MSI StarCam Racer

Our next participant is the StarCam Racer, available for ~€20/$30, it’s a beautiful, uniquely designed and functional webcam. The choice for the name "Racer" should be obvious, made to look like a racer’s helmet; the set is completed with the stand done as a racing tire.



There its different variants of this webcam. The single difference is the color of the helmet: red, blue and black. The "helmet" can turn 360° round its axis, and this to infinity.



Also for this webcam, MSI has chosen for the typical white-blue packing. With on the front, the functions of the webcam, and on the back more detailed information.



I’m not going to present you all theme’s, effects and the menu again of the Racer , there it is exactly the same as it from the Genie. It also captures at 1.3 Mega pixel, but can take snapshots at 4 Mega pixel !
It only takes one click on the webcam to open the capture-screen, when I did this; the system asked the program for opening and adjusts the image. This is the result when you take a snapshot with it at full quality.


(click image for full size)

As you can see the cam adjusts itself very good to compensate the lightning from outside. This snapshot is taken at 17h00 with the screen as light source.

An interesting extra of the Racer is the infrared position. In a complete dark room, you still can get a useable image. Remember that this photograph is taken in a room without any kind of light. Even though the image is over-exposed, I think the infra-red has done its job more than well.



It’s clear that this webcam needs a faster and modern system, probably for its higher resolution capturing.
My test sample did not come with a driver CD (the official one does, of course!) but was able to get it working correctly with the driver I downloaded from the MSI website.

Overall a very good webcam that gives your computer-space that extra touch, especially for the younger crowd.