Most laptops and Macbooks come with a webcam built in, but they can leave video-chatters somewhat wanting in terms of performance and image quality. Newcomer Opal Camera has addressed such things with a small-but-powerful model called the Tadpole.
The Tadpole comes two years after the release of the company's C1 webcam, a US$300 mini brick rocking a 4K Sony sensor that measured 4.07 x 1.97 x 1.81 in and weighed in at just 7 oz. The new model is much smaller and lighter at 1.77 x 1.37 x 0.78 in (45 x 35 x 20 mm) and 1.2 oz (35 g), respectively.
"Most webcams are large and built to live on top of a monitor in a home office," said company co-founder, Stefan Sohlstrom. "At Opal, we challenged ourselves to deliver high-quality hardware, but in a beautiful form factor that's as tiny, convenient, and plug and play as possible. We put everything that you would want when working on a laptop… directly into the hardware."
![The Tadpole features an adjustable clip for mounting the webcam to any laptop display](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/8059d79/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1440x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb4%2F3b%2Ffb06eb9b42b3937643aea7b63068%2Fopal-tadpole-02.jpg)
The designers have managed to squeeze a larger CMOS sensor into the teeny box, which shapes up as a 48-megapixel Sony IMX582 Exmor RS flavor where the resolution is scaled down to 1080p at 30 frames per second – technically a downgrade, but with a new machine-learning ISP system based around a brand-new processor for the promise of "DSLR-rivaling quality."
The Tadpole boasts a F1.8 aperture, six-element glass lens offering a 70-degree field of view and phase-detection autofocus. It's designed to clamp to the top of any laptop display and is cabled up over USB-C, with the connector sporting nifty capacitive tap-to-mute functionality for tap-tastic instant muting of the directional MEMS microphone.
"On a device this small, there's really no room for a button. Putting a capacitive touch sensor into the USB plug is a feature we all love and an elegant way to solve the 'you're on mute' problem everyone has had," said Opal's David Kalinowski.
![The braided USB cable can be worn around the wrist so that your tiny webcam is always ready for your next video call](https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/2f2a1ef/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4500x3000+0+0/resize/1440x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F62%2F6f%2Feb7fcdc74555bc5a3ba5950a71d2%2Fopal-tadpole-08.jpg)
The braided USB cable can also turn the tiny webcam into wrap-around wrist candy for ease of transport, or there's an optional transparent carry case available.
The Tadpole is on sale now for $175, and is reported compatible with both Mac and PC. The C1 model is still available at a reduced price of $250.
Product page: Opal Tadpole