Pocket camcorders (aka mini cams or budget cams, or sometimes Flip cams after the pioneer of the category) are simple gadgets. They’ve got one job to do: Shoot watchable video, often for uploading to streaming video sites. They’re also very close to the end of their lifespan, with perhaps only a year or so left before smartphones make them obsolete, but right now they’re the easiest and cheapest way to take quick and dirty videos. I tested seven of these diminutive camcorders, or more accurately six camcorders and one capable PMP, in five categories: Outdoor, indoor, low light, macro and sound.

The criteria for judging fell mostly to smoothness of video during motion, image sharpness, noise and colour reproduction. Specs like storage capacity, screen size and battery life are mostly the same across the board, although overall, compared to last year, this crop of mini cams are faster and stronger with beefed up memory and HD sensors. All save the iPod Nano take 720p video (or better) and add HDMI ports and more memory to accommodate the higher-quality footage. Yet I wasn’t really all that thrilled with any of the camcorders — the bar for these cams is so low you could trip over it, and several of them actually did. Battery life was disappointing across the board, as none could break two hours of filming. Anyway, on to the results!

Results

Choosing between the Kodak Zi8, Flip Mino HD and Flip Ultra HD is tricky. The Zi8 is unreliable, but when it’s good it’s unbelievably good; the Mino HD is diminutive, solid and stylish, but overpriced and with lousy touch controls; and the Ultra HD is a reliably good shooter with a low price and the best controls of all, but physically unappealing (read: fat as hell). In my opinion, you should never judge a book by its obese cover, so the champion is… the Flip Ultra HD!

Flip Ultra HD: First Place

Flip’s Ultra HD is the best overall choice. It’s one of the cheapest cams around (at $US150, it’s $US70 less than it’s younger brother, the Mino HD), but it tied for the highest score in our lineup, and it features nice tactile controls that I much prefer to the sleeker Mino HD’s touch-sensitive exercise in frustration. Unfortunately, the Dom DeLuise HD is upsettingly fat — about twice as thick as the Mino HD, but even that doesn’t really get across how truly large it feels in the hand. It’s not particularly heavy, but it is by a long shot the thickest pocket cam here. On the plus side, that girth hides a useful battery — Flip includes a rechargeable pack, but the John Candy HD can also use two AA batteries, which is great since pocket cams have generally abysmal battery life (usually about an hour, though of course they’re often rated for double or triple that). Replaceable, cheap batteries are really nice, but some will have to decide whether the William Howard Taft HD’s girth is worth that feature. Given its price, I think it is.

Video quality is just fine, above average if not particularly impressive on every test, and it, like the Mino HD, is extremely user-friendly. Although that simplicity yields less flexibility and a barebones feature set compared to the Kodak Zi8, it’s a good distillation of the aims of pocket camcorders, and its 100 per cent tactile controls are a welcome change from the Mino HD. If you’re not superficial, it’s a very smart buy.

Flip Mino HD: Second Place

Flip’s Mino HD is the best-looking and best-feeling camcorder I tried. Its aluminium body feels solid and expensive, which might be because it is — at $US230, it’s the priciest camcorder I tested. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it sells the best, even though it’s not the greatest deal, because it looks (and is) simple, cute and functional. I won’t rehash my review, except to say that I hate those goddamn touch buttons more and more every time I use the Mino HD. They’re incredibly sensitive and I guarantee that you will accidentally trigger the playback function more times than you can count.

Besides that, it’s totally serviceable: It did well on all of my tests, it’s thoughtfully designed and stupid-easy to use. But it’s definitely overpriced, and I have a hard time recommending it over its physically awkward yet substantially cheaper older brother, the Ultra HD, just for its looks.

Kodak Zi8: Third Place

Wider and taller than the Flip Ultra HD, though not nearly as fat, the Zi8 packs a 1080p sensor and the largest and best screen of the bunch. The controls are easy and tactile and aside from flimsy-feeling plastic covers over the ports (one of mine already fell off), the hardware is high-quality. The Zi8 snagged the bronze medal, because while its highs were higher than either of the Flips, its lows were lower — and given how focused and simple this type of gadget is, reliability is worth more than flashing moments of greatness.

The Zi8 absolutely rocked in two of my tests, outdoor and macro, with perfect colour reproduction and excellent clarity, and it even takes pretty decent still photos (think point-and-shoot circa 2006 quality). But the conditions need to be just right to get the most out of this guy — I first tried it in 1080p mode (neither of the Flips can break 720p) and while picture quality was amazing, scenes with lots of motion were pretty jerky to the point of being distracting. But even in 720p, it was still head-and-shoulders above the competition — but only in outdoor and macro testing. In the indoor test it proved to have difficulty focusing on objects closer than 3m but farther than 0.5m away, and low light shooting was distinctly tinted red and a bit dark. It wasn’t unusable in any test (unlike the similarly uneven Creative Vado HD) and at $US180 it’s fairly priced, so I’d still recommend it — but you and I are likely to be more forgiving of the Zi8’s flaws than, say, your mum, who just wants a camera that works pretty well all the time. For her, go for a Flip.

