Obsbot Tiny 2 review: My new favorite webcam

When I reviewed the Obsbot Tiny 4K last year, I was blown away by both the image quality and tracking features it included. Since then, contenders like the Insta360 Link and the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra have given it a run for its money. But with the newly-launched Tiny 2, Obsbot is taking back the crown as the best webcam on the market by improving the package in almost every way.

The Obsbot Tiny 2 comes with a massive upgrade to the sensor, easily outclassing its predecessor, and it delivers some of the best image quality you can get on a webcam. But it’s when you add the tracking capabilities and remote control that it truly becomes something special, and it makes this my new favorite webcam. Plus, the hardware itself is much nicer than before.

Really, the only downside with this webcam for me is the price tag, but it’s not actually much more expensive than other high-end webcams. It’s just more expensive than most people might need. But if you want a great webcam and you can splurge, then this is the one for you.

Obsbot Tiny 2: Pricing and availability

The Obsbot Tiny 2 launched on June 27, 2023, and it’s available through Obsbot’s own website as well as on Amazon. Pricing comes in at $329, which makes this the most expensive webcam I’ve reviewed, albeit by a small margin compared to other high-end rivals like the Insta360 Link and Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, both coming in at $299.

That does make the Obsbot Tiny 2 something of a hard sell, especially considering those other two are already very expensive. But if you’re in the market for something this high-end, I’d imagine that $30 difference isn’t what’s going to deter you.

Design

It actually feels kind of premium

In terms of how it looks, the Obsbot Tiny 2 is a huge leap forward from its predecessor in more ways than one. For one thing, it’s far smaller and lighter than the previous model. It’s over almost 30mm shorter in height, and over 10mm smaller in width and depth, so it makes a pretty big difference. It’s still slightly bigger than the Insta360 Link, but for the hardware packed in here, this is a reasonable size. It’s certainly much more sleek-looking than the behemoth that is the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra.

What I also love is that the webcam feels much more premium in terms of how it looks. The entire gimbal and camera structure looks like it’s made of metal, where most cameras are unapologetically plastic, and it looks really nice. The base is still clearly made of plastic here, but the top half looks really sleek. It still has that red outline around the camera and a light at the front indicating the current state of the webcam — blue when tracking is enabled, yellow when the tracked subject is lost, and green when tracking is disabled.

A versatile gimbal

Another benefit I think is worth mentioning in this section is that while the gimbal is software-controlled, it doesn’t resist physical force (as long as it’s within its range of movement). This means you can flip the camera down to turn it off for privacy, or you can manually rotate it if you don’t want to use software controls to get the right angle. That’s a big benefit over the Insta360 Link, especially considering how easy it was for that camera to lose track of me in more challenging scenarios.

The gimbal itself supports two directions, those being horizontal rotation (or pan) and tilt. The hardware itself supports horizontal panning up to 150 degrees both ways, and it can fully tilt 90 degrees down or upward. Effectively, though, the software control can only make use of 140-degree bi-directional panning and it can tilt up to 70 degrees upward or 30 degrees downward. That’s still a very wide range of movement, and realistically, you won’t be in a situation where you need more than that very often.

One thing it lacks compared to something like the Insta360 Link is the ability to be used as a portrait-oriented camera. That’s a legitimate feature if you’re creating vertical content, though I’d imagine most people use their phones for that anyway.

It comes with a sturdy case, too

It may seem superfluous, but I think cameras like the Obsbot Tiny 2 deserve a nod for their packaging, or rather, the included case. Indeed, instead of just being in a box, the Obsbot Tiny 2 comes inside a travel case that’s really nice and sturdy. It’s a hard shell with space for the webcam, the monitor mount, the USB-C-to-C cable, and a little pocket for things like the USB Type-C to Type-A adapter. It makes it easier to travel with it if you don’t want to give up the great image quality, as it would be pretty hard to find a case suited for a webcam otherwise.

