Jabra PanaCast 20 Review

In the past couple of years, we have witnessed numerous intelligent products – audio, watch, etc. However, the webcam is still the same, low quality. Jabra revolutionised the space with its new intelligent AI-enabled Panacast 20. The first consumer-focused webcam from Jabra is significantly more affordable than the conference room-focused other PanaCast devices.

Build

The PanaCast 20 looks like a pillbox that feels solid and is made out of metal. This is the first webcam that comes with a unique design and metal casing that also works as a heat sink for the camera. It holds a 4k lens and microphone pinholes on the left and right. There is another pinhole for the third mic on the top of the textured chassis. It comes with a small sliding switch on the bottom edge that works as a privacy cover. The webcam comes with a USB-C port that faces down on the bottom panel, near the back.

The flat design camera has a monitor clip, a square metal arm that flips down from the bottom of the chassis. The metal clip lets you fix the webcam on any screen, however, the arm doesn't rotate farther back and the front lip is fairly shallow and wide, so the webcam feels less stable on thicker monitors.

PanaCast 20 comes with a zip-up case that securely holds the webcam and the USB cable which is fairly long around 1 meter.

Features

Jabra PanaCast 20 webcam has a 13MP, 1/3.2-inch sensor and a 117-degree, f/2.25 lens. It relies on three MEMS microphones for audio capture. The USB Type C cable plays a dual role – powering up the device and data transfer. The single cable draws the power from a USB 3 or USB 2 port plus captures the video and audio. The Jabra Direct software is available for macOS and Windows, you can easily install the software on your PC and the device as per your preferences. The software lets you choose auto to manual zoom and framing features. It also lets you update its firmware. The app is quite intuitive to use and designed for multipurpose that works with most Jabra devices.

Jabra PanaCast 20

Jabra PanaCast 20

Jabra PanaCast 20

Jabra PanaCast 20

However, despite a live preview feature, you can't use the software to record or stream anything from the camera. It’s mostly just for keeping the camera up to date, toggling the Intelligent Zoom feature, setting the field of view, and tweaking the exposure and white balance settings before you use the camera with dedicated video conferencing, recording, or streaming software.

Though you get a 4k webcam, you won't be able to utilise the resolution. The typical video calling apps support up to 1080p. The camera lets you adjust the field of view and the Intelligent Zoom feature digitally crops in up to 3x, offering a minimum 720p resolution. The camera automatically tracks your face, keeping you in the frame. The camera has a fairly wide sight range that keeps you always on spot. You can also manually control the camera in the Jabra Direct app for any pan, tilt, or zoom controls in your software of choice to manually frame your shots.

Performance

The 4K camera captures reasonably sharp images and videos with good lighting. While using the 4k, it captures plenty of detail, however, moderate noise appears. Although, in the well-lit environment, we didn’t notice any noise. The Intelligent Zoom feature works fairly well, however, if you are using the webcam in a large room or with multiple objects, it can gets confused a bit and takes a few moments to zoom in, but after that, it cropped and panned the frame smoothly and slowly.

The three mics work perfectly fine, it was able to reduce noise and capture my voice. However, it wasn’t particularly clean and was a bit fuzzy when tested in a small room. While using the PanaCast in a hall, we noticed a bit of echo, using the mic setting we were able to reduce the echo.