Pocket Camcorder Review of Flip Mino, Sony Webbie, JVC Picsio and Kodak Zi6

A few months ago I did a Dig­i­tal Soul Hour episode about Vlog­ging and I promised to do a review of the dif­fer­ent pocket cam­corders that I own. This is the promised review. As I was start­ing my review process, I noticed JVC came out with the JVC Pic­sio and I tweeted out that I would love to include it in my review. JVC con­tacted me and sent me a blue Pic­sio (yes, in the name of dis­clo­sure, that means free). For the FTC, here is the list of the 4 pocket cam­corders I will be review­ing and how I came to have them in my possession.

Kodak Zi6 — This cam­corder was in my swag bag from the Social­Luxe party at Blogher

Flip Mino HD 60 — I won this one through a ran­dom con­test at yourtribute.com

Sony Web­bie PM-1 — We pur­chased this one our­selves last year.

JVC Pic­sio GC FM-1 — JVC sent to me to include in this review

I have included the iPhone 3Gs in the video com­par­isons at the very end, but it was because I was curi­ous how it com­pared. I didn’t expect it to do as well and I am not “offi­cially” includ­ing it in the review, but it’s there if you’d like to see how the video looks.

I spent at least 2 weeks with each of the 4 cam­corders. Using it as I nor­mally would, car­ry­ing it in my purse, tak­ing to dance, school, vlog­ging, etc.

All of the videos below were recorded at the same time using the high­est qual­ity HD set­ting for each cam­corder. I uploaded them to my 24″ iMac and used iMovie to put together the short clips. I uploaded directly to YouTube using the default HD set­tings. All 4 cam­eras allow you to put the cam­corder on a tri­pod. The still pic­tures were not all taken at the same time, but are here to give you an idea of the qual­ity of still pic­tures that are avail­able with each cam­corder. Once again, I used the high­est set­tings for each still pic­ture and resized for the web.

Com­par­i­son of Basic Features

Fea­tures	Sony Web­bie	Flip Mino	Kodak Zi6	JVC Pic­sio
Weight	4 oz	3.3 oz	3.8 oz (no batteries)	3.36 oz
Dis­play Size	2.5 in	1.5 in	2.4 in	2.0 in
Zoom	4x opti­cal	2x digi	2x digi	4x digi
Video HD High­t­est Quality	1080	720	720	1080
Still For­mat & Quality	JPG/5M	N/A	JPG/3M	JPG/8M
Power	remov­able rechargeable	inter­nal rechargeable	remov­able rechargeable	inter­nal rechargeable
Mem­ory	Sony Mem­ory stick PRO Duo up to 32 GB	inter­nal 60 min 4 GB	128 mb inter­nal SD/SDHC slot up to 32 GB	SD/SDHC slot up to 32 GB
Soft­ware	PC/Mac	PC/Mac	PC	PC

Here are my find­ings and at the end I’ll let you know which one I am ulti­mately going to use as my camcorder.

Kodak Zi6 Pocket Cam­corder

I have been using this cam­corder since I brought it home from BlogHer as my main cam­corder and I’ve been very pleased with it. Pair it with the eye-fi video and it worked really well for me. It wasn’t easy to just eas­ily slip in my pocket so a few times I opted to take my iPhone only and leave the Zi6 behind. I some­times find the video to have a slight bluish tint to it which I was able to eas­ily fix in iMovie and I didn’t see it all the time.

Pros:

• The Kodak Zi6 pocket cam­corder feels very com­fort­able in my hand. I like the tex­ture of the out­side and it feels very sturdy and I don’t worry about drop­ping it.
• It has a large dis­play which I found quite easy to see even out­side in the sun.
• The con­trols are very easy to mas­ter one handed which leaves one hand free (great for Moms)
  
• Both the bat­ter­ies and mem­ory are remov­able, so you can carry spares and never run out. It also comes with 2 AA recharge­able batteries.
• Comes with a pouch to carry the cam­corder in so it does not get scratched up.
• Turns on very quickly and ready to begin recording.
• Has a close-up and nor­mal mode.
  

