I upgraded my video and audio setup during the pandemic since I figured even at up to $1k it was cheaper than the office space it was replacing.

After about a month of research I was surprised to find how difficult it was to evaluate options and how few of those options were plug-and-play.

I had assumed the explosion in livestreaming over the last few years would mean best practices would be easy to find and great high quality cameras purpose built for streaming would exist, but didn't find that to be the case at all.

Ultimately I took a chance on a heavily discounted open box ZV1 but it wasn't until I married it with a 4k capture card (USB streaming was meh), a key light (lighting matters so much!), a mic (& arm to hold it), AND an ali-express battery-to-dc connector (so it could run all day) that I finally hit the sweet spot of "clearly better" and "easy to use all day".

Worth it in the end, but a lot of work.