Pocket Video Camera Review — Kodak Zi8 Vs Flip Mino

Posted on | August 16, 2009 | No Comments

The field of digital camcorders is hurtling along at the same velocity as the computer industry, gathering an abundance of incredible features in ever smaller packages. Take, for instance, the new pocket video camera that have been developed recently. Currently, it is primarily a contest between just 2 products: the new Kodak Zi8 and the Flip Mino camcorders.

Both camcorders have been painstakinly designed to garner the advancing market of easy to use and extremely portable camcorders with built in know-how that make sharing the videos on the computer and loading them up to the common social networking sites extremely easy. Let’s do a quick digital video camera review of these two products.

Flip and Kodak are both justifiably proud of their own product lines, and make it simple to catalog lots of data online. Of course, one of the most significant attributes to everyone is the price, and you will find that they at exactly the same price point, $179.99. So far they’re even.

One noticable differentiation between these two is that the Kodak Zi8, like most pocket video cameras, has an extremely meagre amount of internal memory — only 128 MB. The Flip has a much higher capacity of 2 GB, 16 times as much. Score 1 for the Flip.

However, and this is huge, the Kodak depends on the use of SD/SDHC memory cards to expand it’s storage capabilities. The Flip Mino leaves you without room for growth. The Kodak digital video camera can allow up to a 32 GB card for those who want to go all out. What does that mean? Up to 10 HOURS of video recording! That’s a huge plus for Kodak.

One of the characteristics that is alike between them is they both benefit from a very functional built in USB swing-out arm, so you don’t need camera specific cables. You can just pull out the arm and plug it promptly into your computer and begin sharing. No more cable clutter! It’s even.

Both come with video and picture editing software, but only the Zi8 has HD capable video recording, and a HDMI output on the camera itself to attach directly to your HDTV for instant screening. Kodak wins.

But from here on, it actually isn’t much of a competition. The Flip Mino, and even it’s big brother the FlipHD, which costs significantly more, can’t compare to the value and quality of the Kodak Zi8. For the same price, you get a considerably bigger view screen, built-in image stablization, full 1080 pixel HD video, and the confidence that comes with the Kodak name.

Evaluation result: the race between these two products is not remotely close at present — the Zi8 pocket digital video camera is first rate. However, don’t expect Flip will sit by quietly as their market share disappears.

Tags

photography

Comments