What goes wrong in this category
Audio and video faults are usually urgent, because they surface two minutes before a call. They are also the category where the fault is least often the hardware: a microphone that works everywhere except in one meeting application is not a broken microphone, it is a device selection or a permission.
That is exactly what these tests are for. If the level meter moves when you speak, your microphone, its cable, its driver and your system privacy settings are all working, and the problem is the application that cannot hear you. If the camera preview appears with a resolution next to it, the camera opened and negotiated a stream, which rules out permissions and drivers in one step. Each result eliminates a whole class of causes rather than a single one.
The limits are worth knowing before you rely on the answer. A browser cannot report sound pressure in decibels, because it has no calibrated reference, so the level here is relative and anything absolute would be invented. A camera reports the resolution the driver negotiated, not the sensor's native resolution. And no test can tell you whether a black preview is a closed privacy shutter or a dark room: only you can see that.
Which test for which symptom
| Symptom | Test | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Nobody can hear you on a call | Microphone Test | Whether any signal reaches the browser, which rules the meeting application in or out in one step |
| The microphone is very quiet | Microphone Test | The peak level relative to full scale, which shows a per-device input level set too low |
| The camera shows a black picture | Webcam Test | Whether the camera opened and at what resolution, which separates a shutter from a driver problem |
| The video looks lower quality than expected | Webcam Test | The resolution the driver actually negotiated, which is often below the advertised maximum |
| Sound comes from one side only | Speaker Test | Which channel is silent under a tone rather than under music, which is the only fair test |
| There is no sound at all | Speaker Test | Whether the browser can create an audio context and reach an output device |
Compiled by MyGearCheck. The last column is deliberately bounded: these tests observe what reaches the browser, which is enough to separate hardware from software and not enough to name a failing component.
Guides for audio & video
A test tells you what is happening. These explain what to do about it, including when the honest answer is that nothing is wrong.