As someone who has been working remotely for almost a decade at this point, I will say straight out that a built-in camera on a recent laptop is mostly just fin

As someone who has been working remotely for almost a decade at this point, I will say straight out that a built-in camera on a recent laptop is mostly just fine. What you need to concern yourself with is /position/ of the camera and /lighting/. Do these three simple things to make your video better: 1. Get a laptop stand that raises your laptop so your eye level is towards the center of the screen. Not only does this improve ergonomics, it improves the positioning of the camera for video. 2. Get a lamp that you can move the head on and point it at the wall behind the laptop (assuming it's white-ish in color) to provide reflected back light at your face from behind the camera, and then add as much ambient light as possible in the room emanating from the corners (smaller rooms are easier to light). You don't need anything fancy, although yes a ring-light is probably "better" you can get by with cheap floor lamps from Walmart and some "daylight" color temperature bulbs. 3. Make sure all the lightbulbs in the room are the /same/ color temperature, whatever that happens to be, but preferring "daylight" if you can. Just these changes will MASSIVELY improve video quality on conferences, and for most people wouldn't even necessarily require buying anything additional except possibly light bulbs (you can makeshift a laptop stand, and move lamps from other rooms if it's an especially important meeting / interview you are preparing for). For audio, nothing beats a microphone on a boom, but any good quality USB headset with a built-in boom microphone will get pretty close, so don't sweat this so much. The main thing is that you should NEVER be taking a call using the built-in speakers and microphone in your laptop... it sounds horrible and picks up a lot of noise. The only laptops I would never use the camera on are Dell laptops that inexplicably chose to put the camera near the keyboard so it's staring up the person's nose the entire time.