Cons:

• The Kodak Zi6 pocket cam­corder does not eas­ily fit in your pocket.
• The sound was not very good and I could often hear the wind blow­ing in my out­door videos
• No Mac ver­sion of the software
• Hard to use for vlog­ging because I can not see if I’m in the pic­ture, but I was able to make it work.

Flip Mino HD Pocket Cam­corder 60 min

I can’t say enough pos­i­tive things about the Flip Mino HD pocket cam­corder. I was very pleas­antly sur­prised. I had one of the very first Flips that came out a few years ago and while I loved the ease of use, it didn’t take very good video at all. I have stayed away from it since then. But, WOW, they have def­i­nitely improved on the qual­ity. I do miss the screen they had that “flipped” to make self record­ing much easier.

Pros:

• Very small size makes it easy to carry in your pocket or purse every­where you go. My arm did not get tired hold­ing it up to record a 1 hour dance recital.
• Excel­lent sound. I took video at a con­cert and I heard the con­cert music just as well as the sounds right around me
• Turn it on and begin record­ing within sec­onds (about 3 sec)
• Excel­lent qual­ity video in all types of sce­nar­ios. I tested at a con­cert, out­side, sports, recital, scenery, at night and I was pleased with all of the video.
• Offers a Mac ver­sion of the software.
• I never have used the soft­ware that comes with a cam­era or cam­corder in the past because I never found it use­ful, until the Flip Soft­ware. It makes trans­fer­ring the videos effort­less and I can eas­ily upload to a pri­vate loca­tion for oth­ers to view or to YouTube. When I want to change where they are located on my com­puter, I can do that eas­ily also.
• The still pic­ture cap­ture fea­ture in the soft­ware was a huge plus because I could get the exact shot I wanted.
• Has a red light which turns on the front of the cam­corder when record­ing. Works well for vlog­ging because you know if it is record­ing or not.
• Video was crys­tal clear and looked the most nat­ural to me. It han­dled the tran­si­tions from a dark room to a lighted win­dow very well.

Cons:

• The zoom but­tons are not “true” but­tons, but rather a lit up ‘+’ and ‘-’ on the panel and quite often I would press and press and noth­ing would hap­pen. It was hit or miss.
• Can not remove the bat­tery or mem­ory, so if you use it up, you need to down­load the video to con­tinue record­ing (you get 60 min worth of time)
• Can not take still pho­tos (how­ever you can cap­ture a still photo with the soft­ware included, see Pros above)
• Dif­fi­cult to record your­self with­out a tri­pod. I am often cut­ting off my head in my vlogs. You need to get used to this.
• The view­ing screen is really small.

JVC Pic­sio GC FM-1

I really wanted to like the Pic­sio pocket cam­corder. When I took it out of the box, it looked like a jewel, but it just wasn’t hap­pen­ing for me. Over­all I found the but­tons hard to use, the qual­ity of the video wasn’t good and the bat­tery didn’t hold a charge for very long. Maybe if I had plugged it in before each out­ing, it might have helped? But I tend to keep my cam­corder with my iPhone and grab it and take it wher­ever I go. I don’t want to have to plug it in after every outing.

Pros:

• Records video in HD 1080p
• Can plug an HDMI cable into the camcorder
• Still pic­tures can be taken up to 8mp (depend­ing on your settings)
• Mem­ory is remov­able so you can carry a spare.
• Has a close-up and nor­mal mode.

