Opal C1
Review & Alternatives (2026 Guide)

I purchased my C1 in late May 2022 so I probably consider myself an early adopter. I was very excited to try out Opal because the specs look great, it looked aesthetically beautiful, and I always want to support a startup (especially one my friend invested in).

Unfortunately, in the ~2 years of using Opal C1, I have officially "given up" on the product. The TL;DR is that when it works, it's great but it is too inconsistent as the Opal software would often crash (sometimes during a Zoom meeting!) or my laptop wouldn't recognize the camera (recent MacBook Air with Apple silicon).

Pros: • Beautiful hardware • When it works, quality is great

Cons: • Software appears to be buggy. Crashes in inopportune moments. • Does get hot. Not really an issue for me but I do recognize it. • Inconsistent customer service. When I complained to support about the product, the CS person mentioned that there was a whole new driver I could download. It was not something that I would know just auto-updating the original software driver I had. I literally had to uninstall the old driver and reinstall the new driver. Presumably, this would solve my reliability issues but it didn't.

It's amazing as they market it to be, only complaint is it gets super hot.