Anker makes some of the most affordable tech accessories and household gadgets around, with its catalogue consisting of everything from true wireless noise-cancelling earbuds and speakers to beefy power banks and 4K projectors.

Now the much-loved Chinese brand is diving headfirst into a pretty competitive new market – one that it has only tentatively dipped its toes into before: the world of the home office. With data published in March suggesting that employees only want to work in the office two days a week and sales of webcams booming like never before, it was only a matter of time.

Last month, Anker announced new home office gadgets under a new AnkerWork product line. There are only two products in the range at the moment, but the company is expected to announce more in the coming weeks and months.

For now, the brand has released its first-ever 1080p full HD webcam – the powerconf C300 – and announced an updated powerconf portable conference speaker – the powerconf S500 – which has four upgraded microphones that take advantage of Anker’s voice radar technology.

While the S500 has yet to be assigned a release date or even a price tag, the powerconf C300 has been out since April. We’ve been testing it out for a couple of weeks now and we’re ready to deliver our verdict. Read on to hear our thoughts and see whether it’s worth the money.

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Anker powerconf C300

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Key specs: 1080p camera, 60FPS, 115-degree wide-angle lens, auto-focus, AI-powered face tracking, auto low-light correction and privacy cover included

Audio: Dual stereo microphones

System requirements: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 or Mac OS 10.13 and above.

Price and availability

The powerconf C300 is available now and costs £119.99. You can buy it from Amazon or the Anker website itself. It’s actually quite pricey for an Anker product, and is more expensive than the Logitech C922 pro HD stream webcam (£74.99, Amazon.co.uk), which was the top pick in our round-up of the best webcams. As you’ll see below, we’re still uncertain if it’s worthy of that price tag.

Design

The powerconf C300 is a sleek, simple, no-nonsense webcam that’s easy to use straight out of the box. It feels and looks premium, and is Anker through and through, featuring a sleek rectangular body with curved edges. The webcam measures 30.4mm in height, has a width of 99mm and a depth of 33mm.

In the middle of the webcam’s body sits an extremely wide 115-degree lens with dual stereo microphones on either side. To the right is an LED indicator that glows when the webcam is turned on. The C300 also comes packaged with two adhesive privacy covers that we found really easy to install. Just attach one of them to the front panel and slide it over to cover the lens if you fear any prying eyes.

You also get a 3ft USB-C to USB-C cable inside the box, which you need to connect your computer to the webcam. If you don’t have a USB-C port on your computer, Anker helpfully also included a USB-C to USB-A adaptor in the box.

The camera sits on a fixed mount that you can adjust to your liking. It folds down and back to clip behind your monitor. It took a while to get the right positioning and, admittedly, it kept falling back behind our monitor when we were placing it on the top, even though it has a bit of a grip. You won’t be able to place it on the top of a thin laptop screen at all, simply because of how much real estate the webcam takes up. There’s no clamp, so you’ll need to get creative. It’s also pretty hefty, weighing 127g.

The camera itself sits on a smaller hinge which lets you swivel it up, down, left and right. Overall, the powerconf C300 looks good, but it might not mount onto every monitor – especially if you have a thinner one.

Picture quality

The picture quality of the C300 is pretty fantastic. It’s not grainy or colourless like many of the webcams that prioritise lighting over everything else. Anker’s webcam balances this all surprisingly well. It’s crisp, bright and there’s no noticeable noise in the frame.

The C300 can capture footage at both 60FPS and 30FPS, although we preferred having it set to 30FPS. Colours felt neutral rather than explosively oversaturated or, worse, dull. And the autofocusing feature was pretty speedy when we moved in and out of shot. Just using the standard webcam on our MacBook Pro, people are barely able to see our face thanks to the blindingly bright room we’re sitting in. But the C300’s HDR makes swift work of the lighting conditions, making us visible in spite of the bright room.

The powerconf C300 performed just as admirably in low-light conditions as it did in bright light. Testing the webcam out in the dark, with the lights turned off and just the glow of our screen for company, our face still looked illuminated in a natural way.

Features

When we first heard about the powerconf C300, its features were what we were most excited about. The C300 works in collaboration with the AnkerWork software, which is where you can control self-framing, brightness and contrast tuning and access all those AI features.

The AI is what allows the webcam to track your face if you tend to fidget, move about, or if you just move to grab a drink. It sounds great, except when we actually tried it out, it didn’t live up to the hype.

The face tracking has an absolute mind of its own. Yes, we know that’s what AI means, but it has a mind of its own in all the worst ways. Move a smidge and the webcam will start zooming into your face and then back out again – a bit like one of those zoom-effect troll videos on TikTok. Imagine being on a conference call and having that function turned on. Not a great look. We do imagine, however, that this is something Anker will work on improving in a software update.

As for those dual microphones, well, they seem really solid – friends and family were able to hear us loud and clear.

The verdict: Anker powerconf C300

All in all, the Anker powerconf C300 is a solid webcam – it looks premium on the exterior, and makes you look pretty premium too. It’s expensive for what it is, but as one of the very few wide-angle webcams, it might be deserving of the price tag. Having that wide backdrop behind us is quite neat.

The PowerConf C300 is a great webcam for anyone working from home, but it’s particularly good for those in offices needing to fit multiple people into the frame thanks to that wide-angle lens. And yes, any family-centric Zoom catch-ups will make good use of the webcam too.

But it could also work well as a YouTube capture cam or a Twitch streaming webcam. Again, that wide-angle lens lets streamers show off any posters or merchandise behind them.

We expect that as the AnkerWork software is updated and more improvements are rolled out, the powerconf C300 will only get better. Overall, it’s a great start for the AnkerWork product line.

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Anker powerconf C300 review: How good is the brand’s first webcam?

We review the design, picture quality and AI-enhanced features on offer