checkyoursetup

See and hear yourself the way others do on calls.

People might not tell you that your mic sounds muffled, that they can hear themselves echo, or that your face is lost in shadow. It just makes you a little harder to listen to, and harder to read.

In a 2025 study of about 4,800 listeners, speakers whose audio sounded "tinny", like a cheap laptop microphone, were judged less intelligent, less hireable and less credible, even though every word was understood. An earlier study found poor sound made speakers less likeable, too. Read the research.

Most fixes are free and take a minute. This check takes about two, and your video and sound are never sent anywhere.

Start the check
A woman on a video call with a bright window behind her. Her face is in shadow.Window behind
The same woman lit evenly from the front. Her face is clear.Light in front
Same person, same camera. The only thing that changed is where the light comes from.

Step 1 of 4

Your microphone, speakers and camera

Your browser will ask for permission first. Everything happens right here in this tab.

Step 2 of 4

How you sound

Record a short clip

Then play it back. What you hear is close to what other people hear from you. If you have more than one microphone, such as your headphones and your laptop, record once with each and compare them.

Microphone level

Try reading this out: Hi, I'm testing my microphone. Can you hear me clearly? If you say the same thing each time, the recordings are easier to compare. Press Stop when you're done, or it stops by itself after 10 seconds.

You'll need to allow your microphone in step 1 first.

The echo test

When you listen through your computer's speakers rather than earphones, your microphone can pick up everyone else's voices and send them straight back. Everyone else hears their own voice come back a moment later. You can't hear it from your end, so you'd never know unless someone tells you.

Set your volume to where you'd normally have it on a call. Then stay completely quiet for about 20 seconds while we play a short clip of a real meeting through your speakers or headphones. After that we'll check whether your microphone picked it up, and you can hear exactly what it heard.

Step 3 of 4

How you look

Compare yourself with each example and check the box under any that look familiar. Most of these take a minute to fix and cost nothing.

Your camera will show up here once you've allowed it in step 1.

You

    Step 4 of 4

    Your checklist

    This is built from what you found above. Print it and keep it by your computer, or save it as a PDF.

    Run the check again any time at checkyoursetup.com

    Hosting a call? Send your guests the check first.

    Noticed something on a colleague's calls? Send them a kind heads-up.

    Put your camera at eye level

    A laptop on a desk or on your lap looks up at you. People on the call see your chin, your nostrils and the ceiling. It's a common problem on calls, and an easy one to fix.

    A woman seen from below by a laptop camera. The view shows under her chin and the ceiling light.Laptop on the desk
    The same woman seen straight on, with the camera at eye level.Camera at eye level
    Illustrations. Same person, same room, only the camera height changed.

    Why it matters

    When a camera looks up at you, you seem to be looking down at everyone. It’s unflattering, and it feels slightly off to the people watching, even if they can’t say why. With the camera level with your eyes, you look like you’re across the table from them.

    Free fix: a stack of books

    Put your laptop on books, a box or a shelf until the camera, at the top of the screen, is level with your eyes. Sit about an arm’s length away.

    Typing on a raised laptop is awkward, though, and every keystroke makes the camera wobble. That’s fine for a call where you mostly talk.

    Better fix: a laptop stand, plus a keyboard and mouse

    A stand holds the laptop at the right height every day, without the book pile. Add a separate keyboard and mouse and the camera stays still while you type. You also stop hunching over a low screen all day, which your neck will thank you for.

    Expect to pay about $30 for a basic stand and about $30 for a simple keyboard and mouse. A basic stand is fine as long as it gets the camera up to eye level.

    Using a desktop monitor with a webcam on top?

    The same rule applies: aim for the camera roughly level with your eyes. On a big monitor it often ends up a little above them, which is fine. If it’s well above, lower the monitor a bit.

    Webcams for video calls

    Many older and cheaper laptops have 480p or 720p cameras. On a call they look soft and grainy, and no setting fixes that. A basic external webcam is one of the few purchases that makes an obvious difference.

    A woman on a video call in a grainy, soft, low-resolution image.Old 480p laptop camera
    The same woman in a sharp, clear image.1080p webcam
    Illustrations. Same person, same room, same light.

    Do you need one?

    Maybe not. Recent MacBooks (the MacBook Pro from late 2021 and the MacBook Air from 2022) have 1080p cameras, but many other laptops, including the M1 MacBook Air, have 720p. If yours is 480p, or 720p and you’re on calls often, an upgrade is worth it.

    It’s also worth it if you take calls on a second monitor. With the camera on your laptop, people see you looking off to the side the whole time. A webcam on top of the monitor you look at fixes that.

    Try these first

    Add light. Small cameras get grainy in dim rooms, and a lamp in front of you makes any camera look better, though it can’t add detail a low-resolution camera doesn’t have.

