A few years ago, Razer debuted their Kiyo webcam, which set itself apart by having an integrated ring light, allowing you to illuminate yourself during video calls without needing any extra accessories, making it one of our picks for the best webcams at the time. Later on, they updated it to ditch the ring light in favor of a wide aperture lens that can adjust its light capture as needed by each scene. With the new Razer Kiyo V2, the outfit is leveraging AI technology to level up your video quality on the fly.
Like many webcams today, Razer is boosting Kiyo’s image resolution to 4K, allowing it to capture images with sharper, more extensive detail. More importantly, they’re reinforcing the camera hardware with plenty of AI optimizations, along with a suite of AI tools for lighting, framing, backgrounds, and more.
The Razer Kiyo V2 is equipped with an 8.3MP Sony Starvis image sensor, which allows it to capture native 4K footage at 30 fps. They pair that with an ultrawide angle lens that boasts a 93-degree field of view, so you can zoom in for a more focused framing or zoom out to show more of your background. Razer claims it does this with no warping or distortion along the edges, so images are captured clearly from one corner to another. The webcam can also capture in 1080p if you want a higher 60 fps frame rate.
It can capture footage with HDR, allowing it to record footage with richer hues and enhanced contrast, with support for both automatic and manual focusing, so you can let the camera keep you in focus the whole time. The webcam, by the way, can record footage in MJPEG, YUY2, and NV12 formats. Do note, it only supports lower frame rates (15 fps and 20 fps, respectively) when shooting 4K in YUY2 and NV12 formats, so you might want to stick with MJPEG if it won’t be an issue.
The Razer Kiyo V2 works with the outfit’s Synapse software, allowing you to change settings for ISO, shutter speed, white balance, and more on the fly, along with offering AI background replacements for a more presentable backdrop. It also comes with a bunch of streaming software tools for people who want to use the webcam for streaming on Twitch, YouTube, or anywhere else. The webcam boasts native integration with Reincubate’s Camo Studio software, giving it all sorts of advanced AI capabilities. These include an auto-framing function that automatically performs panning, zooming, and tilting effects as needed to keep you perfectly in frame, as well as one-click image enhancements that automatically adjusts exposure, white balance, noise reduction, and more to ensure flawless visuals, regardless of your current setup.
The webcam also comes with a built-in stereo mic that uses an omnidirectional polar pattern, so you can start using it even without a dedicated USB mic. It even has onboard noise cancellation, so it can clean up audio before transmitting it. Other features include an integrated privacy shutter, 16-bit 48kHz audio, USB-C connectivity, and an L-shaped mount that can be affixed on top of monitors or mounted on tripods via a 1/4-inch thread.
The Razer Kiyo V2 is available now.