Image quality

One of the best sensors in a webcam

Obsbot also delivered some big upgrades on the inside of the webcam, particularly upgrading the sensor. The Obsbot Tiny 2 has a 1/1.5-inch sensor with f/1.9 aperture, and that’s one of the largest sensors in a webcam, with one of the widest apertures, too. It’s still smaller than the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra, but it’s still well ahead of the Insta360 Link, and considering the sheer size of Razer’s webcam, it’s very impressive that Obsbot fit such a big sensor in such a small package.

This is all reflected in image quality, as you’d expect. All three cameras look great in daylight, with quality getting slightly worse when switching to indoor lighting, and finally to no lighting aside from my monitors. The Obsbot Tiny 2 is clearly a bit sharper and less noisy than the Insta360 Link, though both get trounced by the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra in very low light. For each set of images below, the Obsbot Tiny 2 is presented first, followed by the Insta360 Link and then the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra.

It is worth noting that the Insta360 Link seems to preserve my natural skin tone a bit better in low-light, while the Obsbot Tiny 2 is more influenced by the color of the light coming from the monitor. In terms of noise, though, Obsbot definitely looks cleaner, and that’s a big advantage of this larger sensor. You can also tell here that the Obsbot Tiny 2 has a slightly wider field of view, at 85.5 degrees compared to the 79 degrees of the Insta360 Link.

It’s all about that tracking

Where Obsbot really runs away from the competition is tracking, and that’s what makes this my favorite webcam yet. Razer’s webcam offers nothing like this, so the only real competition is the Insta360 Link, but Obsbot clearly comes out on top.

When tracking is enabled, the Obsbot Tiny 2 will use its gimbal to pan and tilt and make sure you’re always centered in the webcam’s frame. It does a very good job of tracking you, so you can move around pretty freely and it will still follow you. And if it loses track of you it will generally stop and it can pick you up again when you come back into the frame. It’s not perfect, but the system works most of the time. The Insta360 Link, on the other hand, fails more easily and tends to keep moving a bit after it loses you, which makes it harder for it to find you if you come back to the spot where it lost you in the first place.

I tried recording a quick comparison video, but the Insta360 Link lost so quickly that it was almost pointless and I didn’t test all the movements I was planning to include in that video. You can see that below. I did conduct other tests outside of this, and it’s pretty much in line with what you see below.

Another benefit of the Obsbot Tiny 2 is that if it does fail to track you again, you can physically rotate the gimbal to get it to see you. The Insta360 Link resists any physical force, and you’ll have to use reset tracking and enable it again for it to work.

Low-light performance also plays a role here. I tried enabling tracking when I had the lights off and simply moving to the back of my room. As you can see in the pictures I took, the Obsbot Tiny 2 still managed to track me and keep me centered in the dark, while the Insta360 Link lost me when I moved away from the light coming from my monitors, and I ended up off-center.

Between the sharper image quality and the much better tracking, the Obsbot Tiny 2 is easily the best webcam in this segment.

Software and controls

It supports gestures and voice controls

The Obsbot Tiny 4K introduced me to gesture controls, which allow me to control certain webcam features, like enabling or disabling tracking, or zooming in and out, using a hand gesture in front of the camera. That’s all still here in the Obsbot Tiny 2, along with a new gesture where you use both hands to make an L shape to dynamically adjust the zoom level, rather just toggling between preset zoom factors.

The big new addition, though, is voice controls. That’s right, you can now use the microphones on the webcam to control it instead of trying to figure out how to make the gestures work. You can wake up the webcam or put it to sleep, ask it to zoom in or out, and enable or disable tracking, all using your voice, and the command recognition seems to work pretty darn well. Whether using your voice during a call is less awkward than moving your hands might be debatable, but if you’re muted during a call, you can speak to the webcam more discreetly than trying to get the gestures to work right while everyone while others are looking at you.

