The Livestream Mevo ($399.99) is a compact video camera built for live streaming. Eschewing the design of traditional camcorders, which have settled on long zoom lenses as standard, the Mevo's wide-angle prime lens and small size make it more like a GoPro. But instead of just capturing ultra-wide footage, the Mevo leverages its resolution to apply digital zooms and pans to footage. The result is 720p video that underwhelms in terms of resolution, but is perfectly sized for streaming. If you love broadcasting to Facebook and want to step up your production values, take a look at the Mevo. But understand it's not without its foibles.

Design
Available in black or white, the Mevo is a small cylinder with a lens, a forward-facing microphone, and a removable bottom. With the bottom portion installed it measures about 2.5 by 2 inches (HD) and weighs 4.6 ounces. You'll want to remove the bottom for one of two reasons: to get to the microSD memory card slot, or to add the Mevo Boost, a long cylinder that significantly increases the battery life. The Boost also adds IPX4 weather resistance—out of the box you don't want to use the Mevo in the rain. Unfortunately, the Boost doesn't have a price or ship date at this time.

The bottom houses the tripod socket—this is not a handheld camera, and you'll get the best results when it's set on a tripod or a flat surface. The micro USB port, which can be used for data transfers to a computer and for charging, is always accessible, even when the bottom is installed. That's a good thing, as I only netted about 45 minutes of use on a fully charged battery. If you want to stream for an extended time period, and don't want to wait until the Boost is available for purchase, you can power it via a wall outlet or a USB battery pack.

The exterior is soft rubber. The only control to speak of is the Power button on top of the camera. When you turn it on a ring lights up around it to indicate connection status or battery level. There's a Bluetooth connection to your iPhone (the Mevo doesn't support Android or Windows Phone devices at this time), so the Mevo app automatically finds the camera when it's turned on.

Streaming and Video Quality
You can set the Mevo to connect to the same Wi-Fi network as your phone, or have the camera broadcast its own SSID and leverage your phone's data plan for streaming. You can usually get faster results from a Wi-Fi Internet connection, and you won't have to worry about eating away your data plan when streaming. And to be clear, the Mevo only works as well as your Internet connection—don't expect good streaming quality if you're in a dead zone.

The camera supports the Livestream service, which starts at $42 per month and scales up to $1,199, depending on your needs. Corporate customers will want to use that to cover high-profile events. Most home users are going to look at the Mevo for use with Facebook, which is free. You can choose to stream to either service, or to record to the internal memory card, from the app.

For the best quality, you can simply record footage to a memory card and share it online later. Your on-the-fly zooms and pans are recorded, so you won't have to edit footage. The same goes if you opt to save a stream to the Mevo's memory card. There's a caveat: The quality of the saved stream is affected by what the camera sends to the servers. If you're on a really bad connection you can replace a stream that's full of stalls, stutters, and stops with one saved locally, but expect the file saved to the memory card to be pixelated.

I attempted to stream on a DSL connection with a meager 1Mbps upstream that caused the Facebook feed to turn into a series of still images with some garbled audio. The video saved to the Mevo's memory card, shown above, is viewable, but not nearly as crisp as the footage saved locally to the card when the Mevo isn't attempting to broadcast. Ideally, full-quality footage would be saved to the card, so you could replace your ill-fated stream with the best video the camera can manage at a later date.

The 720p crop from 4K footage is effective and delivers fine quality for streaming, but don't expect top-tier video. At maximum zoom the footage is on the soft side, even when recorded directly to the card. At wide angles the softness isn't too apparent, though you can see textures are washed away, even in bright light. When zoomed, however, video is noticeably soft. There are three filters available if you want to change the look of footage: vivid, black and white, and sepia.

Audio is a mixed bag. The Mevo has a stereo mic, but the sound quality is about what you'd expect from a camera this size. I set it a few feet away from my face, pointing toward me, and I was able to clearly hear my words, but they rang a bit hollow. With the camera a few feet to my right my voice was difficult to understand and muffled. There are built-in gain controls to adjust the volume in very loud or quiet settings, which can be done on the fly via the app in the midst of recording, with levels showing you how loud the soundtrack is and warning you if the audio is clipping. You can also opt to switch the audio source to the iPhone, which allows you to plug into a soundboard or use a high-quality external microphone.

Panning and Zooming Control
One of the big draws of the Mevo is the ability to pan and zoom without having to deal with a bulky zoom lens camera. You see the full field of view captured by the lens on your phone's screen, along a box that indicates what's being captured. You can pinch to zoom in and out, or slide the box from one part of the frame to another. Once you've completed your move, the app replicates it with smoothness and precision. You control the speed of the movement—drag the frame from one point to another quickly and you'll get a quick pan; do it more slowly and the app will create a slower, more gentle camera move.

Of course, you don't have to take manual control. There's an Autopilot mode that uses object recognition and motion detection to adjust what's being shown in the frame. Face detection locks the frame around a human face with ease, but I found that it struggled in other situations. I set a frame around one of the family dogs lounging in the kitchen during one streaming test. When I turned on Autopilot, the Mevo went back to the wide shot. It has a tendency to cut between angles (which you can do manually by tapping to move the framing box). Autopilot seems like a solid tool for those times when you aren't able to take control of camera moves, but your video will be better served by manually taking the helm when possible.

Conclusions
The Livestream Mevo is a specialized camera that will certainly make some folks happy. If you've been using Facebook Live to share moments and vlogs with the world, the Mevo is an easy, affordable tool to help you take your video quality to the next level. It won't fix bad lighting or replace a good dedicated microphone, but it does broadcast at 16:9 and it makes it possible for a single crew member to pan, zoom, and cut between shots, which gives your video the appearance of having a professional production budget. There are a few things I wish it did better—a longer battery without having to invest in an accessory would be a plus for location shoots, and a standard mic input on the camera itself would also be welcome. But if you're a serious vlogger, the Mevo is worth a look.

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