Since we were all locked down during the Covid pandemic we’ve become au-fait with meeting (and presenting ourselves) via our webcams. Indeed during a Zoom chat or virtual meeting we may find ourselves silently critiquing the quality of the streaming video footage from the meeting’s other participants! You may even have invested in an LED ring light to give your web-streamed footage the edge.
Another way to improve the look of your streamed footage is to buy a third-party webcam that makes you look better than the results from your laptop or PC’s built-in camera.
Emeet was founded in 2016 with the mission statement "better communication, better world". Presumably, their name evokes their trade – Emeet = electronic meeting! Emeet designs and manufactures the type of business-focused camera devices that you’d expect to see in corporate offices, such as the Emeet Meeting Capsule – a 360º panoramic camera that swivels to capture everyone around the table in a board meeting.
Emeet also produces cameras such as the Smartcam range of affordable webcams that sit on the top of your PC so that you can stream live footage via OBS Studio, chat to friends and family in a Zoom call or record a high-quality ‘talking head’ intro movie for your YouTube channel via QuickTime.
Emeet’s SmartCams have a classic webcam look - a black plastic body with a single lens at the center. However, the company’s latest offering (released in early 2025) stands out from the webcam crowd due to its distinctive design and powerful performance - queue a drum roll for… the Piko+!
EMEET Piko+: Specifications
EMEET Piko+: Price
The Emeet Piko is available in two models - the Piko and the Piko+. The key difference is that the lower-specced Piko has a smaller 1/2.8” image sensor compared to the 1/2.55” Sony sensor in the Piko+. The latter of which retails at $89.99/£73.00. The lower specced Piko (which won’t be as effective in low light) is of course cheaper at $69.99. If you buy the Piko+ directly from emeet.com they offer a code that will give you a 10% discount. We tested the higher-specced Piko+. Emeet offers the Piko+ in Black, White, and spearmint Green.
The price for the Piko+ is a little higher than some of Emeet’s other 4K streaming cameras, but as you’ll see from this review the image quality that it produces is impressively sharp and full of tonal detail, so I think it is a fair price.
EMEET Piko+: Design & Handling
My first impression of the Piko+ after unboxing it was ‘this is tiny!’ My hands aren’t that big for a man but I could still conceal it in my palm. As well as its diminutive stature what makes the plastic-bodied Piko+ really stand out from the webcam crowd is its two cameras. Their side-by-side position evokes a pair of eyes that are nested inside a circular silver ring (which in effect creates the outline of a face.)
Once you plug the Piko+ into your PC to power it up a little horizontal blue line below the ‘eyes’ provides a ‘mouth’. My wife couldn’t resist the anthropomorphism, saying that ‘it has a cute face’. The cuteness factor is no design accident. The Piko+ also ships with a cute little rubber cartoon panda face that acts as a privacy shield (or lens cap). This lens cap covers the Piko+’s two lenses via a magnetic attachment - handy if you don’t want to be visible during a particular Zoom chat.
The two lenses aren’t just there to create a pretty face. The left camera (as you look at the ‘face’) sends a 4K UHD feed to the Piko+’s 1/2.55” Sony Sensor. The right camera is the Portrait Camera, which uses AI to ensure that the face is in focus at all times and is correctly exposed.
The Piko+ is very light. It doesn’t feel like it has any weight at all but my food measuring kitchen scales gave it a weight of 39g - the same weight as my daily potion of cereal. At the base of the Piko+ a tiny thread that enables you to screw the webcam onto its supplied silver plastic and metal tripod. The tripod can be extended from 5 to 7 inches which brings the Piko+ up to the same height as my 15” M2 MacBook Air’s built-in HD FaceTime Camera. The tripod could be tilted upwards to include my face in the shot and it will also tilt by 45º so that you can stream vertical portrait-oriented footage instead of a horizontal landscape orientation.
EMEET Piko+: Performance
I write all of my Digital Camera World reviews on my 2023 15” MacBook Air (which I was inspired to purchase after reading Gareth Bevan’s review). The MacBook Air is also great for editing the videos that support my reviews. However, its built-in FaceTime HD camera is very sub-par. When using the FaceTime HD camera (in a QuickTime recording for example) my face looks too soft, with blocky compression artifacts becoming visible when I move my head. There are also some noticeable particles of noise in the MacBook camera’s feed, especially in low light.
If I do need to record a ‘straight to camera’ sequence on my MacBook I’ll choose my iPhone 16 Pro’s Camera - which wirelessly streams superior-looking footage straight to my MacBook. The downside of using my iPhone 16 Pro as a webcam is that I may get interrupted by a call or notification (plus it's very expensive to be related to being a webcam!).
