I must admit I was unsure at first. I hadn’t come across Obsbot products in the past and all the sales information on the Tail Air almost seemed to be too good to be true. A full 4k30fps ptz camera that fits in the palm of your hand, has a built in battery, able to record, has NDI and AI tracking…. surely not.

But in fact I was wrong! It is true and wow does it do it well.

I bought the camera as a trial for work as we do streaming of live events from concerts to sports to corporate events and award ceremonies with the plan to put it in along side our usual cameras and give it a test not believing it could be as good as our more expensive PTZ cameras but surprisingly it not only matches them but beats them on a number of key areas.

Yes it doesn’t have SDI output and only has micro HDMI out and USB C on the body of the camera so you find yourself having to use adapters but that’s a small price to pay for what had to be one of the smallest and most powerful PTZ cameras on the market. Coupled with its small size you have it’s inbuilt battery, NDI Hx3 and the ability to connect and control over WiFi which gives you a really powerful camera that is so handy to have in your box of tricks on a job.

We’ve so far used it on conferences’ on the panel table giving us perfect shots of guests speaking during q&a, on stage as an audience camera where you could hardly see it in the corner of the stage, as a main lectern camera on an awards night and during sports presentations on pitch connected to an additional battery to give us over 6 hours of battery life to show presenters and guests live on the big screens in the ground where the battery and wireless NDI hx3 comes into its own as everything is fast paced and needs to be cleared from the pitch very quickly and a number of other events where we have struggled to wire or power any other camera or the director hasn’t wanted a big and ugly camera in shot.

Overall I’m very, very impressed with its size, quality and overall usefulness out on jobs.

If you are buying this camera on its own rather than as a bundle there are a few additional items you will have to pay for, which is something you need to bear in mind when looking at the purchase cost. Firstly you will have to pay extra for the NDI HX3 licence – the camera works perfectly fine without NDI but its worth purchasing especially if you use vmix or OBS. Secondly I would strongly advise getting the USB c to network adapter so you can use a wired connection as well as wireless for those jobs you csnt trust the wifi and thirdly for the complete set go for the Obsbot Remote as that makes it so quick and easy to get the camera up and running and in position on a job. You can control it via your phone and computer software like vmix etc… BUT sometimes it’s just easier to grab the remote and put the camera where it needs to be – just quick and simple and with the added bonus that 1 remote will control up to 3 cameras!

Previously we have had the logitech mevo start 3 pack and a couple of go pro in our box of tricks for those times where you need those additional camera shots or small footprint but I think we are now looking to replace the mevo’a with Tail Airs as the mevo are only 1080p and a fixed shot where as the Tail Air are full ptz with tracking ability if needed – which is so much more useful in the box of tricks.

Overall I’m so impressed by this little camera and cant recommend it enough – it really has opened up so many more creative ideas and workflows and we are looking at buying more as a company.

Good video quality, but u wouldn’t rely on the mic. Its OK, but not great.

Tracking is usually good, but the signal to turn it on and off, and for zoom, are a little temperamental (I guess it works first time around 60% of the time).

Also, the signal to turn on and off tracking is a little wave of the hand…. which means that you turn out of accidentally every time you wave to say hello or goodbye. Bit of an own goal…

But, generally, I love the camera and its great value for money compared to some other tracking cameras

For once, a camera that lives up to its reviews, very easy to use, software works well and integrates into your meeting software without a problem. To see this tracking a speaker in a classroom is magical, it lives up to the hype of the impressive reviews. It could be improved with adding controls to offset the speaker rather than centrally-locating them on screen, it would be a good idea to have included the remote control device as re-setting the camera can be a hassle. Using the remote disables some keyboard keys in use.

If you walk outside the 300 deg range, it can freeze the gimbal, so a reset fixes this. Walking for hours within the correct range limit is no problem, it tracks all the time. Power requirements are well within 500mA USB limit and I measured peak of 250/300 mA in use.

The build quality is excellent. There is a 4K version which has a larger sensor and higher zoom level, probably worth the extra just for that.

The two gestures can get confused if you have a particularly vocal hand-wavy speaker, just keep that in mind as it could be easy to turn off tracking or leave it zoomed in.