Razer Stargazer wants to be top gaming webcam

The Logitech C920 has perched above my monitor for years now, resolute, watchful, and consistently on top for quality, aesthetics and affordability among webcams.

for quality, aesthetics and affordability among webcams. But that's not good enough for Razer. Announced at CES, the Razer Stargazeris a $200 all-seeing, all-chroma-keying eye built with streamers in mind.

The Stargazer uses Intel RealSense for a number of features in the Kinect family, such as gesture and facial recognition, and 3D scanning. More intriguing is its promise to do away with the need for a green screen to separate you and your racing chair from the background on stream. The Stargazer has three lenses, and uses depth perception to decide what is gamer and what is bedroom wall. There's very little footage of the hardware in action, but a video by The Vergeshows the background clipping in distinctly. Still, it may be a viable alternative if you lack somewhere to store metres of green cloth, and as all the processing happens onboard it won't sap CPU power.

It records in 720p 60fps or 1080p 30 and boasts a noise-cancelling dual-microphone array. I can see that being useful on the move, but it strikes me that any streamer willing to spend $200 on a webcam will have a condenser mic to hand.

Part of the C920's appeal is 1080p quality for £50—do you think the extra features of the Stargazer will invigorate the webcam market?