By using a dedicated (and far cheaper) third-party webcam such as the Piko+ I can dramatically improve the quality of my MacBook’s video streaming and recorded video footage. Check out this review’s supporting video so that you can compare the quality of the Piko+ with both my MacBook’s built-in HD Camera and my iPhone 16 Pro.
Normally I’d expect a webcam to clip onto the top of my MacBook’s display so I’m looking directly at my screen when addressing people via the webcam, but the Piko+ lacks a display mount. Instead, I screwed the Piko onto its supplied mini tripod. To get the Piko+ up and running I had to plug its supplied cable into my computer. The cable is a generous 1.5m long so I could place it comfortably next to my MacBook. There’s also an adaptor on one end of the cable so you can plug it onto a USB or USB-C socket on your PC. Very handy!
After firing up the QuickTime app I was able to switch from my Mac’s fuzzy-looking FaceTime HD camera to the feed from the Piko+. The 4K UHD feed from the Piko+ had a pin-sharp resolution, with a wide tonal range that boasted strong shadows, bright highlights, and detail throughout the tonal range. The Piko+ footage vastly outclassed the FaceTime HD Camera’s fuzzy flat feed - and you can see the results for yourself in this section’s supporting video. In the Piko+ footage, you can see every detail in the texture of my shirt and the hairs on my face (must shave next time before recording video!).
The Piko+ is supported by the free Emeet Studio app. This desktop app enables you to fine-tune the way the Piko’s Portrait Camera uses AI to prioritize focus. For example, you can adjust its Smart Focus section to focus on Face Tracking, Half Body Tracking, and Full Body Tracking (which could be handy if you’re demonstrating something from a distance such as leading an exercise class!). The app also has a collection of one-click presets to change the look of your streamed footage. For example, the Nostalgia presets bathes your face in warm sepia tones. You can also fine-tune color temperature to make skin tones look more accurate in cold daylight or warm interior lighting set-ups. If you’re backlit this can cause your face to be under-exposed. The app offers a Backlight Contrast setting to toggle on but all this does is lighten your face while over-exposing the background. You’ll be better of positioning our face so that it’s lit from an angle (as I did in my test video).
Although the footage from the Piko+ looks great I can’t say that the audio from its built-in mics matches its video quality. As you’ll hear from my test video the sound captured via the Piko+’s mics sounded roomy, with my thin-sounding voice bouncing off the walls in my test location. The app enables you to trigger noise reduction, but this just created an even flatter sound. For far better quality audio I clipped a Boya Mini into my iPhone 16 Pro and used the Mac’s QuickTime app to stream audio from the iPhone alongside video from the Piko+. Again, check out my supporting video to compare the Piko+ and iPhone-sourced audio for yourself.
EMEET Piko+: Verdict
The Piko+ should enable you to stream (or record) UHD 4K footage that will greatly surpass the quality of footage captured by your PC’s native camera - especially if you’re using an older computer like my 2023 MacBook Air. I found that the footage from the Piko+ was comparable (if not slightly superior) to the footage wirelessly streamed to my MacBook from my expensive iPhone 16 Pro! There were a few blocky compression artifacts in the iPhone footage, but this could be because the iPhone was streaming wirelessly to my computer whereas the Piko+ was hard-wired via its supplied USB-C to USB-C cable.
The quality of the UHD 4K footage captured via the Piko+ was impressive, with a crisp and clean representation of delicate details as well as detail in both the shadows and highlights. The 4K UHD footage also had a more striking contrast than the footage from my MacBook’s FaceTime HD camera or the iPhone 16 Pro.
I liked the compact size of the Piko+ and it’s welcome to slide into a compartment in my MacBook’s carry case alongside its highly portable mini tripod. I might even use the Piko+ to record more links for my review videos instead of relying solely on my iPhone 16 Pro.
If my review stopped at discussing visual quality, then the Piko+ would get a 5-star rating. However, the audio relayed from the Piko+’s built-in mics can’t match the excellent video quality captured by its dual lenses. My test location was challenging - with hard walls for sound to bounce off, so the Piko+ will sound better in a controlled environment that’s surrounded by acoustic treatment tiles (which is something we can’t always access, especially if we’re streaming via the Piko+ in a cafe for example)
If you want to look your best in an online meeting (or when chatting to camera via your YouTube channel) then the Piko+ is a highly effective and relatively affordable way to improve your video production values. (You’ll just need to use a third-party audio source!)