    If the picture looks hazy rather than grainy, wipe the lens. A fingerprint on a laptop camera makes everything look foggy.

    It’s also worth checking your call app’s video settings. Some apps have an HD option that’s off by default.

    Buying one

    1080p is enough. Call apps rarely send more than that, so a 4K webcam is money wasted for calls.

    Look for one that copes with ordinary indoor light, since that’s where most calls happen. Reviews that include a sample from a dim room are the useful ones.

    It should clip onto the top of your screen, so the camera sits at eye level. You can ignore the built-in microphone: webcam mics are far from your mouth, and your laptop mic or wired earphones will usually sound better.

    Expect to pay about $40 to $70 for a good 1080p webcam.

    What the science says

    When your sound is poor, people like you less and think less of what you say, even when they understand every word. Several studies have now measured it, along with what your camera and background do.

    Sound quality changes how people judge you

    In 2018, Eryn Newman of the Australian National University and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Southern California played people the same short talks, some with good sound and some with poorer audio.1 In the first experiment, 97 people watched clips from two conference talks, one on engineering and one on physics. In the second, 99 people listened to two interviews from the NPR show Science Friday. With poor sound, people found the speakers less likeable and less intelligent, rated the talks as worse, and rated the research as less important.2

    “As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists and their research lost credibility,” Newman said.2

    A much larger study in 2025 went further. It ran six experiments with about 4,800 listeners, who heard the same short passages, such as job application essays, either clear or processed to sound “tinny”, like a cheap laptop microphone on a video call. Listeners understood every word equally well either way. Even so, speakers with tinny audio were judged less intelligent, less hireable, less credible and less romantically desirable. The researchers say videoconferencing is what prompted the study.3

    It affects hiring

    In a 2018 study of video job interviews, two groups of about 100 people rated candidates in recordings that were either clean or had glitches: frozen frames, visual filters and audio static. Candidates with good audio and video were rated more hireable, even when the raters were told to ignore the quality.4

    Looking at the camera, not the screen

    A small 2024 study had students give the same short speech twice, once looking into the camera and once looking at the screen. Working adults then rated the recordings. Looking away from the camera was rated worse than looking into it, and even worse than audio with no video at all.5 It’s one small study, but it matches what the check shows: when your camera isn’t where your eyes are, people see you looking away.

    Camera angle and background change first impressions

    A 2015 study moved the webcam either below or above the screen during video chats. People filmed from below were seen as taller, and their partners went along with their choices more often in a simple game.6 A later study found mixed results,7 so the safe conclusion is that camera angle changes how people read you, not that one angle always wins. We still suggest eye level, because it looks like you’re across the table from someone.

    A 2023 study showed 167 people faces on different video call backgrounds. Backgrounds changed how trustworthy and competent the same face seemed. A bookcase or plants scored best, and ordinary home backgrounds and novelty backgrounds scored worst.8

    Why it happens

    Norbert Schwarz explains it with an idea psychologists call processing fluency: information that’s easy to take in feels more familiar and more believable. “When you make it difficult for people to process information, it becomes less credible,” he said.2

    What it means for your calls

    These studies used recordings and simulated calls, not your calls. But they point the same way: a muffled microphone, a glitchy picture, or eyes on the wrong screen make you harder to take in, and people judge you by it without realising. Most of those problems cost nothing to fix.

    Check your setup. It takes about two minutes.

    Sources

    1. Newman and Schwarz (2018). Good Sound, Good Research: How Audio Quality Influences Perceptions of the Research and Researcher. Science Communication. ↩

    2. Trust in science, news and experts is influenced by sound quality, Phys.org, April 2018. The study details and quotes come from this summary. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

    3. Walter-Terrill, Ongchoco and Scholl (2025). Superficial auditory (dis)fluency biases higher-level social judgment. PNAS 122(13). ↩

    4. Fiechter, Fealing, Gerrard and Kornell (2018). Audiovisual quality impacts assessments of job candidates in video interviews: Evidence for an AV quality bias. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 3, 47. ↩

    5. Shinya, Yamane, Mori and Teaman (2024). Off-camera gaze decreases evaluation scores in a simulated online job interview. Scientific Reports 14, 12056. ↩

    6. Thomas and Pemstein (2015). What you see is what you get: webcam placement influences perception and social coordination. Frontiers in Psychology 6, 306. ↩

    7. The impact of camera usage and angle on perceptions of power during videoconferencing (2023). Computers in Human Behavior Reports. We’ve read this study’s summary, not the full paper. ↩

    8. Cook, Thompson and Ross (2023). Virtual first impressions: Zoom backgrounds affect judgements of trust and competence. PLOS ONE 18(9), e0291444. ↩