Razer's latest webcam shows why adding AI to stuff isn't the golden fix tech brands want it to be

I cannot tell you how excited I've been to try out the Razer Kiyo V2 Pro since its announcement. I've been using its predecessor, the Kiyo Pro Ultra, for over three years now for every YouTube video I've created, and I stand by what I said back in 2023 when I reviewed it: it's the best webcam ever made. That said, I can't pretend there aren't improvements I was waiting for in a sequel. I've been dying for the bump up to 4K60 recordings; I've been wishing autofocus was a bit quicker, and for some sort of customizable aperture to help with depth in my shots.

But the best live streaming gear for gamers has taken a bit of a turn in recent times. The trend with almost all of the webcams hitting the shelves these days is the inclusion of AI. Not generative AI, mind you, but AI image enhancement, and more often than not, some kind of clever pan, tilt, and zoom. The Kiyo Pro Ultra never had those AI features in it, but even as someone who hates the current AI situation, I can attest that most webcams use it pretty well. It's hard to offer a DSLR-type of performance in a USB-only webcam that's in a smaller body, so AI is used by lots of brands now to provide a less costly performance bump. It's the way the market has gone since 2023, so I'm not exactly surprised to see Razer follow the trend with the Kiyo V2 Pro.

Sadly, I've tested this thing, compared it to what came before, and I don't like it one bit as a sequel to one of my favorite pieces of content creation gear. For the same $299/£299 price as the Kiyo Pro Ultra, it feels like a worse product in almost every way, and not one I can recommend easily.

Design

Personally, I never had any problems with the design of the original Razer Kiyo Pro or the Razer Kiyo Pro Ultra. Were they comically large for webcams? Yes. Were they a bit bulky and impractical when sitting atop a laptop or monitor? Absolutely. Did their design get in the way of anything? Definitely not. Were they big for a reason? Yes - they have larger sensors than other models, and in the case of the Kiyo Pro Ultra, the largest sensor ever put in a mainstream webcam. This made a big difference to the sort of imagery it could capture, and its low-light handling especially was perfect for the gaming content market.

All of that said, Razer decided to make changes to the design of the Kiyo for its V2 range, and the V2 Pro has followed suit. It now has the largely common design language of a modern-day webcam, small and round for the lens in the front, with a lot more junk in the trunk. I first saw this sort of design with the Logitech MX Brio: a smaller lens with a massive, wide body on either side of it. I can maybe see why this became the norm for a few cameras, but it is far, far more impractical for you to sit atop a monitor or try and squeeze between other things on your gaming desk because it has a lot more real estate on its flanks.

Despite its size changes, the Kiyo V2 Pro, at 380 grams, has somehow become heavier than the Kiyo Pro Ultra (348g). What you have, then, is a Kiyo V2 Pro that feels bulkier and more awkward to use than its predecessor, and what makes things worse are design decisions that make it less versatile as a camera.

For example, the Kiyo V2 Pro comes on a standard crocodile clip-like stand, but unlike the Ultra before it, it can't be removed from this stand, which makes mounting it to the Elgato Prompter or another tripod a lot more difficult.

Even worse is that this crocodile clip isn't very strong, so if you want to sit it up in different positions, the folding hinges can't even sustain the camera's weight very well, meaning it sometimes slowly wilts out of the framing you just spent a minute trying to line up perfectly. If you try to tilt the V2 Pro backward at all, it's so back-heavy it'll fall pretty much immediately. Most users will clip this onto a monitor or laptop, but I have my doubts about laptop screen hinges being able to deal with this sort of heft too.

Unlike other webcams that tout AI PTZ features (the Insta360 Link, the Insta360 Link 2, the Obsbot Tiny 2 4K, and the AverMedia cams to name a few), the Kiyo V2 Pro isn't attached to a gimbal, meaning it doesn't actually pan, tilt, and zoom; it just uses slightly punched-in shots from its wide-angle lens to track you with its AI features. There are vents on the back of the webcam's body, which I assume are for venting heat, but when software is doing the heavy lifting, I'm not sure why the thing needs ventilation or, indeed, its increased weight.

One thing I'm happy to see carried over is the privacy shutter you can close by twisting the lens. It's nice to have that peace of mind, especially in this day and age of digital security feeling like a lottery ticket. There isn't an external lens cap this time - even though you don't need both for privacy, I always thought the cap was more useful to protect the expensive lens and camera innards from breakage. It's a shame that, at the same price, Razer isn't offering you the same protection this time around.

Annoyingly, the small recording light placed on top of the Ultra's lens has been moved to the side body of the V2 Pro. That's hardly an issue for most users, but if you plan on chucking this webcam into the Elgato Prompter as I do for my videos, you're going to have more trouble spotting where to look.

