Skip to main content

MSI brought the only laptop with a 1080p webcam to CES, and I’m mad

In 2020, we all learned the hard way just how bad our laptop webcams all are. They’re a horrible, grainy mess, and they make for a terrible videoconferencing experience.

That’s why I was certain that coming to CES 2021, the virtual show-floor would be flooded with laptops with 1080p webcams. Surely, after over eight months of constant blurry Zoom calls, companies like Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Asus would relieve our pain. But I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Recommended Videos

Only one company, MSI, had the smarts to bring a proper 1080p webcam to its laptops — and it’s not the one you would have thought.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The GE76 and GE77 Raider are two of MSI’s new gaming laptops, both refreshed with new silicon from Nvidia inside and a fresh coat of paint on the outside. The laptops are filled to the brim with interesting new features, but its webcam was what made me do a double-take.

MSI says it’s worked for years behind the scenes to get a 1080p webcam in one of its laptops. Kudos to MSI. Being the only manufacturer with a piece of hardware isn’t easy. It probably wasn’t cheap, either. It’s not dissimilar to the work Dell had to do behind the scenes to shrink the size of its camera module to squeeze it into the tiny top bezel of the XPS 13. Oftentimes, it takes a lot of extra effort to convince a vendor that manufactures small computer parts to invest in a new technology that won’t ship in huge volume.

Meanwhile, companies like Lenovo and HP did upgrade their webcams this year, but only to 5 megapixels. That’s an improvement, but they’re still severely held back by the low resolution. As much as I appreciate what MSI has done here, gaming laptops are an odd place to feature a 1080p webcam. We need it in the work laptops we’re stuck using on a daily basis.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

At the moment, you can only find 720p webcams in tablets like the Surface Pro or iPad Pro. I spoke to Lenovo about why laptops have remained at 720p while tablets have moved to 1080p. The company replied by saying that in the past, improved webcams just weren’t a priority for its customers. But now that that has changed, Lenovo says making the operational gears of manufacturing take a while to start spinning, especially when it involves so many partnerships.

“Cameras were not quite getting the job done as well as they should be,” said Adam Howes, the product manager of the ThinkPad laptops. “Part of that is the hardware, part of that is the pipe coming into the home or wherever you are, and part of that is the software.”

It sounds like a lot of things to have to get right, but MSI just proved that it could have been done.

Howes did reassure me that 1080p webcams on Lenovo laptops were in the works. I have to assume that’s true of other manufacturers as well.

But the idea that new laptops with 720p webcams are still being announced at the world’s most advanced tech conference is a severe disappointment. For all the talk about empowering remote workers, we’re going to be left out to dry for the foreseeable future — unless you start using an MSI gaming laptop for work, that is.

Luke Larsen
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Luke Larsen is the Senior Editor of Computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.
I’m a laptop reviewer, and these were my biggest disappointments of 2023
Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 front view showing display and keyboard.

I recently praised five great laptops from 2023, ranging from the excellent and affordable Asus Zenbook 14 OLED to the spectacular and expensive $5,000 HP Spectre Foldable PC. But not all of the laptops from 2023 belong on our list of best laptops.

Some of them were downright disappointing. Maybe they were overly expensive, provided inferior performance, or otherwise failed to live up to expectations. I cover six of these disappointing laptops here.
LG Gram Style
LG Gram Style Digital Trends

Read more
I’m a laptop reviewer. Here’s why I still use a laptop from 2021
Apple MacBook Pro 14 front view showing display and keyboard deck.

I'm pretty much always using a new laptop as my daily driver -- whichever one that I'm testing for review. And in 2023 alone, I've reviewed almost 40 machines, ranging from near-budget machines with solid performance and impressive features all the way up to innovative devices like the HP Spectre Foldable PC.

But occasionally, there's a lull in new releases, which gives me a chance to do a gut check. Which laptop do I return to as my primary work machine? To my own surprise, it's none of the flashy new releases from 2023. It's a laptop from way back in 2021 that remains my favorite. Not coincidentally, it's the only laptop I've purchased myself in years. That laptop is the first-gen Apple MacBook Pro 14, and it's held up so well against the competition that I still haven't felt compelled to replace it. Here's why.
The display continues to blow me away

Read more
Trump’s lawyer brought a gaming laptop to $250M fraud trial
A tweet showing Trump's lawyer with a gaming laptop.

We've seen gaming laptops in classrooms and out in the wild on public transportion, but we've never expected to spot an Asus ROG laptop in a courtroom -- especially in the hands of an attorney representing former President Donald Trump. Still, there it was, with RGB lighting changing colors all throughout the first day of Trump's $250 million fraud trial in New York.

The unidentified laptop in question belongs to Alina Habba, one of Trump's attorneys, and it was first spotted by Ryan Rigney, a marketing director at a game development company called Odyssey Studio. Rigney took to Twitter to share his findings, claiming that we're looking at an Asus laptop with an Nvidia RTX 2070 Ti inside. The RTX 2070 Ti doesn't exist, so Rigney is most likely talking about the RTX 2070 Super.

Read more