Finding a good webcam on a budget can be tricky, because cheaper webcams often come with hard-to-stomach limitations. It’s especially hard to find good, decently priced webcams that allow you to stream with HD video quality. If you’re looking for a good, budget-friendly streaming webcam, then the Papalook PA552 is your answer.
This webcam has a number of useful features that make it worth considering, but at a typical retail price of approximately $90, it won’t break the bank, either. Putting this impressive webcam to the test, we’re going to look at the good and the bad to help you decide if the Papalook PA552 is the webcam for you in this extensive review.
Papalook PA552: Design
The first thing you’ll notice about the Papalook PA552 is the design. With a white, circular exterior around the main 5-layer camera lens, you’ll be dealing with a slightly bigger camera than the rectangular Logitech webcams you might already be used to.
This is entirely by design, as that white exterior around the camera hides a feature that might appeal to users in low-light settings. Unlike many third-party webcams, the Papalook PA552 includes an adjustable ring light that you can use to improve the lighting for your calls or streams.
If you’re in a dark office or workspace, then the ring light included with the PA552 is almost essential, as it’ll give you a lighting boost that’ll make you visible to your audience. You can adjust the intensity of the light by touching the panel at the bottom of the camera to switch between three brightness levels, or to switch it off entirely.
The webcam has other tricks up its sleeve than just a fancy light. Like most webcams, the camera is built into a flexible stand that can be clipped onto PC monitors or laptop screens. If you want to place it further away, however, then you can use the supplied tripod instead, which offers a 75-degree field of view.
This screws into the base of the webcam in seconds, allowing you to stand your webcam up without clipping it to anything else. The tripod is small, but it’s adjustable, letting you adjust the position and focus of the camera, where necessary.
A microfibre cloth is also included to help you keep the lens and chassis clean of dust and dirt. While it isn’t strictly a design feature, it’s a nice touch that’ll help you to keep your webcam in top working order.
Papalook PA552: Features and Specifications
If you’re thinking about purchasing a webcam like the Papalook PA552, then it’s important to carefully consider the features it has to offer. Thankfully, the PA552 has all the features you’ll expect from a good-quality live streaming webcam aimed at general and professional users.
Many high-quality webcams will only offer 720p quality for live streaming, but that isn’t the case with the Papalook PA552. This impressive webcam offers high-definition, 1080p streams for video and live streaming at 30FPS (frames per second).
Thanks to the ring light, you’re also able to offset bad lighting, removing harsh shadows and evening out the colors in your video or stream. The integrated DSP (Digital Signature Processing) chip will also play its part as it automatically attempts to balance out colors and exposure for the best quality video.
The PA552 is also packaged with two noise-cancelling microphones on either side of the camera lens, which should help to reduce the excess noise that might be picked up in any calls or streams you make. This is especially important if you’re recording video, as you’ll want to maintain crisp and clear audio for your audience.
To help improve the video quality even further, the PA552 comes with a fixed-focus camera lens. Rather than worrying about focusing the lens manually, the camera will do it for you, making it easy to focus on the important part of your video or stream: yourself.
If you’re worried about unauthorized webcam access, then you can take things a step further by taking advantage of the Papalook PA552’s design. The webcam can be adjusted downwards at a 90-degree angle, taking you out of shot entirely and leaving any snoopers with the sight of your blank screen instead.
Papalook PA552: Software
The Papalook PA552 might work great for video calls, but it’s been designed with live streaming in mind. Support for OBS and other streaming software is included, making it a great option for streaming on Twitch and other live-streaming platforms.
For Windows users, the Papalook PA552 manual recommends you download and use AMCAP, which you can download from the Papalook website . This allows you to test the webcams features, record live video, or take snapshot pictures. You can also use the Windows 10 Camera app to quickly take videos and photos, if you’d prefer.
Mac users can use the built-in Photo Booth app instead. This is available for all Mac users and can be launched from the Launchpad. You’ll need to switch to using your webcam, however, by selecting the Papalook webcam from the Camera menu on the menu bar.
Testing the webcam on both macOS and Windows PCs proved to be a seamless experience. The built-in Camera app on Windows 10 and the Photo Booth app on macOS both recognized the camera as soon as it was inserted, with no additional configuration required.
Under good daytime lighting, the ring light isn’t really necessary, but it definitely helps to improve your appearance at night or if your office or working location has poor external lighting. This puts it in direct competition with other ring-light webcams, such as the Razer Kiyo .
