Given their donut-shape, ring lights are perfect for headshots and close-ups, whether you're shooting still images or video. So if you photograph or film yourself or others directly looking into the camera, a ring light is perfect for you. Ring lights can also be used like more traditional LED light panels, to provide overall key or fill lighting to a scene, but they are tailor made for shooting faces. Do professionals use ring lights? Apart from size, another thing that sets apart one LED ring light from another is the amount of LEDs, which affects how diffuse and possibly how bright the light is.We've made sure to include products with plenty of LEDs for this reason. What controls should a ring light have? Image quality, for starters, is superb: crisp, clear and well-balanced, with natural colour and good detail. The good core image is bolstered by fast, effective autofocus, solid exposure adjustment and automatic white balance. Audio quality is decent thanks to stereo microphones.

While ring lights may seem like simple devices, there's actually a lot to consider. So how we test them is by putting them through their paces in real-world conditions, using them for Zoom calls, photographing portraits, filming YouTube content –all at different times of day, in different natural and artificial light conditions. The rest of the feature set is excellent. The field of view can be widened all the way to 90 degrees, and there's an infrared camera that works with Windows Hello login. The USB-C connection also means longer cables can be used. Elsewhere, the Dell has a clever AI-based focus system that keeps subjects smoothly in focus. There are plenty of tweakable settings in Dell’s straightforward management app. The device tilts but doesn’t pivot, though, and it also doesn’t have a microphone.The Brio also supports HDR, which means bold colours and better performance in low-light situations. And, if you don't need 4K, the Brio also offers 1080p recording at 60fps – the only webcam here to also offer that feature. Modern ring lights are LED lights, since they are powered by clusters of LED bulbs. However, most LED lights come in the form of rectangular-shaped panels, which produce much flatter illumination. Ring lights, on the other hand, are donut-shaped, which is much more flattering to faces. So rather than providing harsh, flat lighting, ring lights sculpt your features and provide a more dimensional, pleasing, professional look. What are ring lights good for?

Some sophisticated models have options for altering RGB colours, making them ultra customisable, whereas others have filtered gels that sit over the LEDs themselves. Professional-grade LED lights may also even feature creative lighting effects to mimic natural lighting such as lightning, gunshots or campfires. Are battery-powered ring lights worth it? There are several qualities that make the best ring lights so popular for filming to-camera social media videos or for making video calls. Firstly, they're quite affordable and their size makes them handily portable and easy to set up on a desk or on the floor, without the need for a lot of space. For creatives and streamers, though, the Logitech offers plenty of versatility alongside smooth, high-quality 1080p footage, so it’s a great choice. They can be attached to your laptop, tablet or phone so long as it's 18mm or thinner. They're great for taking on nights out so you can capture well-lit selfies, on holiday or even when traveling away from home so that you can Facetime loved ones no matter how much light is around you.verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Pros: Wide-angle lens for more image capture; decent 1080p image quality; tilt and swivel adjustment options If you’re looking to cover a webcam or laptop camera you already own then we don’t think you pay too much mind to what you’re getting – given it’s typically just a sliding piece of plastic. You can find a wide selection of webcam covers here – and they’re quite cheap. What webcam do YouTubers use?