Genius Look 313 Media review

The webcam market is surely close to saturation, but the Genius Look 313 Media offers a unique selling point: built-in loudspeakers.

It's also a USB hub, with two USB 2.0 sockets on the back, so adding it to your PC leaves you with one more free socket instead of one less.

As a camera, the Look 313 is a fine device. It works with MSN Messenger, Skype and all standard Windows webcam applications. Pictures are sharp and well-exposed, and video is very fluid (though things inevitably get a bit choppier once you start streaming over the net). It supports all standard picture sizes up to 640 x 480; higher resolutions are offered, but these don't improve image quality as they use software interpolation.

You can twist the camera lens to adjust the focus from around six inches to infinity; it's fiddly to do, but assuming you always sit in the same place when video chatting, you may only need to do it once. The lens section also rotates vertically to help frame your subject. You can press a snapshot button to grab an instant still image of whatever the camera's seeing, though since it's located on top of the camera it's easy to accidentally capture your own arm.

The stereo speakers twist, too, to point forward if you prefer. Windows automatically routes your audio through them (unless you tell it not to), and their sound is surprisingly clear and solid for their size. They're still tiny, though, and they're only a few inches apart, so don't expect mind-blowing stereo hi-fi. There's no built in microphone, but there's a socket to connect one or a headset.

Bundled software includes DDPlayCam, a program for putting your own pictures into cartoon-like situations, and Genius' own application for capturing photos and video. One interesting feature of this is its security camera mode, which watches the scene and starts recording whenever it sees movement. It's not very flexible, though, and you can't set it to launch automatically, so it doesn't compete with dedicated security packages.

Overall, the Look 313 Media is a fun gadget that does its job quite well. You can get higher-resolution webcams, but most Internet connections would struggle with anything more than this. It won't perch on top of an LCD monitor, but that's an issue with most webcams. The real question is whether you actually want this combination of features: if you don't need the speakers, single-function devices like the Creative Live! Cam offer basically the same webcam features for half the price.