The Warrior LiveCam, as its namesake implies, looks like the upper torso of a knight in shining black armour, complete with a protection visor. The visor is there for a purpose – for privacy, and to avoid hackers and voyeurs alike spying on you, you can swing the visor down to cover the lens.
On top of the helmet, there is a blue light-emitting diode button that glows when the Webcam is turned on. Pressing on this button will also take a still picture.
Perched on top of your monitor, it looks ultra-cool as far as Webcams go. A4Tech Warrior LiveCam has a flexible rubberised grip that can be moulded to grip a liquid crystal display notebook PC screen as well.
If you think this is just one of those regular glossy black Webcams, then you cannot be anymore mistaken for the Warrior LiveCam has what A4Tech calls “professional face-tracing technology”. What this technology means is, when you are in the midst of a face-to-face Webcam conversation, the camera auto-focuses and compensates for your face or head movements.
During testing, A4Tech Warrior LiveCam is able to trace facial movements as long as the movements are not too extreme. The images are auto-focused and the centre of focus is maintained.
A4Tech has ingeniously done this without cumbersome mechanics. Within the small eye-like orb is a five-layer glass lens. This glass lens setup reduces distortions or blurring for better images compared to your run-of-the-mill breed of Webcams. A4Tech has managed to utilise USB 2.0 and 1.3-megapixel (which is double of what most Webcams have) hardware with its software and drivers to make the camera eye follow movements.
There are several modes such as the face-tracing mode, which traces the facial area within red boxes so you know where the camera is pointing to.
Other interesting modes are hats and animal masks. These two funny modes show how well the face-tracing technology copes with your head movements, albeit the hats and animal masks can lag a little at times during sudden movements.
The built-in noise-cancelling microphone works fine, but it would still be hard to pick up words in a noisy gaming cybercafe.
A4Tech Warrior LiveCam comes bundled with the VP-Eye software, which can be used to capture videos or pictures of yourself. The software also comes with features to adjust and enhance photos and videos, and to enlarge, crop and add borders to photos.
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