Cons:

• I found the but­tons kind of hard to work. I have small hands and when I would hold it in 1 hand (which I do often), I often dropped the camcorder.
• The holo­graphic design on the front of the cam­corder was very dis­tract­ing for my kids (and not in a good way). They would want to play with the cam­corder and take it out­side and make the sun reflect off the camcorder.
• The loca­tion of the “on” but­ton is hor­ri­ble for me. When I press the but­ton, I cover the off/on light with my thumb and at first I couldn’t tell if it was on or off. I thought it was just me, but a cou­ple of other peo­ple who tried it did the same thing.
• Does not come with a pouch or any­thing to pro­tect it from scratching.
• Bat­tery is inter­nal, there­fore you need to recharge if it runs out.
• I heard a hum­ming sound on many of my videos. The sound also was very muffled.
• When you watch my video below, you’ll see some flick­er­ing that I saw in a lot of my video from this camcorder.
• The web­site claims 96 min­utes of power, but I found that I never had enough power. I would power it up, start tak­ing video and within 10 — 15 mintues, it would shut off (with a 4GB mem­ory card).

Sony Web­bie PM-1

The Sony Web­bie pocket cam­corder served me well for quite a while. I think the rotat­ing lens fea­ture is really inge­nious. I just wish the qual­ity of the video were better.

Pros:

• The 270 degree rotat­ing lens makes self record­ing for per­sonal vlogs a breeze! I absolutely LOVE this self record­ing feature.
• Records video in HD 1080p
• The bat­tery is remov­able and comes with recharger.
• When turned off and closed, the lens is com­pletely cov­ered and pro­tected from scratches.

Cons:

• I was not impressed with the qual­ity of the video. This was the first of the 4 that I received and even before I com­pared it to any­thing, I was not happy with the qual­ity. It was very grainy and
• This is a neg­a­tive that is true across all the Sony prod­ucts. I do not like that you can only use the Sony Mem­ory Stick. We have so many SD cards for all our cam­eras and I always have to have a dif­fer­ent one for my Sony products.
• I was for­ever push­ing the dis­play but­ton to start the record­ing. You have to press either Movie (for video) or Photo (for still). Then when you stop record­ing, the word “record­ing” in red pops onto the screen. It con­fuses me every sin­gle time it comes up and every­one who uses the cam­corder. There are numer­ous times that I have thought I was record­ing because I saw the word “record­ing” when in fact I wasn’t. I missed my daughter’s entire preschool grad­u­a­tion because of that.
• The sound near the cam­era is always very very loud and any sounds fur­ther away are hard to hear.

Vlog­ging with Your Pocket Camcorder

Since the major­ity of the time, I’m using my cam­corder to record a vlog post, I decided to do one for a Casual Fri­day which showed you all 4 of the above cam­corders in action. You can hear the sound and see the video for your­self and decide which one you like.

And the cam­corder I will be car­ry­ing around with me every day? ::::drum roll please::::

The Flip Mino HD

It was very close between the Kodak Zi6 and the Flip Mino HD. Ulti­mately, I was very impressed with the qual­ity of the video from the Flip Mino and along with the small size and ease of use, it is the cam­corder I will use.

I took it to a Miley Cyrus con­cert (I took all of them with me) and the video was spec­tac­u­lar. I can not post them because I do not have per­mis­sion from Miley. But we could hear Miley very well and when I zoomed in, the qual­ity was not dete­ri­o­rated at all. We com­pared them to some of the videos from her youtube chan­nel of her con­certs and we thought it was pretty close to the same qual­ity and all that from the lit­tle Flip.

I also recorded my daughter’s Nut­cracker show and that was prob­a­bly the decid­ing fac­tor. It was very sim­ple to record, my hand was not tired after hold­ing the cam­corder up for an hour, we could hear every word spo­ken on stage and the qual­ity even in the dark parts of the pro­duc­tion were fantastic.

iPhone 3GS

(just out of my own curios­ity I added this one)

Tagged as: 3gs, camcorder, camcorder review, camcorder sony, Digital, Flip Video, geek, iPhone, JVC, jvc picsio, kodak zi6, mino, pocket camcorder, review, sony webbie, swag bag, video, Vlogging, web comparison, webbie