Every year 4K makes strides towards toppling 1080P as the king of resolutions, but there are reasons to make the jump right now, and the Logitech Brio is one of the biggest names in that space for webcams.

Marketed for business on its official website many people will also think of content creation and leisure applications for a 4K webcam. For content creation there’s simply the jump to make video in 4K, but it also comes in handy for 1080P too. Usually 4K is used in 1080P content creation when you want to capture as much of a scene as possible in case you need to crop in at a later stage while not losing quality.

For leisure the first thing we thought of when we saw the Brio was for tabletop gaming which, much like increased business meetings now done online, can’t be done traditionally because of the pandemic. A 4K stream for your dice rolls and cards could be a lifesaver depending on your hobby.

So we know what niche the Brio fills the price is the real kicker here with Logitech representatives who supplied our returned review sample telling us the South African RRP is R3 695. Is the Brio worth it?

Inside the box for your money you get the Brio itself, a mounting clip, a privacy shutter, a 2.2 metre long USB-C to USB-A cable and a carrying bag.

As with many Logitech reviews we’ve done in the past the quality here is fantastic. The Brio is deceptively small for everything it packs in on top of the 4K camera, as there’s also a surprisingly competent stereo microphone, activity light, infrared sensor for Microsoft Hello and more. We’ll touch on each of those soon, but it’s all packed into a rounded metal body that feels well built and sturdy.

Our biggest complaint is more of a little niggle and that’s the mounting system. The Brio itself has a female screw tripod mount on the bottom which is great, but the included mount connects to this not with a screw as you’d expect, but with a peg. Attaching and detaching the two feels like one or the other will break.

The mount also provides little to keep it attached to your screen, depending on some rubber feet and gravity to do all the work. For the price we would have really liked to see something like spring-tension joints.

As mentioned it’s a nitpick and one we quickly forgot about once the Brio was positioned, but keep it in mind if you plan on moving your webcam around.

Firing up the Brio to do some test recording and video calls and the quality here is, as you may expect for 4K, great.

The biggest problem for us was low light. The Brio attempts valiantly to compensate here but it leads to visible noise in the image. You can play with the Brio’s settings all day long – something we’ll talk about when it comes to software – but there’s simply no replacement for adequate lighting.

We must mention that this is somewhat of an unfair test as the room we were in for most of our testing is the worst case scenario for a webcam, but it’s worth putting the Brio through its paces for the sake of review.

It’s also worth talking about the fact that the Brio can help you overcome these issues with its features. As talked about at the top the 4K means you can crop out the bad parts of the image if the shooting conditions aren’t ideal, something not possible in 1080P unless your quality suffers more.

The Brio also has three field of view options with 65°, 78° and 90° available in the Logitech software. Usually the backgrounds of a scene may not be lit right right, and choosing a smaller field of view can help.

When we flooded the scene with light things obviously improved, which is another element to think about when it comes to your personal setup.

The other hardware here impressed us. Our resident audio engineer Brendyn Lotz was surprised by a video call received with the Brio on the other end. If you really don’t want to use a dedicated mic for your calls the Brio can do the job.

The IR sensor and Windows Hello functionality worked perfectly and it signed us into Windows faster than we could type a short password.

What about the software? 

Every piece of audio-visual tech should come with some software from the manufacturer to provide basic functionality, even if the user would be happier with their own choices.

On that end the Brio worked as expected in external applications with OBS, Discord and the Windows default Camera programme all working great, but what about what Logitech provides?

Strangely the Brio has four main pieces of software it works with, discounting the far end control and firmware options on the download page.

The four are Logitech G Hub, Logitech Capture, Camera Settings and Logi Tune.

As you may imagine there’s a lot of overlap between the pieces of software here with options like field of view, flicker adjustment, brightness, contrast and more all popping up.

The pick of the bunch is probably Logitech Capture, also called Logi Capture depending on where you look. It has the greatest number of options including nice to have features like text overlays and scene effects. It’s kneecapped by the fact that that many of those nice features are hidden away behind the need to create an account and log in.

Logitech, if we’re already handing over R3 695 for a webcam asking us to make an account to unlock features is a step too far.

We wish everything was incorporated into Logitech G Hub (see the screenshot below) a piece of software that, as you may have guessed by the name, is supposed to be the central hub of everything Logitech connected to your computer. G Hub supports keyboards, mice, headsets and, yes, even webcams. It doesn’t make much sense to create three more pieces of software when G Hub should be the final stop for Logitech software.

Worried about large install sizes? Just make G Hub dynamically download extra components are more hardware is plugged in. That’s free advice, Logitech, please use it.

The Brio does what Logitech claims it can do, and it does a lot of it well, but once again we revert to the topic of price.

R3 695 is a lot of money no matter how you look at things, but the playing field for the Brio isn’t just against other webcams, it’s against multitaskers like phones and cameras.

During the pandemic the need to video call has lead to countless options popping up for people to use hardware they already own.

Canon, Fujifilm, GoPro, Sony and many more now offer the ability to turn expensive cameras into webcams. Phones and tablets takes things further by being entire devices themselves which can offer many benefits like freeing up computing power on your desktop or notebook.

These factors make it a particularly hard market for the Brio to exist in right now, especially with the aforementioned little niggles and the price.

With all of that in mind the Brio is still a solid 4K webcam offering great picture, audio to match and extra functionality.

If you do have a specific need for a 4K webcam that packs all those features into a small form factor that is well made and comes with the Logitech legacy, then the Brio is worth considering.