I bought an Opal C1 as a guilty pleasure (it just looked like a fine gadget and I needed a webcam anyway) A few thoughts: - I think Opal’s marketing feels even more out of touch than when they launched the C1: “Introducing the Tadpole, the smallest webcam ever built” - I mean, I doubt this is true, and one might even say that your laptop’s webcam is smaller. It doesn’t really inspire confidence.

• It looks like an neat product, but the presented use-case is extremely narrow: it’s for people who really (like, $175 really) need a better webcam than whatever their laptop has built-in, but don’t have a home setup with a screen and a webcam.
• It took ages for Opal to fix their alpha app which is basically required to use the C1 for anything and it’s still buggy. Fix the damn thing before releasing new products. At some point there were so little improvements on their software that I began to wonder if the company wasn’t going under.
• They’ve been texting me about this new webcam which I consider to be a major red flag when it comes to targeted ads, especially for a company that brands itself as premium. I don’t think I’ve given them my phone number except for shipping and it annoys the f**k out of me that they use it for this.