Features

I think the main feature disparity to focus on here between the Kiyo Pro Ultra and Kiyo V2 Pro is the sensor. The Ultra features a Sony Starvis 1/1.2-inch sensor coupled with an f/1.7 aperture. The Kiyo V2 Pro uses a smaller 1/1.8-inch sensor with an aperture of f/1.9. The V2 Pro may have a wider-angle lens, giving an FOV of 86 degrees as opposed to 82, but don't be fooled by that. The Ultra's lens and optics let in more light; the V2 Pro can just capture a wider area.

In theory, with its sensor and updated innards, the V2 Pro should be able to capture more vivid colors, not least due to its UHDR support, which the Ultra didn't have (it was limited to HDR). That said, I didn't notice a more vivid color range in my testing. The Kiyo V2 Pro relies on software to try to tune your image, especially with features like one-click image enhancement. My issue is that the Ultra offered even clearer and out-of-the-box lighting balance because it was baked into the capabilities of the product on a hardware level.

We've run into this kind of thing before when we reviewed the Elgato Facecam Mk 2. While colors feel a bit flat and the imagery isn't so good right now, there's every chance it could improve with time and software patches - either way, at the top of the market, I think people should get a bit more bang for their buck on hardware alone.

You might think that the big engine running the show on the software side of things is Synapse, but it feels like more of a cheerleader this time around. In fact, Razer has partnered with Camo Studio for the V2 Pro, so much so that Razer's website even says the camera is "powered by" the software. That does mean that with a webcam purchase you'll get a lifetime license for Camo Studio Pro, but don't think of that as an added bonus because, as I found out in my testing, it's really a requirement if you want the quoted capabilities of the camera.

That's not to say Synapse doesn't have a lot going for it. It's here you'll have access to settings like autofocus, auto exposure, shutter guard, low light compensation, noise reduction, HDR, and image presets if you don't want to get into the nitty-gritty image settings within Camo Studio.

You will need to go to the third-party app if you want to access the pan, tilt, and zoom trickery however, which works just fine; don't expect the actual camera to move around with you, it'll just zoom in slightly and shift the focus around where you are in your shot. Yes, it still looks like an Oblivion NPC has stolen your in-game attention.

Essentially, if I had to sum up the features here, I'd tell you that, as a fan of the Pro Ultra, Razer has taken a more affordable step down in terms of the hardware and parts used in favour of giving you more software support. Where the Pro Ultra relied on pure sensor might to give you the best image possible, the V2 Pro relies on not one but two bits of software to make up for the fact that it isn't quite as strong a camera. And the big bonus? Capturing 4K footage at 60fps instead of 30.

Performance

I think the best way to tell you why I don't recommend this webcam is to run you through my experience with it from start to finish. Hopefully, with the testing footage and imagery I've captured, you'll get a sense of why it's not a match for the older Kiyo Pro Ultra.

To begin with, I slotted this camera into the Elgato Prompter in preparation for recording a new video essay I'm working on for my YouTube channel. I know from countless recordings with the Ultra what sort of image quality I should expect, and I was excited to see that scaled up to 60 frames per second as opposed to 30 this time around.

I went into Synapse to ensure I was working on the most up-to-date firmware, and found nothing besides Synapse telling me I could activate my Camo Studio license for enhanced features and PTZ stuff. Since I wasn't going to use those in my static video recording and was only interested in 4K60 and the out-of-the-box experience (because why would I need anything else with a $299 camera), I ignored that. I turned on the vibrant color mode, I made sure all of the other settings were correct, and I got cracking setting up lighting.

The first bump in the road came when I couldn't get the lighting right. The Kiyo Pro Ultra's larger sensor always means that if you're recording in a gaming room like me, using darker scenes with colorful lighting in the background, it's excellent at balancing things. The V2 Pro was struggling, and with Low Light Compensation on and playing around with the Shutter Guard, I couldn't get the balance I wanted at all because it was overexposing the image or not capturing the vivid colors of the blue lighting in my background. Keep in mind I was doing everything I could to make it work, including bumping my ring light down to 1% of its brightness. Things also looked pretty grainy, so I ended up turning both of these settings off. I finally found the balance I wanted, so I got to shooting my video.

Image 1 of 2

When I went to watch it back a whole 40 minutes later (I had a lot of outtakes), my head immediately hit my hands. I must have recorded at 1080p, because this was not the sort of quality I expected at all from a 4K webcam. Below, you can see an example of the same lighting being used in an older video with the Kiyo Pro Ultra, then a sample of what I had just captured with the Kiyo V2 Pro. The difference is scary, and I knew something must be wrong - even if the properties of the file promised me the frame sizes were in 4K. It looked like 1080p stretched up to 4K.

The next day, I decided to look closer. First off, I did tests in 1080p and 4K to see if there was actually a difference in quality, and there wasn't.

