Very grainy 2018 macbook air facetime camera

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.

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."

Hi there - I have been in the business of supporting one of the world's largest Banks with one of the largest deployments of internal video collaboration over 40,000 video endpoints. I have used & abused multiple PC, MAC, Linux, Mobile & Tablets in optimising internal Video Conferencing and Video Chat with Customers. Internal guides to optimise the lighting conditions, optimal camera height and configurations and extensive testing of all of the USB Webcams in the last 8+ years. These are the baselines of my credentials....

My 4 day old 2020 Macbook Air 13" is brilliant...but i went to do a Video Call and I was gobsmacked at how poor the quality was. This is not my subjective opinion, as many of you have demonstrated, and I was told by Apple Support have said this is "EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR." I am very upset, as I checked and knew it was the "720p FaceTime HD camera" so was not expecting broadcast quality. I was expecting similar performance to 7yr old 2013 MacBook Air I was replacing  - in the same way you'd expect relatively similar performance if you changed a 7yr old car...maybe a little quicker, but not 50-70% slower!

I have conducted a x3 way video conference call on Zoom and recorded it to show the comparative quality between a 2020 MacBook Air, 2013 MacBook Air and an iPhone XR. You need to view in full screen. The video quadrants  are labelled with device names, but its clear quickly which is the newest device.  https://vimeo.com/409222156

I am genuinely at a loss and sincerely hoping that this is a device driver setting/enhancement that is required...because, I cannot seriously consider that someone at Apple has intentionally chosen the piece of 5hit camera if it is hardware related...

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. :(

I just bought a new MacBook Air 2020 with a 512gb hard drive to replace my 2013 MacBook Air. The main reason was that I do a fair bit of filming for online tutorials and the small hard drive in my old MacBook was so full of system files, I was no longer able to store any large files. The camera on my old MacBook was fine but this new one was shockingly bad. I jumped through the hoops with Apple support over the phone (as the Genius bar is closed due to Covid 19) and wiped the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system twice - costing me two valuable days of work - and then had to take it to an authorised Apple dealer for them to agree there was a problem worth asking for Apple to send a replacement MacBook. I've received the replacement today and the camera is just as bad. Same before and after pics as shown previously - ie: clear and sharp on the old MacBook and dull and grainy on the new one.

I'm so disappointed to read all of these replies showing a long standing issue and angry that I've been made to jump through hoops when the issue is clearly in the machine itself.

[Edited by Moderator]

I'm so angry. Apple will not authorise a refund until they have received the products back at their online store, after which it will take another few days for the credit card company to put the money back on the card. If not for Covid 19, I could walk into the Apple Store, hand over the computers and get my refund. As it is, I will need to wait for up to 2 weeks to get my money back, preventing me from buying another computer elsewhere. I can't see any reason why Apple can't expedite this, given the current situation and the necessity for people working from home to have access to a working computer. After being a loyal Apple customer for many years I'm not feeling the love right now. Maybe it's time to make a change ...

They are definitely not otherwise this thread would not be full of people saying otherwise.

I myself own both a 2015 MacBook Pro and a 2019 MacBook Pro. The difference is astounding. The 2015 wins hands down.

I keep getting all of these complaints about the face time video on the new MacBook Air retina and related products. Can we just call a duck a duck? Its pairing with Quicktime and the resultant video quality is noticeably sub par. In a word - it sucks. If I had known this I would not have purchased this Mac. My 2013 MacBook Pro Retina had better resolution. and now with everyone working on Zoom or the other platforms, they must be seeing the issue. And this is not acceptable. I haven't heard or seen anything from Apple - what are they doing? They keep improving the iPhone and it seems the only money they are making on Macs is to introduce new models that require more accessories and adaptors. We need to take action.

After the 2018 MacBook Air launched, complaints began surfacing about the machine's 720p FaceTime HD camera, with users suggesting it was noticeably worse than the ‌FaceTime‌ cameras on other MacBook machines, including the 2018 MacBook Pro and the previous-generation ‌MacBook Air‌.

All 720p cameras are rather poor in quality compared to the ‌FaceTime‌ cameras that we get in iPhones and iPads, so we initially believed these complaints were coming from people who just expected more from a 2018 machine.

Given the sheer volume of complaints, though, MacRumors decided to do some investigating and found that the 720p ‌FaceTime‌ HD camera in the 2018 ‌MacBook Air‌ does indeed appear to be worse than the ‌FaceTime‌ HD camera in some other models, specifically the 2015 ‌MacBook Air‌.

2018 ‌MacBook Air‌ vs. older ‌MacBook Air‌

Compared to the 2015 ‌MacBook Air‌, the ‌FaceTime‌ HD camera in the 2018 ‌MacBook Air‌ is noticeably worse. It's darker, grainier, and lower in quality. To be clear, neither camera is good because we're talking about 720p video here, but there is a visible difference in side by side photos. Do you really want to buy new Linkedin accounts If you need aged Linkedin accounts, you can simply knock us

I think if everyone gives their feedback about this to Apple, they might do something about it: https://www.apple.com/feedback/ Worth a try!

Hey everyone, just a note that there's another active thread about this too: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250011475?answerId=250432477022&page=1

Also to illustrate the difference, here are screenshots taken in the Apple store with the Quicktime camera running on respective devices.

Macbook Air 2013:

MacBook Air 2018: