The great video chat faceoff: Six apps. Dozens of heads. One came out on top.
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We picked the best video chat apps. Spoiler: Stick with Zoom - The Washington Post 5/21/20, 12:42 PM
The great video chat faceoff: Six
apps. Dozens of heads. One came out
on top.
Our first and hopefully last pandemic Chatty Awards
compares Facebook Rooms, FaceTime, Google Meet,
Houseparty, Skype and Zoom — and crowns some
surprising winners
To Zoom, or not to Zoom? That is the question.
Zoom videoconferencing’s Brady Bunch grid of faces has become
synonymous with working, learning and even partying from home during the
coronavirus pandemic. But the world’s new favorite app stumbled when
hackers figured out how to bust into private conversations. Week after week
after week, security and privacy researchers found more holes in Zoom’s
protections.
Now tech’s big guns are trying to replace it. Last week, Facebook rolled out
Messenger Rooms, a group video chat service that works across its apps
and even for people without accounts on the social network. Google made a
free version of Meet, its service built for businesses (and cousin of a similar
Google service called Hangouts). And don’t count out Apple’s FaceTime
built into iPhones and Macs, Epic Games’ growing Houseparty and
Microsoft’s old faithful Skype. There are even more Zoom clones focused
on business, gaming and meeting new people.
So we decided it’s time for a video faceoff.
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We picked the best video chat apps. Spoiler: Stick with Zoom - The Washington Post 5/21/20, 12:42 PM
Help Desk: Ask our tech columnist a question
The best video chat apps. (Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post)
For the past week, we’ve been virtual chatty Kathys, giving a half-dozen
different group videoconference apps the chance to win our hearts. We
looked for the single best video chat app to bridge all aspects of our
shelter-in-place existence, rather than work-focused systems (which are
probably chosen by somebody else, anyway). We ran all six on problematic
WiFi networks, graded clarity with an old-fashioned eye chart, and tested
with people who have different tolerances for learning new software. We
tried all the virtual backgrounds and special effects options we could find,
from scenic caves to jaunty hats. And we studied privacy policies and
consulted security experts.
It’s time to name some winners, which we dubbed the Chatty Awards. Our
testing found some apps excelled in particular areas — so we’re giving out
awards for technical categories that might matter to you, such as best
picture quality, special effects and security.
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We picked the best video chat apps. Spoiler: Stick with Zoom - The Washington Post 5/21/20, 12:42 PM
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Only one gets the top prize. Our big takeaways: The best communication
tool is the one that works for the most people. And if you really want to trust
software, you have to be willing to pay for it.
Best video quality: Skype
Blast-from-the-past Skype wins a surprise award for its sharp image quality, good enough to do an eye test.
(Heather Kelly/The Washington Post)
No video chat app looked great every time, but one had clear video more
often than the others: Skype. The app that helped create the idea of video
chats with grandparents is still in the game.
When we held up an eye chart to the camera, Skype made it easiest to read
the small type. It’s also what we used to make the video accompanying this
column. Just know, its performance demands a lot out of your computer, so
you may need to close other apps.
Bad WiFi is slowing you down. Fix yours without spending a dime.
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We picked the best video chat apps. Spoiler: Stick with Zoom - The Washington Post 5/21/20, 12:42 PM
A close runner-up was Zoom, which uses software smarts to up (or down)
scale when needed. For example, it sends over an HD image when someone
is looking at you in full screen mode.
That said, none of the apps could pass our toughest quality test: Making it
possible to sing a group rendition of “Happy Birthday.” That slight but ever
so annoying delay you notice is called latency, and while it’s also the fault of
your device’s Internet connection, we couldn’t find any apps that seemed to
improve it significantly.
Best special effects: Facebook Rooms
Chatting with friends is cool. Chatting with friends who have dogs on their heads is cooler. Facebook Rooms wins
an award for its deep library of special effects. (Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post)
Sure, Zoom lets you insert yourself into a virtual background or clear up
some wrinkles, but that’s nothing compared to the world of augmented-
reality special effects.
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We picked the best video chat apps. Spoiler: Stick with Zoom - The Washington Post 5/21/20, 12:42 PM
Facebook Rooms come knocking with the best selection of filters that move
with your face (a dog that is also a hat, goth makeup), immersive 360-
degree backgrounds (fall into a ballpit, or a black hole) and physical games
like competitive burger eating, where virtual burgers fly around that you
grab with your mouth. Just note, they’re available only on Facebook’s
mobile apps, not on the Web version of Rooms.
The effects are a great time killer with other people, if you can figure out the
slightly confusing Rooms setup. For example, the Facebook app asks if you
want to invite certain people to your Room … but then also suggests posting
to all your friends on Facebook about the existence of your room. Facebook
acknowledges its menus might be confusing, and says only the friends
you’ve invited will see your post. But we’ve seen enough shenanigans like
this from Facebook before.
Good news if you want to have fun without also feeding data to Mark
Zuckerberg: The Snap Camera desktop app, made by the same company as
Snapchat, is filled with special effects and works with apps that allow it.
(Zoom recently stopped working with Snap Camera but is slowly adding it
back.) Our favorite filter is one that makes you look like a potato.
Best privacy and security: Apple FaceTime
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You have to have an Apple device to use it, and the effects could use some updating, but FaceTime is the most
secure way to video chat. (Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post)
Membership in the Apple cult — we mean, club — has its privileges. Most of
the security pros we spoke with said FaceTime was their go-to of our
mainstream options. The problem is, of course, it only works if everyone you
need to speak with also has Apple devices.
Group video calls of up to 32 people using FaceTime meet the gold
standard of security with end-to-end encryption. That means they can’t be
seen or heard by anyone else who might try to intercept them.
There’s no way to add an extra password onto a chat, but the chance of
random people crashing into your call is also low. You start a group
FaceTime by sending an Apple Message to all the other people you want to
talk to, and then tapping on their face icons at the top and looking for the
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FaceTime button. Then everyone can hop in and out of the call.
Watch my kids, please: Parents hire Zoom babysitters so they can shelter in
peace
FaceTime is also the natural (if rather unexciting) choice for families with
kids. It is one of the few apps that actually allows kids under 13 to set up
special accounts. There are also parental controls to limit whom they can
call and how long they can talk.
An alternative that works on different kinds of mobile devices is WhatsApp.
While it’s owned by Facebook, its video calls are fully encrypted (which
Facebook Rooms is not). But WhatsApp group calls don’t work well on PCs
and Macs and are limited to just eight participants.
Best for a party: Houseparty
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As video chat fatigue sets in, in-app games help liven up the conversation on Houseparty. (The answer was Brad
Pitt.) (Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post)
It says it right there in the name. Houseparty, which Fortnite maker Epic
Games bought last year, is a funky little video chatting app made for having
fun and maybe a drink with other people. There’s a desktop computer app,
but the mobile version is where the real good times happen, with built-in
games to fill in awkward silences, and the option to meet new people and
split off into separate rooms if you find like-minded friends.
By far the most social of the video chat contenders, Houseparty invited
celebrity guests to film segments any group could watch together, such as
Idina Menzel flubbing the words to “Frozen” or Zooey Deschanel being
Zooey Deschanel.
There’s no apologizing for forgetting to mute or sharing a PowerPoint
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presentation in this house, but there also isn’t much in the way of fun
backgrounds or filters. This is a come as you are kind of party.
Honorable mention: Third-party tools are making it easier than ever to turn
your video chat app of choice into a party. Jackbox.tv games, which include
fun group competitions like creating funny T-shirts, work with any app that
allows screensharing, like Skype, Zoom and Meet.
Best overall video chat app: Zoom
There's a reason everyone has flocked to Zoom. It has the best balance of layout, image quality and features, and
has moved quickly to address security concerns, such as “waiting rooms” where hosts decide whom to let in to the
call. (Geoffrey Fowler/The Washington Post)
Yep, we’re sticking with Zoom, even after all those security problems — and
in part, because of how it responded to them.
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Zoom defines much of what we need from a group video conference. It
gives you the simplest way to get up to 49 people together on one screen in
happy rows of boxes, regardless of whether they have an account or
whether they want to use an iPhone, Windows PC, or even an old-fashioned
landline. Usually, everyone just has to click one link to get in.
Zoom’s features win the Goldilocks principle, sitting somewhere in between
a work app (you can share screens) and a social one (you can turn your
background into a Malibu dreamhouse). While it could still do better when
participants have poor connections, Zoom’s call quality is good enough
across a shockingly wide array of devices. Google’s Meet, a Zoom clone in
many respects, never met our threshold for video quality and is utterly
bereft of any fun features at all.
Then there’s simplicity. Our families and friends all know how to Zoom. Even
after a week, we still can’t quite figure out — or trust — the sharing
mechanisms of Facebook’s Rooms. Skype recently added a one-link-to-join
option like Zoom, but you can’t use it for a scheduled meeting or put it
behind a passcode. Houseparty is fun but requires too much coordination
when you actually want to meet someone at a particular time. Apple’s
FaceTime needs a rethink for the pandemic era where you can’t expect
everyone you need to interact with owns an Apple device.
‘Screen time’ has gone from sin to survival tool
What about Zoom’s security problems? We won’t know for a few months
until they’ve stopped making changes — and until good (and bad) hackers
have had a chance to thoroughly poke at it. But security experts we spoke
with at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumer Reports and privacy
software maker Disconnect agree it is moving in the right direction. Zoom
already has changed some default settings to address “Zoom bombing” —
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when someone uninvited figures out the code to enter a meeting. (Now
people joining calls by default go into a virtual waiting room.) It apologized
for and fixed problems like routing some traffic through China. Some
organizations that had banned Zoom, such as New York City Schools, have
resumed using the app.
Many researchers we spoke with noted security and privacy issues are not
unique to Zoom, and Consumer Reports has called out others using unclear
language in privacy policies. But Zoom has been the quickest to respond
and hire respected security and privacy leaders. Zoom calls are still not
end-to-end encrypted, the gold standard for keeping snooping eyes out,
but it has a timeline to move that way, at least for paying customers.
Most importantly: Zoom’s main business is selling video chat software. It’s
the only service we tested that you have to pay for after a limited window —
$15 per month for calls lasting longer than 40 minutes. But we actually find
that reassuring compared to some of its rivals mainly in the advertising and
gadget-selling business. We know we sound like a broken record, but
remember: If the product is free, that means you’re the product.
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