The Obsbot Tiny 3 packs best-in-class AI tracking, sharp 4K video, smooth 1080p120 recording, and excellent microphones into an even smaller body, making it the most capable and polished webcam you can buy if you’re willing to pay a premium.<\/b>
\nObsbot continues to deliver impressive webcams in small packages. At $349, the Osbot Tiny 3 is $20 more than the Tiny 2, but Obsbot adds even more AI tracking features, 1080p120 recording support, and better microphones while further shrinking its size. The $99 Obsbot Tiny SE also offers mechanical pan and tilt capabilities and remains our top recommendation among affordable 1080p models, but if you want even sharper 4K resolution, plus the most advanced recording and tracking modes, and voice control support, the Tiny 3 is worth the hefty premium and earns our Editors\u2019 Choice award for high-end webcams. Design: Somehow Even Smaller Than Last Gen
The Tiny 3 sits atop Obsbot’s webcam lineup, launching alongside the Tiny 3 Lite ($199). The Lite version is also very good, though its video isn\u2019t as sharp, and it lacks some of the recording and tracking modes of its higher-end sibling.
The Tiny 3 is Osbot’s smallest cam yet. It measures only 1.5 by 1.5 by 1.9 inches (HWD), making both the Tiny 2 (1.9 by 1.7 by 2.4 inches) and the Tiny 3 Lite (1.6 by 1.6 by 2.3 inches) seem downright large. It keeps an otherwise nearly identical design to its predecessor, featuring a base and camera module connected by a gimbal. The base is made of black plastic, while the gimbal and camera are encased in dark gray metal. The entire construction feels very solid. Like with the Tiny 2, there’s an indicator light bar on the front edge of the gimbal\u2019s base plate. A USB-C port sits on the back of the base.
Turning the Tiny 3 upside down will expose a screw mount for attaching the base to a tripod or another stand, as well as a ring-shaped rubber foot to keep the camera stable on a flat surface. The base is magnetic and snaps securely onto an included small, square clip for putting the camera on the top of your screen. The clip has three hinges that offer the right amount of resistance to keep the camera securely attached to your monitor or laptop at your desired angle.
A hard-shell gray fabric case is included with the Tiny 3. It’s roomy enough to hold the camera, clip, and USB cable together. It\u2019s a nice extra if you want to bring the webcam with you wherever you go, instead of using it only at your desk. Features: Automatically Track Whatever You Want
The Obsbot Center software for Windows and macOS enables a number of settings and automatic features on the Tiny 3. Extensive image controls are available, including manual focus, upper and lower ISO sensitivity limits, and white balance, each with an auto mode you can toggle. The more typical contrast, hue, saturation, and sharpness sliders are here, plus 50Hz and 60Hz anti-flicker, device resolution and frame rate, and even a mode for using it as a webcam with the Nintendo Switch 2.
Particularly useful and varied are the Tiny 3\u2019s AI-powered tracking options. The camera can automatically pan and tilt to follow you around like the affordable Tiny SE, but it doesn\u2019t stop there. You can set the Tiny 3 to automatically zoom in on your face, full body, upper body, lower body, or headless full body. There are also separate modes for single users and groups, plus hand tracking, voice tracking (based on the direction of your voice), and object tracking (based on a specific object you select in the preview window, similar to many mirrorless cameras\u2019 subject tracking). If that isn\u2019t enough, desk and whiteboard modes respectively provide a vertically flipped view of your desk (useful for crafts and projects) or an automatically cropped view of a whiteboard you\u2019re presenting with. You can also set and switch between up to three preset angles in Obsbot Center, or with Obsbot\u2019s optional $49 Tiny Smart Remote. If none of those options satisfy, you can, of course, also manually control the gimbal.
At a glance, you can easily tell whether the camera is following a subject or locked in place by the color of the light strip. It shines blue when visually tracking, purple when voice tracking, or green when not tracking.
Then there are the voice and gesture controls built into the Tiny 3. The camera will respond to a handful of spoken commands like \u201csleep, Tiny\u201d to put the device in a low-power state, \u201ctrack me\u201d to turn on AI tracking, \u201cunlock me\u201d to disable tracking, \u201czoom in closer\u201d and \u201czoom out further,\u201d and \u201cposition one\/two\/three\u201d to jump between your preset shots. The voice commands were responsive in my testing, reacting quickly and performing the requested actions consistently. In testing, I found myself using the voice controls regularly, especially when I didn\u2019t want the camera following me around the room.
Gestures are more limited. You can open your hand to toggle AI tracking, hold your thumb and index finger in an L shape to zoom in and zoom out a specific amount you can set, or form a U with both of your hands to dynamically zoom in and out. The tracking and standard zoom gestures worked reliably, but I couldn\u2019t get a consistent response with the dynamic zoom gesture. Even without the dynamic zoom control, the two gestures that worked were helpful (especially when my voice was hoarse during testing, which made the otherwise excellent voice controls less responsive).
