We just bought our daughters MacBook Airs for Christmas. My older daughter’s replaces her 2015 MacBook Air. She was very disappointed in the camera quality compared to her older MacBook Air. She teaches and the quality is important! I saw a thread about this topic from 2018!!! Has Apple not done anything about this yet? I hate to return them and get an hp PC as they like Macs, but this is very disappointing!!
MacBook Air
I just noticed (with my new MacBook Air M1) that iriun webcam works, however it isn't available as a camera option in the Zoom camera dropdown list... I would think that this has to do with the new MacBook Air M1 and either Zoom or iriun needs updates to allow them to work correctly with the new MacBook. Hopefully they fix it soon... I'm stuck using the MacBook Air 780p camera until it is fixed.
Thank you for the responses! I will look into the camera adapter, but curious to know what apps it works with. Zoom, Google classroom, etc.
I've heard the stories of the poor camera quality. My 2020 M1 MacBook Air looks just fine in Zoom meetings. Though, I will admit that I have a face more suited for audio!
Ha!! I bet that’s not true! These Macs are the intel versions vs the M1, although both have the same cameras. The comparison between our 2015 Air and this one is significant.
I agree that the 780p camera is poor (whether the M1 camera it is worse than the prior MacBook Air camera is debatable - depends on lighting situations), so I went another direction for correcting the issue that Apple isn't interested in fixing.
I found the IriunWebcam free solution (www.iriun.com) that enables me to use my iPhone's 1080p camera as the video camera instead of the MacBook Air's built in camera - a much better camera that I already had. While you can go out and buy a dedicated external camera and connect it to your MacBook Air, I already had an iPhone and I don't use my iPhone while I am on video sessions... hence it just made sense to use my existing iPhone and it's charging cable to connect it to my MacBook Air (I actually connect the camera to the MacBook Air via a port on the back of my LG UltraFine 4k monitor that is connected to my MacBook Air). The only other piece of equipment you would need for this would be some iPhone stand so that it is stable and hands free to use. I personally have the stand set up such that the iPhone camera is just behind my MacBook Air's screen and just higher than the screen's camera location - this makes the iPhone camera angle and distance almost identical to the MacBook Air camera angle and distance.
While I would have preferred a better 1080p camera on the MacBook Air M1, this solution I use is a reasonable no extra cost way to achieve what I need.
MacBook Air poor camera quality!
