Review: Logitech ConferenceCam CC3000e Keeps Employees Connected

With ever-shrinking travel budgets and greater demand for distributed collaboration, video conferencing has become more important, not only at the executive level, but also among teams.

For example, agile system development makes more sense when remote users can see and interact with other members of the team in daily scrums. Instant messaging and phone conferences go only so far; the ability to see facial expressions or perhaps draw on a whiteboard together — even over a distance — is now critical.

Logitech’s ConferenceCam CC3000e meets small-team collaboration needs. Priced at just under $1,000, it fits a niche between personal webcams and conference rooms of six to 10 people. It is compatible with a number of leading unified communications platforms, including Microsoft’s Lync and Skype and Cisco Systems’ Jabber and WebEx. Plus, it’s easy to set up and use. We especially liked the preset “home” setting, which returns the camera to a convenient position at the click of a button — pointed, for instance, at a whiteboard.

The clarity of the picture that the high-definition camera creates was a pleasant surprise. The field of view can take in up to three people at once, and with support for 30 frames per second, we found that motion shots were rarely pixelated or blurred.

The lens-based zoom was startlingly good, rendering 9-point Calibri text perfectly readable from 10 feet away. This comes in handy for the chicken scratch commonly found on workgroup whiteboards. Pan and tilt were very smooth, with little to no choppiness, and the autofocus resolved itself quickly when moving from subject to subject. All told, the Logitech ConferenceCam CC3000e provides a solid foundation for ad hoc video conferencing for small and medium-sized teams.