The OBSBOT Meet SE and OBSBOT Tiny SE review — Perfect for tabletop gaming?

Every camera iteration from OBSBOT is a huge jump over the last, and the OBSBOT Tiny SE and OBSBOT Meet SE are no exception.  Both cameras are more than just a bump in resolution and framerate, bringing with them a ton of improvements like low-light compensation, HDR support, and a lot of AI improvements like dynamic framing, and a number of user-requested features.  Let’s dig into both of them and see what’s under the hood, as well as a really cool use case we just had to test out during our most recent tabletop convention. Let’s kick things off with the Meet SE.

Despite this device costing nearly half that of the Meet 2 ($69 vs $129), the Meet SE has nearly every single feature of its slightly larger brother, but with the generational upgrade of an extra year’s worth of tech uplift.  

The OBSBOT Meet SE has a lot of the same physical characteristics as the Meet 2, measuring just 4.5” x 2.5” x 2”, making it easily the smallest 4K camera I’ve seen – it’s even somehow slightly lighter… Also like the Meet 2, it sits atop a magnetic stand that you can set over a monitor, perch on a desk surface, or screw into a standard ¼″ UN thread. You can also flip it vertically or leave it horizontal, depending on the type of content you like to make.  You can even mount it upside-down without a problem as you can invert the image in the OBSBOT software or in OBS. So far, that’s all the same as its predecessor.  It’s when we get behind the lens that things change dramatically.

Unlike the Tiny SE which has moving parts, the Meet SE relies on reframing within the 4X zoom range to “move” within the image. It does so with the help of AI-assisted auto-tracking.  Both the Meet and the Meet SE supported this, but with the Meet SE I had less instances where it would miss the L for zoom or the hand up for “focus on me”.  Similarly, the dynamic reframing (that is to say, you might have two people in the foreground with a tight crop on their faces, but the camera can pull back and reframe when a third person walks behind them to accommodate that person’s height) was more reliable. 

The biggest improvement to the Meet SE is easily the new 1/2.8" stacked CMOS sensor.  A slightly larger sensor, but with the same ƒ/1.8 aperture. This new sensor has a  2.9μm pixel size, allowing it to draw in more light, resulting in better low-light performance while retaining the already-great full brightness image of its predecessor.  It also means the camera is capable of capturing the resultant image faster – something crucial for the jump from 4K@30fps/1080@60fps on the Meet 2 to a fantastic 1080p@100fps/720p@150fps for slow motion capture. Even when you’re not using the device for slow motion, simply capturing more frames will make for a cleaner image with less noise, better at handling fast movements like waving.  Sure, you lose 4K/30 support, but as you’ll see below, the tradeoffs are more than worth it.

One of the most impressive improvements on the Meet SE is the dual ISO support. Low light conditions are a challenge for a small camera.  Even phone cameras that have millions of dollars of R&D often struggle with light to dark transitions, taking an exceptional amount of time to adjust. The Meet SE improves on its more expensive predecessor in this area nicely, making it more than useable for capturing your face while gaming – the most obvious use case, but far from the only one.  

There is really only one area where I felt like the Meet SE’s lens didn’t quite live up to the promise – auto-focus.  All of the OBSBOT cameras are capable of locking onto a target with AI, be that a face, torso, hand, or in the case of the bigger cameras, over 200 other things (shockingly, I’m not exaggerating!).  In the software you’ll see a square over the tracked object, and the camera will try to stay focused on that item. If you proffer something to the camera, the device will focus on that, giving a nice bokeh effect to the background – that all works better than ever.  It’s when I started switching scenes that I had an issue.

In the video below you’ll see that we tried to do an impromptu demonstration of how you might use the OBSBOT Meet SE and Tiny SE for a tabletop setting.  Sitting down with Mike’s tabletop team, we played a game round with me acting as producer.  I forgot to bring my Talent for the occasion (that review is here), so I simply used a hub and connected it to my laptop.  The Meet SE is a USB-C 2.0 camera, so it requires very little bandwidth, allowing for four cameras to connect simultaneously without a problem.  As I switched scenes rapidly, I found a few cameras had an issue staying focused.  Switching away and then back again would often bring it back to focus, but focus issue just the same.  What I needed was either to use the OBSBOT Center software or the OBSBOT Talent’s touchscreen.  Both would give me targeting options that OBS did not.  Better planning would have resulted in a better show – such as it is in Hollywood, and it is no different here.  C’est la vie.  