Voice controls also let you switch between preset gimbal positions, though these require the Obsbot WebCam software (formerly Obsbot TinyCam). Surprisingly, though, all of the above works without software. You don’t even need to have the webcam plugged into a computer, necessarily. I could use all these features with the webcam connected to a docking station that wasn’t connected to my PC.

A lot more features in the Obsbot WebCam app

There’s a lot more you can do if you do have the Obsbot WebCam software, though. All of the controls available through gestures and voice can be changed in software, too, including changing the gimbal position, zooming, and enabling tracking. However, these capabilities are expanded upon here. You can enable auto-zoom with a few settings to focus on your upper or lower body (for some reason), or a more close-up view.

There are few other AI modes, too, like Desk and Whiteboard modes that are clearly borrowed from the Insta360 Link I reviewed last year. Interestingly, the Insta360 Link came with markers to help you define the whiteboard area, while this one doesn’t, so Obsbot is seemingly just looking for flat white surfaces. I don’t have a whiteboard to test this very thoroughly, unfortunately, but it did pick up a piece of paper as a whiteboard. Additionally, there’s a new hand-tracking mode which might be useful if you want to show off some kind of manual work, and a group mode, too. I found that it can have some trouble tracking your hands if you move too quickly, but for the most part, it works well.

Another new feature in this software is beauty mode, along with a few other capabilities that are enabled through the Obsbot Virtual Camera. This includes a few different beauty modes (called Native, Classic, and Men, for some reason), as well as features to change the appearance of pretty much your whole body, from slimness to shoulder width. There are a few filters and background blur, too. Since all of this requires heavy post-processing, it’s not coming off the webcam directly, and instead, you need to use the virtual webcam feature to use these capabilities.

Of course, a few other capabilities are also available, like HDR and general image settings like brightness, exposure, and everything you’d need to get the image quality you want. I generally stuck to the default settings here since things looked pretty great for the most part.

There’s an actual remote control, too

While it’s not included with the base package, the Obsbot Tiny 2 also supports remote controls using an actual remote, if you want something less awkward than gestures or voice. Obsbot did send this to me, but I didn’t use it very much since I’m pretty happy with the built-in controls. It’s pretty cool, though. It connects using a USB dongle and you can use it for most of the webcam controls, like tracking, switching between gimbal positions, or enabling AI features like desk mode, hand tracking, or whiteboard mode.

In fact, this is a legitimate presentation remote, too. It includes buttons for moving to the next in a PowerPoint presentation and a built-in laser that’s fairly powerful if you need to point at something on a physical whiteboard. If you’re doing presentations that require both your webcam and PowerPoint, this unlocks a lot of versatility. You can even use the remote to click UI elements (though it’s a little clunky) and switch between windows. It’s all meant to make presentations easier, and while it’s not something I need myself, I can definitely see uses for it.

The remote costs $49 sold separately, but you can get save $10 by buying it as a bundle on Obsbot’s website.

Should you buy the Obsbot Tiny 2?

You should buy the Obsbot Tiny 2 if:

• You need great image quality for meetings and video calls
• You’re conducting presentations where you move around frequently
• You have money to spare

You should NOT buy the Obsbot Tiny 2 if:

• You just want a simple upgrade for your laptop’s webcam or to add a basic webcam to your desktop
• You only use the webcam while sitting at a fixed position
• You don’t want to spend $300

If you’re looking for a high-end webcam, especially one with face tracking and pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) capabilities, you really can’t do much better than the Obsbot Tiny 2. It’s mainly competing against the Insta360 Link, and I’d argue it wins in just about every category. Image quality is very sharp, the tracking is reliable, it supports both gesture and voice controls, and it has a really nice design. I frankly can’t complain a lot aside from the price. The only thing I really wish it had is Windows Hello support, but all these high-end webcams are more focused on quality than extra features like that.

But that price is definitely a big barrier that most people don’t need to have to conquer. There’s a pretty low chance you need a 4K webcam with all these capabilities, and a $50 webcam will already be much better than most laptops on the market. This is made for those that really need this image quality and features, and if you;re in that group, you can’t get much better.