Flip Mino
Even before YouTube inspired attention whores across the globe to film every excruciating detail of their lives, we had a love affair with camcorders. Seriously, who didn’t? They allowed us to do more than take a still snapshot of a moment; they let us literally replay small snippets of our lives. Back in the day, unfortunately, camcorders were either too bulky or expensive for Joe and Jane consumer to capture spontaneous moments as when, say, junior took his first steps, or your best bud was booed off the mic at karaoke. Those sensitive moments are regulated purely to the realm of memory, but with the introduction of low-cost camcorders, you don’t have to miss ‘em anymore.
Pure Digital’s Flip Mino ($179) is a pocket-sized camcorder roughly the size of a cell phone. The “Flip” in its name refers to a pop our USB connector that’s used to charge the device and/or transfer video from it to your computer. The Flip Mino’s face consists mainly of a rather smallish 1.5-inch display, touch-sensitive buttons for controlling playback and zoom, and a large, red “you couldn’t miss me if you tried” one-touch record button that has you doing the Spielberg thang as soon as you power it on. Controls are simple and intuitive, so much so that even the most technological impaired of us can get get into the swing of the sweet Flip Mino action.
One would be naturally inclined to think that video shot on a small, sub-$200 camcorder would be rather heinous; surprisingly, it’s not. The Flip Mino shoots at 640 x 480-pixel resolution (which is just short of “DVD quality” for the multimedia junkies out there), so footage looks pretty ace whether played back on the cam itself, monitor, computer display, or TV (Pure Digital wisely includes a cable for hooking the Flip Mino up to the latter). The camera also comes bundled with a carrying case, wrist strap, and software for editing clips, but being a Mac OS X Leopard guy, I prefer to edit my masterpieces in iMovie.
So how much video can you actually shoot with this small wonder? It packs 2GB of on-board memory that records up to an hour worth of clips (there’s a very handy indicator on the display that shows you how much time you have remaining). In our hands-on testing, we were able to shoot several pieces on and off over the course of 2.5 hours.
So, is the Pure Digital Flip Mino worth the asking price? You betcha. It’s shoots very solid video, is easy to carry, and infinitely simple to operate; it’s a far superior device than the el cheapo pocket camcorders that popped up in Rite-Aid and Walgreens a view years back. The Flip Mino’s the perfect companion for road trips, vacations, birthday parties, or any other circumstance when you want to video without any accompanying setup, hassle, or dents to the wallet.
Editor’s Note: we also found the Flip Mino on Amazon starting at only $144
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