While it’s a shame that there isn’t a Papalook-branded app for controlling your video stream or configuring your webcam, you’re well served by a number of built-in camera apps on Windows and macOS, as well as a number of third-party apps, including AMCAP on Windows.
You can use other third-party tools to make calls, record video, or stream online, from setting up Zoom to live streaming on social media.
Using the Papalook PA552: Is It the Webcam for You?
The Papalook PA552 isn’t designed to be a world-beating webcam, but it’s certainly giving it a go. Easy to use with an appealing design, the PA552 has all the features you’d need to make regular video calls or to live stream to a wide audience. With 1080p support at 30FPS, you’ll be able to conduct high-quality, smooth live streams.
At around , it also competes well on pricing against some of the best live streaming webcams out there (not to mention features). Thanks to its built-in ring light, you can be assured that you won’t look washed out when you start up your stream, either.
Once you’ve tested a webcam like the PA552, you won’t want to go back to the grainy, low-quality cameras built into laptops or Macbooks. You should be able to make Zoom video calls as soon as you plug in your new camera, but if you’re struggling, there are plenty of quick fixes to try if things aren’t working.
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Ben Stockton is a freelance technology writer based in the United Kingdom. In a past life, Ben was a college lecturer in the UK, training teens and adults. Since leaving the classroom, Ben has taken his teaching experience and applied it to writing tech how-to guides and tutorials, specialising in Linux, Windows, and Android. He has a degree in History and a postgraduate qualification in Computing. Read Ben’s Full Bio
3D printer manufacturer, Anycubic, recently released two new printers—the Anycubic Kobra and its bigger, badder uncle, the Anycubic Kobra Max. We were interested in testing both products in our hunt for the best entry-level 3D printers. We’re looking for ease-of-use and affordability, as well as build and print quality.
We’ve published a number of 3D printer reviews from Anycubic—for both FDM printers like the Anycubic Vyper that print with spools of filament and SLA resin 3D printers like the Anycubic Photon Mono X 6K that use a liquid resin as its raw material—and we can say that the Kobra Max has quickly become one of our favorites.
Features of the Anycubic Kobra Max 3D Printer
The most obvious feature of this printer is its size. It is absolutely massive. That means you can print huge items in a single piece. Think of a full helmet or an entire ukulele—these are things you couldn’t print in one piece on a normal-sized 3D printer. Truly, the word “Max” doesn’t sufficiently capture just how big this printer is. Good luck fitting the packaging into your trash or recycling bins!
We were skeptical that a Cartesian printer of this size (which relies on a moveable print bed) would perform well since it has a lot of weight to move around. Admittedly, it’s not the speediest printer out there because of those design tradeoffs, but it works great.
The Kobra Max has an impressive list of technical specifications:
- Leveling: Automatic, 25 points leveling using the Anycubic Leviq technology
- Panel area: 7.95 in² / 51.3 cm²
- Filament run-out detection: support
- Printing material: PLA / ABS / PETG & TPU
- Nozzle size: ø 0.4 mm (replaceable)
- Nozzle temperature: ≤ 500 °F / 260 °C
- Hot bed temperature: ≤ 194 °F / 90 °C
- Average speed: 3.1 – 3.9 in./s (80mm/s – 100m/s)
- Control panel: 4.3 inch LCD touch screen
- Z-axis: double threaded rod
- Print size: 17.7 x 15.7 x 15.7 in. / 45 x 40 x 40 cm (HWD)
- Build volume: 19.02 gal. / 72.0 L
- Machine dimensions: 72 x 71.5 x 66.5cm
As far as we can tell, the extruder is identical to the extruder and print head on the Anycubic Vyper. Furthermore, the Kobra Max has the same automatic bed-leveling system as the Vyper. The system uses a pressure sensor instead of an inductive sensor.
The bed-leveling sensor is right on the nozzle itself, ensuring that it can probe every printable part of the bed. And since the sensor is pressure-based, you could replace the glass bed with any other material and the bed-leveling system will still work. (Inductive sensors require metal to work, so you won’t find them on printers with glass beds.)
Since the Kobra Max’s printing platform is a rigid glass sheet, you can’t remove and flex it to pop your prints off. We prefer removable spring steel build plates, but glass is still a nice printing surface. If your printer doesn’t have a removable bed, glass is ideal because you can use metal scrapers to remove your prints without worrying about scratching the surface.
