Very grainy 2018 macbook air facetime camera

I know... just got mine a couple of days ago and it's a huge disappointment since I Facetime my parents who live overseas a lot. I didn't have the same problem with the 2014 one. Wish I didn't sell it to get the new one!

Apple, please do something! It's not a cheap device to have such a crappy camera!

Yes, I just got my new 2019 MacBook Air on Friday. I teach online and waiting for my student now. The quality of the camera is appalling. It's grainy and has horrible lighting no matter what I do. This must be fixed ASAP.

I have this same exact problem and am in TV studio lighting and the computer is 14 days old. My OLD 2015 air has a perfect camera. This is grainy and awful and if it is a known problem (hundreds of complaints online) there needs to be a fix and FAST - too much money for such an inferior product.

I have been ALL Apple - 19 computers 14 phones 6 ipads - this camera thing is ridiculous and taking away ports is just crazy - for the first time ever I think I will become a PC user and Notebook user and let Apple go.

Yep. Same exact experience here - I have TV lighting in my office, so it is NOT the lighting.

I also use a webinar service, and now my webinar replay videos are all pixelated - and not mildly pixelated, like unusable pixelated.

Really not happy about this. Was told they would only replace the computer if it was less than 14 days old. Mine is one month old.

Hey Smoothspeak, how did your government crafted emails to apple go? Because I just bought the Macbook air and the quality on the front facing camera was terrible. My question is, for a company that has more cash on hand than the US Government, why are they trying to save a couple pennies by lowering the video quality in their Macbook air?

I have the same problem. I got my new MBA while on vacations, came back to Argentina to find out the camera was the worst. I still use my old mac book pro (mid 2011) for facetime calls. But, it seems we won´t get an answer from Apple, right? There´s no Apple Store in Argentina, so if anyone has a software solution to share for me to try it, that would be awesome.

Hi,

I just got a new 2018 Macbook Air, and I realised that the camera was a bit grainy/blurry. I saw this thread and honestly its shocking how many others have the sam issue. Has Apple done anything so far for this issue? My last Macbook had a much better quality than a brand new one.

Ayla

I see that Apple has been unresponsive for over a year, I have the same problem with the camera. The quality is terrible. The laptop is too expensive for such poor camera quality. Retina laptop and camera from 5 years ago. I have a guarantee, do you think that if I go and return it because of this, they will return the money?

We have the same problem on our new 2020 Macbook air. The camera is unusably poor and MUCH worse than the 10 year old machine we are replacing. This is an apple premium product, at £1099. What is going on with this? it's a disaster. we could buy two or three small pc laptops for this price. My wife does a lot of meetings on line and we are now going to take the machine back and get a refund - Its not as if Apple are short of cash - why are they installing cheap sd camera's in their expensive computers?

Looking at the thread this poor camera issue was for 2018 units. Well, I just got the 2019 Mac Air running on 10.15.3 and the camera is still awful. Grainy to say the least, even in decent lighting.

Did anyone ever find a solution, other than investing in an external camera, which would be annoying.

Cheers

I wanted to give my older Air back to the office when I bought the new 2019 version. Looks like I can't do this due to the camera being better on the 2015 version. Considering the COVID-19 situation it's so important that people have good quality cameras for working frmo home, and I feel TOTALLY let down by Apple's sub-standard product.

unbelievable worst camera experience, I don't have face to face classes because of Covid 2019, so i had to recored myself for a presentation , when i turn on the camera I was like What, I was shocked , Macbook Air 2018 has the worst camera ever, Iphone 3gs camera was better than this. Apple please fix it. what about those who have daily video conferences. :(

I have the exact same problem with my work 2018 MacBook Air. However, Apple's Jedi knight service rep program teaches their service reps to use the Jedi mind trick.

"You don't really want high-resolution video."

"You want to go home, now, and rethink your dissatisfaction."

Thank you for the great 3-way analysis. I was not able to figure out how to do the same sort of comparison, but I had my work colleagues share their desktop and let me see what they were seeing on their end. We use Teams. I do not have the exact same devices as you, but I am experiencing similar poor video quality with a 2016 MBP and a 2019 iMac 5K. So are the cameras all the same in these models. It seems like maybe so? I don't know. Like your iPhone XR, my iPhone 11 Pro produced a brilliant image, whereas the iMac and MBP were quite similar in producing a grainy (you called it "digital noise) image. My work-issued Surface Pro 4 produced a video image closer in quality to that of the iPhone 11 Pro than the Mac's video quality. This is quite embarrassing as my work colleagues know I'm an Apple fanatic and have spent a lot of my disposable income on these devices. I am not as lucky as you, in that, I am well beyond the return period. :(