rooted to a single position in front of your monitor.
Despite our gripes, there are lots of reasons to like this webcam - but there are even more to like the Creative Optias.