The LCD touchscreen is identical to the screens used on many other Anycubic printers. As usual, it’s responsive and easy to use.
A note about filament types: the Kobra Max will print with PLA, PETG, TPU, and ABS. However, if you really want to print with ABS and get the best possible results, the printer should be inside an enclosure. Given its size, it may be challenging to build a suitable enclosure for the Kobra Max.
Assembling the Kobra Max 3D Printer
When assembling the new Kobra Max, make sure you have sufficient working space. Since the bed moves forward and backward, you need more space than you’d think. We put it on a 30” folding table, and when it’s printing, it needs about 36 inches, front to back.
Assembly of the Kobra Max is no more difficult than assembling the Kobra or Vyper. The only additional items are the diagonal braces which add stiffness to the frame, reducing mechanical vibration.
It took two people about 15 minutes to assemble. Double-check that you’ve cut all the zip ties used to stabilize the printer during shipping. There are a lot of them.
Calibration
The auto-bed-leveling system is easy to use. Anycubic recommends that you check the x- and the y-axes to make sure they don’t wobble. If they do, you can adjust the eccentric nuts until the wobbling stops. There was no wobble on our printer, so we didn’t have to do anything.
Additionally, the x- and y-axes have belt tensioners. We needed to slightly tighten the x-axis on ours. The tensioners are easy to use and are features a lot of other printers lack. Who wants to take apart the extruder assembly just to tighten the belts? Not us, and probably not you.
Build Quality of the Kobra Max
Due to the addition of the diagonal braces, the frame is really stiff. The dual z-axis screws are an improvement over the smaller Kobra. They virtually eliminated sagging of the x-axis assembly.
The spool holder sits on the base of the printer, reducing wobbling when printing tall items. It’s better than having the spool on the top like on the Kobra.
This printer is built with aluminum extrusions with aesthetically-pleasing plastic covers for the hotend and the tenionsers. It’s got an optical z endstop. The x and y endstops are mechanical. The whole thing feels solid.
First Print
For the first print, we used the test file provided by Anycubic. Appropriately, the owl is about twice the print volume of the owl test print that comes with the smaller Kobra. Given the bowden setup (which makes sense for a printer this size), we were surprised that the ears on the owl turned out so well.
The ears look better than they did on the owl printed on the Kobra which has a direct drive extruder system. We suspect that’s due to the slower print speed. Many times, retractions on bowden extruders will create artifacts, but we didn’t notice any blobs or stringing. It approaches the quality you’d expect from a direct-drive.
Next, we printed a vase with a large, flat base with a 0.2mm layer height. Removing prints from the glass bed is certainly not as easy as removing prints from smaller, flexible beds, but it’s not a deal-breaker either. We didn’t have any adhesion problems. The prints didn’t release when the glass bed cooled, which is what we expected and hoped for.
Curious what the power requirements would be for a printer this size, we were worried we wouldn’t be able to run multiple printers on the same circuit. We measured the power usage while the Kobra Max was printing, and, as expected, power usage is highest while the printer is warming up. Ours topped out at 473 watts. While printing, it was a more manageable 200-300 watts. We thought it would be more than that. You could probably run three of these printers on a 20 amp circuit.
Cut to the Chase
To drive home just how big the Kobra Max is, we put the Kobra on the bed of the Kobra Max. Insane. (We do not recommend you try this.)
A small printer is limiting, so if you find yourself printing large objects in small pieces and assembling them, consider buying a Kobra Max. If you’re new to 3D printing, keep in mind that it takes a long time to print big objects—potentially days and days. Typically, we’d recommend a smaller printer to beginners, but at the price point of $569.00 if you purchase on the Anycubic site, it’s worth considering as an entry-level printer.
One downside is that smaller prints will take a little longer than they would on a smaller, faster printer. That’s just physics. Bigger printers have more inertia to overcome and take longer to move. For example, the print time for our vase was thirteen hours. On our Prusa MK 2.5 with similar settings, it would have taken about twelve hours—not a huge difference.
*Special thanks to FormerLurker for help in reviewing AnyCubic’s Kobra Max 3D printer.
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Maggie Marystone is a freelance technology writer, human rights worker, and storyteller based in Chicago. Read Maggie’s Full Bio
