Elgato Facecam 4K review — DSLR quality at a fraction of the price

Elgato may have me in a chokehold. While there are plenty of great devices out there for controlling and capturing your gaming content, Elgato has made theirs so simple. We’re talking Geico levels of “it’s so easy even a caveman can do it”. I’ve had a Facecam for a good while, but I’ve needed an upgrade so I could get away from needing my Canon EOS M50 camera for the crispest picture. With Elgato bringing 4K to the Facecam formula beyond the Pro model, things are about to get vivid in this review.

Everything comes in the blue box with the curvy logo on it we all know and love. Inside you’ll find the Elgato Facecam 4K, a plastic mount, and a USB-C to C cable. Just like the 4K S capture card (which I recently reviewed), the cable is immaculate, 6.5ft long in a braided sheath. The mount has a ¼” thread, and is quite malleable in adjusting it for your particular monitor setup. Something that is an odd omission is a lack of a physical privacy/protective cover for the lens as a standard inclusion. While it is offered for free when buying from Elgato, you can decide to rebuff it in favor of a CPL filter.

Similar to its older brother the Facecam, the 4K is of great quality. It looks the part, with the wide rectangular body a premium container for the custom lens. Elgato has also added lens mount around the lens that is for more than just aesthetics; you can add any 49mm filter to up your capture game.

Inside the plastic frame is where the magic happens. A Sony 1/1.8” Starvis 2 CMOS sensor powers the capture, perfect to grab all of your video footage in beautiful 4K/60fps. Beside that, Elgato’s image processing chip takes the data from that sensor and converts it into the video transmitted to your display. It takes the two of these to tango, and that wonderful dance makes its way through the included USB-C 3.0 cable to offer zero compression. They aren’t kidding either; every time I move around on camera it’s like I’m seeing a one-to-one transmission of my actions.

The most impressive thing about Elgato’s devices is their plug-and-play nature and ease of use. That continues with the Facecam 4K. I’d never call myself a savant when it comes to cameras, and I don’t have the time to try. The great thing about Elgato’s Facecam 4K and the software is that I don’t have to be, with Elgato doing all the hard work for me.

As soon as I plugged up my Facecam 4K, it was working and immediately usable within Windows. There’s no feeling like gear that works correctly. Not only that, I didn’t have to adjust anything else beyond designating it as a source in OBS and Streamlabs to instantly have it providing capture for my overlays. That means within minutes, you can be shooting videos or doing livestreams. Of course, after a quick update, Elgato’s own Capture Hub had my Facecam 4K ready to rock, along with plenty of additional features.

While my knowledge of the software available is still growing, Elgato’s Capture Hub has my back. You’ll see quite a few snapshots here of myself, showing the Facecam at 1080p, its maximum, and the others showing the Facecam 4K at 1080p, 4K, and 4K with HDR. These are the simplest settings to manipulate, and the differences in quality are impressive. The Facecam 4K dwarfs what the original Facecam can do, along with having a better blur setting to boot!

There’s even more than just that to the Capture Hub, with many DSLR-style settings in the mix. My favorites are the Frame settings and HDR. In Frame settings, you can zoom in, along with being able to use the up to 90 degree field of view to pan around and utilize the space afforded by the capture. Beyond that, you can also create four presets for where your lens goes in that space, great for attaching to your Stream Deck for quick camera shifts. With the right NVIDIA update, you can even have it track your face!

HDR is arguably the most important function for this camera. While it does cost you the 60fps mode, it’s more than worth the added natural colors you get in 4K/30fps while using HDR. I’m astounded that even in lower light settings, I get image quality this good. If it does that here, maybe a few Elgato Key Lights will give me movie level quality (more on this in a moment)? 

Beyond just these options are plenty of other lighting settings you can adjust, like ISO, shutter speed, saturation, and more, along with cinematic LUTs you can mess with. I did notice in most of my snapshots that simply using the automatic “range finder” functionality isn’t always the best choice. It’s good to go into your exposure, picture, and white balance settings to get the clearest and most colorful picture you can. Given these are all sliders, it won’t take long to find what works for you and your space, especially if you’re like me and don’t always have the greatest lighting at your desk. Once you’re done, all of these settings save to the camera itself, so moving it or an accidental unplugging doesn’t remove your meticulously discovered “best picture quality”.

One of the greatest recommendations I can make is to ensure you have good lighting in your space. No matter how good the Elgato Facecam 4K is, it can’t make up for poor lighting. It will punch higher than others can in low lighting situations, but you’re going to be sorely disappointed in the results if you don’t upgrade your lighting. I’ve gotten a good look at what that looks like in some of my testing, and the grainy textures you get aren’t pretty. The Facecam 4K is amazing, but it won’t work miracles. Do like me and grab a few keylights, which Elgato just happens to make!

If you want to go further, you can even add your own lenses to get the best shot possible for your space! As mentioned before, Elgato added the ability to screw on your own 49mm filter lenses. They are the first to support this functionality, and it’s a super cool idea. With a ridiculous amount of styles of filters to choose from on the market, any idea you have is possible. Filters can take impossible situations in video capture and turn them around; these can change your content creation completely. They aren’t proprietary either, so as long as it’s 49mm, you can use it. Good on Elgato to add a capability which allows creativity outside of their financial benefit.

Speaking of financial benefit – let’s talk price. The regular Facecam runs $139.99. As big of an upgrade as the 4K is, it’s only $199.99. Even further, let’s look at the practicality of the Facecam 4K versus my Canon M50 camera. Back when it was a newer item in 2020, I spent $599.99 on the M50, plus the cost of a lens (and those are both pricier now). After taking a look at these two running side by side, there’s no way I’d spend that kind of money again. Elgato offers arguably the same quality, if not better, at a third of the price. Sure, technology can get cheaper over time, but those cameras are still in that range where the Facecam 4K is only $200. I’ll take the Facecam 4K and its ease of use over a more complicated and expensive camera any day.

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