The tracking itself is also excellent. The Tiny 3 quickly locked onto my face and kept me in frame when I moved around my apartment, and almost instantly reacquired its subject lock when I walked around the corner and back into its view. Hand and object tracking were similarly accurate, and in all cases the gimbal panned smoothly and quickly. Even voice tracking, which uses the camera\u2019s three microphones to determine your location acoustically, seemed to work very well.Picture: Sharp and Super Smooth
The Tiny 3 uses a 1\/1.28-inch 50MP CMOS sensor, larger than the 1\/1.5-inch CMOS in the Tiny 2 and much larger than the 1\/2-inch sensor in the Tiny 3 Lite. Like the previous version, it captures 4K video at 30 frames per second, but 1080p recording has been bumped up from 60fps to 120fps. It has an F\/1.8 lens with an 82.4-degree diagonal field of view in its native 4:3 orientation and 74 degrees in 16:9, slightly narrower than the Tiny 2 (85.5 degrees) but wider than the Tiny SE (78 degrees) and the Tiny 3 Lite (79.1 degrees). Its two-axis gimbal can pan 130 degrees left or right and tilt vertically from 32 to -60 degrees, with a maximum controllable movement speed of 120 degrees per second.
While its sensor has a 4:3 aspect ratio, the Tiny 3 can only record at 16:9 in 4K (3,840 by 2,160). This is a slight step back from the Tiny 2\u2019s 4,000-by-3,000 4:3 4K mode (it can also do 16:9), but the 16:9 4K resolution is a much more standard video-editing measurement. Additionally, 4:3 recording modes are available at lower resolutions, including 1,920 by 1,440 and 1,280 by 960.
With identical resolutions and similar recording modes, the Tiny 3 doesn\u2019t seem to separate itself from its much cheaper sibling, the Tiny 3 Lite. This is where sensor size comes in. Spreading the same number of pixels across a larger sensor results in larger pixels, which means more area to absorb light. The Tiny 3\u2019s sensor has approximately twice the surface area of the Tiny 3 Lite\u2019s, and that makes a big difference in sensitivity and noise.
In my well-lit apartment, using overhead and indirect lighting, the Tiny 3 delivers a sharp image with relatively low noise (pictured above). It doesn\u2019t capture every thread of my Pikachu sweater, but my face, including individual hairs on my head, eyebrows, and beard, are very clear. It\u2019s a much crisper picture than the Tiny 3 Lite\u2019s, which also looks quite good but shows more noise that softens fine details.
The difference between the two cameras is even more apparent in low light. In a dark room lit only by a laptop screen, my face looks impressively clear and grain-free (pictured above). There is some softening in the finer details, but my glasses and the contours of my face are sharp, and the dark background is uniform. On the Tiny 3 Lite, the same shot shows coarse noise across the entire image, with a static-like pattern in the background rather than uniformity.
The Tiny 3\u2019s F\/1.8 lens blurs backgrounds more than most other webcams with narrower lenses. It isn\u2019t true bokeh, and your background will still be fairly visible, but it will still let you pop out a bit when you\u2019re in focus. To be fair, the only webcam I\u2019ve ever seen that can really provide that effect optically is the Razer Kiyo Ultra, which has a slightly larger 1\/1.2-inch sensor and wider F\/1.7 lens, and a very shallow focal plane. The Tiny 3 Lite performs very similarly in that regard.
Keep in mind that you\u2019ll need a reasonably powerful system to capture 4K30 or 1080p120 footage. Obsbot recommends at least a 10th-generation Intel Core i5 CPU Windows PC or M1 Mac with 8GB of RAM, but you\u2019ll probably want something a bit more powerful. My AMD Ryzen 9 5200HS (comparable with an 11th-generation Intel Core i7) with 16GB of RAM chugged a bit when capturing both 4K30 and 1080p120 video with Firefox and Discord open at the same time.
1080p120 test footage looks very smooth when recorded in normal mode and displayed on a screen with a refresh rate of at least 120Hz. A slow-motion mode is also available, which drops the output footage to 30 frames per second for 25% slow motion. Both high frame rate modes record video and audio as separate files. Whether either mode will be useful to you depends on what you want to capture and how you plan to shoot it. Remember, even with its gimbal, the Tiny 3 is meant to stay in a fixed position, so if you want to capture really dynamic motion, you should probably consider an action cam instead.Sound: Some of the Best Mics in a Webcam
The Tiny 3’s microphones are some of the best I’ve experienced in a webcam. My voice sounded clear and full in test recordings, with little to no outside noise or room echo coming through. Using a microphone closer to your mouth like a USB mic or a good headset will still provide better audio, but on its own, the Tiny 3 provides much better sound than most webcams, including the Tiny 2. The Tiny 3 Lite seems to use the same mics because it has similarly excellent sound quality.<\/p>\n