Once you open the neat PC-Cam 600 box, you get a nice packaging where you'll find the WebCam, 4 AAA batteries, a hand strip, a USB cable, a camera mount plus manuals and software. You can directly put the batteries in (don't forget polarity!) and begin shooting your first pictures right-out-of-the-box!!

But before you "reveal" them, you first need to install the software drivers for your operating system. THEN and only then, you can plug the cable to the computer and then to the camera. PC-Cam Center will load and begin downloading the pictures you just took. All of this in just 5 min!

The camera comes with a resolution selector (from 640x480 to 1.3Mpixel mode) and with an "intelligent" flash that will be automatically triggered on low conditions. There's a red-eye mode if you're trying to shoot at someone's face and there's the option to totally deactivate the flash light, which sometimes is useful. You can also record your own (short) voice messages and reminders, put the camera on self-shoot timer mode, shoot several pics at a time and even record short mini-movies. A sort of beeps will warn you when you're running out of memory. Of course, everything will depend on the amount and quality of the stuff you record.

PC-Cam 600 sitting at computer's monitor

Once you're done shooting, you just stick the camera to its mounting base (what about above your computer monitor? ;)) and conect it to the USB cable so the software downloads ALL the stuff in the camera to your computer. Then you can edit everything (from pictures to movies and sound) on the included software, e-mail it to your relatives and much more.

Image quality on megapixel shots is really astonishing and makes this camera a real good balanced piece of hardware in terms of quality and price.

When you're done downloading the stuff to your computer, you can either empty camera's memory or just launch your preferred WebCam software and begin webcamming to your website or videoconference with your friends or anyone on the Net.

PC-Cam 600 control panel detail

The panel control on the back is quite simple, although it may be confusing at some situations. You need to repeatedly click several times on the several modes the camera has (voice-recording, movie recording, self timered snapshot, image quality) plus flash modes (auto, red-eye, no flash) and sometimes you can get lost or shoot a picture with the undesired quality setting. However, with very few training, you get used at it quite fast.

On the dark side, you'll get the typical light "problems" when shooting close objects or if you plan to get a close shot of something really small: since this camera has a built-in autofocus, adjusted to several inches from lens to infinity, you'll end with blurred pictures. Moreover, there'll be conditions where autoflash won't work properly and you might get overburned images on places where light was OK, but do remember you always can switch off the flash and repeat the shot! ;)

Sumarizing the review, we have a really neat piece of hardware which combines power, quality and a real low price. Many features available, really nice software included in the bundle and a very reliable capture/downloading system, combined along with all the capabilities a nice WebCam can offer nowadays, make this digital camera an interesting device to cover 2 different fields like the digital photography and the WebCam world ;)