The other issue is as plain as day, and is the one area where cost savings may have hurt – the microphone.  Where the Meet 2 utilizes omnidirectional microphones to capture audio, the Meet SE uses a single microphone.  The built in microphone filters out background noise, and it does, but you can hear the resultant audio quality.  While the Meet SE delivers unparalleled ease of use, setup, and flexibility, I’m going to recommend a centralized microphone to raise the quality of your audio capture.

When we were placing the Meet SE cameras around the table, we decided to pull out the Tiny SE sitting inside a ring light and upside down.  With only a hand motion I was able to point it at the table and lock it in place. The camera recognized that it was upside down and adjusted accordingly – no software adjustment necessary. We also experimented with having it swivel around and track the persons talking, but we liked the overhead shot much more.  With four cameras placed, we broke out a game, did a few takes where there wasn’t too much swearing or giggling, and finally got a good take.  

Like the Meet SE, the OBSBOT Tiny SE is the smaller brother to the Tiny 2 Lite.  It utilizes the same dual CMOS setup, and with the same f-stop and the same 4X digital zoom.  It also picks up the ability to handle slow motion at 1080p/100fps or 720p/120fps, shedding 4K support, but picking up the same staggered HDR, dual native ISO, and improvements to AI, despite costing a whopping $60 less than its slightly bigger brother, the Tiny 2 Lite, and three times less than the Tiny 2.  Frankly, I don’t know how OBSBOT is selling this thing for $99 as the parts alone have to cost that much.  It’s an absolute steal. 

Much like the Meet SE, the Tiny SE benefits greatly from the additional development time since the Meet 2.  Despite the price being lower, it has a lot of improvements, especially when it comes to AI.  Whereas the Meet SE can only move inside of its 4X zoom, the Tiny SE can swivel in 360 degrees.  The AI tracking on both will keep an object centered and in frame, but with the Tiny SE, it’s possible to track them as they move around the room.  This means you can have a speaker who likes to pace remain in frame.  Better still, with dynamic zoom, it’ll try to stay locked at the same framing, zooming in or out.  That means if you want to track the person from the waist up and they walk closer or further away, the camera will adjust accordingly.  It creates a shot that’s more alive without needing to do that in post production with keyframes.  Similarly, you can designate a body part such as a hand, which is perfect for catching dice rolls, card flips, and more.  This is expanded over the Tiny 2 as that device could track the upper body, close-up, headless (tracking lower for somebody like a dancer or a skater), and lower body, whereas the Tiny SE can handle hand-tracking as well. 

Another improvement is zone tracking.  Zone tracking tracks a person who is in frame, but as one person exits and another enters, the camera will attach to them, making them the new subject of attention.  This is useful for presentations where you might have several people providing various elements of the meeting.  A better solution, of course, is a multi-cam approach, but the Tiny SE can handle it within reason.  

As the Tiny SE tracked the action below, I realized that I ran into the same issue as the Meet SE – my lack of planning.  The image is slightly out of focus, something I could have easily fixed if I used OBSBOT Center or the Talent instead of just OBS.  If I were producing this from a PC with two monitors, I’d have done exactly that. Or better still, using the remote aspects of the OBSBOT Talent to allow my team to coordinate remotely, they’d have been able to add chyrons, focus cameras, and otherwise prep the scenes before I switched to it.  But hey – for about 5 minutes of prep, it turned out pretty great, I think.  

Similarly, the audio is free of noise, but it still has a rather hollow sound to it.  When the speaker is closer to one of the cameras, the audio is clear, but further away becomes less so – an external solution is always going to be an improvement, and would be my suggestion in a louder or more wide-open space. 

Both of these cameras are a fairly significant improvement over the previous generations in many ways, and only a small step backwards in other, all while reducing the price dramatically.  This makes multi-cam operations more financially viable.  I’m already thinking of ways I might further wire up my space with additional cameras to catch the action in tabletop games for broadcast.  The use cases for things like Zoom calls, work from home scenarios, remote learning, and similar two-way videos are obvious, but this new tabletop use case is intriguing.  Live streaming videogames and framing your face is great, but catching six people around a table bringing The Tomb of Gyzaengaxx to life is a whole different story, and one I look forward to telling very soon. After all – both Mike Dunn and I are in it!  

You can pick up the OBSBOT Meet SE and OBSBOT Tiny SE at the official page right now.  Stay tuned…we’ve got a few more things to share from OBSBOT very soon…