Pocket Video Camera Review

Kodak Zi8 vs Flip Mino: Pocket Video Camera Showdown

The world of digital camcorders is moving along at the same speed as the computer industry in getting more and more amazing features in increasingly smaller and smaller packages. Take for instance the new pocket video cameras that have been developed in recent years. It is primarily a competition at this moment between just two products: the new Kodak Zi8 and the Flip Mino.

Both products have been carefully designed to capture the growing market of easy to use and extremely portable camcorders with built in capabilities that make sharing the videos on the computer and loading them up to the popular social networking sites like face book, or youtube.com incredibly easy. So let's do a quick digital video camera review of these two.

First, Flip and Kodak are both extremely proud of their respective production lines, and make it very easy to find lots of info online. Of course, one of the most important features is the price, and you will notice that they at the same price point, $179.99. So far a tie.

One important difference between these two is that the Kodak Zi8, like most digital cameras,  has an extremely small amount of internal memory (only 128 MB). The Flip has a much larger capacity of 2 GB, 16 times as much. Score 1 for the Flip.

However, and this is huge, both literally and figuratively, the Kodak relies on the use of SD/SDHC memory cards to expand it's storage capabilities. The Flip Mino leaves you no room for expansion. The Kodak digital video camera can handle up to a 32 GB SD/SDHC card for those who want to go all out. What does that mean? Up to 10 HOURS of video recording! Score a big plus for Kodak.

One of the things that is similar between the two is they both share the very cool and helpful built in USB swing out arms that no longer necessitate the need for camera specific USB cables. You can just swing out the arm and plug it directly into your computer and start sharing.
A tie.

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 hook it up directly to your HDTV for instant viewing. A Kodak win.

But from here on, it really isn't much of a competition. The Flip Mino, and even it's big brother the MinoHD (which costs significantly more) can't hold a candle to the value and the quality of the Kodak Zi8. For the same price, you get a vastly larger viewscreen, built in image stablization, full blown 1080 pixel HD video, and the quality that comes with the Kodak brand.

Final result: the race between these two models is not remotely close today -- the Zi8 pocket digital video camera is superior. Of course, don't expect Flip to sit idle.