@ About, Packaging, Build Quality @

The cost of the camera when I bought it 2 years ago was £15 and for that you don't get a lot for your money. In fact what you do get is a 1.5 mega pixel camera, which has glitches and poor build quality. The camera comes in a solid plastic packaging, which will take you the best part of 5 minutes to get into and there are about 6 different user manuals in multiple languages. The camera is made of white plastic and has a green led inside which lights up when it is plugged into the console.

You can also adjust the focus on the front of the camera by adjusting the swivel knob that surrounds the camera lens. This is a very useful feature and I have never had any problems with it. The build quality problems stem from the casing and wiring. The wire has a rubber grey surround to protect it but it's so thin the electrical cable starts to show after just a few months of bending and winding it around.

The casing itself has two pieces to keep it together, the front and back plates. If you drop the camera these will split and smash to pieces on the floor. Lastly, the camera base has a spring in it to keep it in the position you set it up as, and unfortunately one of the springs has become loose and weak, and now its tough to get it to stay upright. It's also hard to position, as you have to force the camera back.

@ Video, Picture & Ease of use @

Like I said 1.5 mega pixels is not great picture quality, and more distant objects are very out of focus, even when the camera has the focus turned all the way round. The focus is very accurate though and you wont get a sudden jump in camera focus, the rubber focus can turn (pardon the pun) 360 to get a more accurate picture. Even some things like LEDs and small details such as text are very blurred. The Vision camera can do video chat and it works the same way as taking a picture except with video there is no lag.

When taking a picture you get a count down then for half a second there is some lag. With video it's a high FPS camera and there is little latency between frames. Even over a poor Internet connection. For this alone id like to award an extra star. To set up its just plug and play. Your Xbox will automatically recognise the camera when it is plugged in and there are no menus to set up.

@ Overall @

This is a rather expensive way to send pictures and video. Microsoft make it so you can't buy any other alternative so you have no option but to put up with this. Not a recommended product but if you really need to send video and pictures... what choice do you have?