I was sure there must be a firmware update or a wider software issue I wasn't catching, but Synapse had nothing listed that fixed the issue except that offer to download Camo Studio. I decided to give it a try, so I downloaded the app and accepted my included Pro license. Suddenly, the quality the V2 Pro could capture was enhanced and looked a lot closer to the sort of detail of a 4K image, but now, there was all sorts of noticeable AI noise going on in the background. To be clear, the Kiyo Pro V2 will actually capture at 4K60, but you need both Synapse and Camo Studio working in the background to make it happen.

But I had new problems: there was all of this visual noise and distortion when there was any motion in front of the lens because clearly whatever AI was working in the background couldn't keep up with the 4K60 promises on the box of the webcam. I hardly move around in my shots, but I didn't want streaky nonsense all over my facecam footage. I tried turning off Dynamic Noise Reduction to get rid of this, but the camera seems to be totally faulty without it. I couldn't capture any image with the V2 Pro in any application, as you'll see below.

Image 1 of 2

Even with this noisy, blurry motion making the footage uncomfortable to look at, I still wasn't seeing the sort of crystal-clear, sharp imagery I'm used to from the Kiyo Pro Ultra, so I wanted to do some more direct comparisons. I plugged the older model back in, and despite my using the same cable, Windows was now telling me through its camera app that I could only record in 1080p. It wasn't until I uninstalled Camo Studio that the full 4K might of the Ultra was enabled again - very suspicious, if you ask me, and just one reason why I hate products like this relying on a bit of companion software.

Apps like this can be unruly, cause wider compatibility issues with other bits of your kit, and generally be subject to change in the future. I'd much rather buy a device whose hardware can do what I need it to.

Either way, once I expelled Camo Studio from my PC, there it was: the 4K, beautiful power of the Kiyo Pro Ultra. Was its autofocus slow? Yes, but its imagery was so noticeably better than its successor that I don't even know if there's a proper comparison to make here.

I tried a bunch of wider setting changes with the V2 Pro and played around in Camo Studio for a while, but I'm just not impressed at all. Thankfully, its autofocus was a bit quicker off the mark than the Ultra, and a wider-angle lens does give you more framing potential. But those things were never dealbreakers for the Ultra, and its amazing clarity spoke for itself. It's one thing to promise DSLR-quality image enhancements with AI add-ons, but when the image quality of the camera itself can't keep up in real time, and isn't as good as a product you released in 2023, it's hard to advocate for.

Should you buy the Razer Kiyo V2 Pro?

This isn't the webcam I was hoping for. Besides a wider lens and faster autofocus, the Razer Kiyo V2 Pro feels like a step backward from the Kiyo Pro Ultra in almost every conceivable way. The colors are flatter, the AI enhancements get in the way of crystal-clear footage, and the bulk of the camera makes it harder to use in a professional setup.

The annoying part is that the Ultra is now more expensive half the time, and it's getting harder to find. I haven't gone hands-on with the Elgato 4K60-capable webcam it offers in competition to the V2 Pro, but I'd be willing to bet that it relies on a lot of the same AI enhancements as this does. So what do I recommend over this?

If you can find the Kiyo Pro Ultra, go for that, because it's still the best webcam ever made in my eyes.

If you're looking for that ultimate 4K60 imagery, if you want access to more aperture and a suite of ways to make the photography your own, maybe it's finally time for me to recommend you look into a DSLR option. Personally, I hate to say it, but webcams might have reached a ceiling that no amount of AI can help you break through.

This is what I feel most webcam makers are missing in 2026 - it may seem as though harnessing AI features is the catch-all to improving this type of device, but the end result looks flatter, less crisp, and cheaper than if you were to actually invest in better camera specs. This wouldn't bother me so much, but when the marketing makes claims that these things can offer DSLR-quality anything, I think it's important to set the record straight.

Beyond actually going for a professional-grade camera for a bit more money, there is a plethora of 4K PTZ cameras that use AI a lot better than Razer has here, and of course DJI's range of tiny handheld cams.

Overall, it's really difficult to recommend a $299 webcam that's just okay in isolation, but so much worse when compared to what came before it.

How I tested the Razer Kiyo V2 Pro

As outlined in the performance section of this review, I integrated the Kiyo V2 Pro into my setup while attempting to record a new video for YouTube, but its difficulty out of the box without software and its blurred visuals when working with its AI companion software led me to go back to its older sibling. I did plenty of test recordings and comparisons with the V2 Pro before coming to a verdict, and I also did extensive testing in Camo Studio to mitigate the problems I was having.

For more on our testing methods, take a look at the GamesRadar+ hardware policy.

For more on content creation, check out the best capture cards, best streaming mixer, and the best microphones for streaming and gaming.