The Rest

The Creative Vado HD scored pretty high, only a point lower than the bronze medallist Kodak Zi8, but while its design is fairly middle-of-the-road (albeit nice and teeny), its abilities were all over the place. It was one of the worst in standard daytime shooting (it has a hard time with sunlight, a serious problem for a pocket cam) and macro, but was the best at indoor, and while its low light video was a little dark, it was the clearest and smoothest of the lot. It also, likely due to Creative’s background in stellar-sounding PMPs and sound cards, boasts excellent sound quality. At $US150, it’s very fairly priced, but I can’t recommend a camcorder that mangles sunlight the way the Vado does.

Apple’s iPod Nano is the only “camcorder” in this roundup to peak at VGA resolution, and aside from a surprisingly strong macro performance, it shows. It turned vibrant colours dull and lifeless, washed out detail and made everything seem darker than it was. It can’t compete with the Zi8s and Flips of the world, but it’s still usable and incredibly priced at $US150/$180 for 8GB/16GB — if you’ve got a Nano already, you probably won’t need a dedicated cam. Convergence killed the video star, I guess.

The JVC Picsio GC-FM1 sucked. It’s spectacularly ugly (think Ed Hardy-inspired) and feels cheap with a confusing button layout (unforgivable in a pocket cam) and a high price ($US200, or $US178 at Amazon). Besides all that, it scored poorly in every one of our tests. Avoid.

And finally, the worst — Aiptek’s PenCam HD. I wanted to like it, I really did &mdash ;it’s got a tongue-depressor-like design and came with a sweet tripod that attaches to a bicycle’s handlebars — but it bombed in almost every one of my tests. The 1.1-inch screen is nearly unusable and battery life barely topped 40 minutes, so it’s definitely the loser here.

Don Nguyen assisted with this Battlemodo.

The GP 400N is nice since it slides back in while not in use, but you do have to charge it separately with a mini USB connection. You get twelve hours of playback on one charge. No real pricing info available yet. [GP-EL via Craziest Gadgets via Geeky Gadgets]

The hardware capability for FM radio does exist in some models — the current iPod touch and iPhone 3GS have FM transmitters, and the 2nd-gen iPod touch also has a chip that’s capable of receiving FM signals, though it uses it for Nike+ stuff.

It’d make sense to add more software parity across the line, but who knows — no date is given for when we might actually see this FM radio app. [9to5Mac

The victim was an 18-year-old schoolgirl. Glad the dude at least stuck to the age limit, but it doesn’t quite make it any better. And also, as you saw in our review, the Nano isn’t that good of an upskirt camera. It may have an “infrared” filter, but that’s not a real filter, and it doesn’t actually help a camera that doesn’t do low-light very well perform low-light any better. What you need is something with a flash, preferably infrared, so you can…wait…I shouldn’t reveal all these tips. [Kobe via Fucked Gaijin via Feer via The Awl via T3]

The Life Time Fitness just restricted the Nano from not just locker rooms, but from workout areas too. You can listen to music on your Nano, of course, it’s just that you can’t use it as a recording device. Hold and stare at your player too long and the woman on the elliptical might give you a hard time about what you’re staring at.

All perfectly natural, but it’s something we’ll see more of once we get gadgets that play music as well as take video. [Twin Cities via Apple Insider]

This new Nano—the 5th generation—comes in the same 8GB/16GB sizes as the last one, though it costs more. You’ll pay $199 and $249 respectively, but at least the bump can be traced to actual additional benefits.

Body

The new Nano has the same body as the 4th generation, but there are definite changes afoot. The screen takes a bump from two inches to 2.2 inches—a jump that may sound tiny but is surprisingly substantial. If you’re used to the old two-inch screen you’ll definitely notice and appreciate the extra space for navigation. The resolution goes from 240×320 to the oddball 240×376. Though wider when viewed lengthwise, the new screen still isn’t 16×9; even widescreen videos will be slightly letterboxed due to the unconventional size. Aside from the added real estate, it’s also noticeably brighter and sharper than the previous model. It may still be too small to watch a two-hour movie on, but it’s a pleasure to use for everything else, including shorter video clips.

Unfortunately, that larger screen comes with a caveat: The click wheel is even smaller than earlier Nanos. If you found the previous Nano’s click wheel slightly thinner and harder to hit than you prefer, this will be even worse. If you had no problems before, then the slight decrease in size shouldn’t affect you much. I personally found it too small, and my thumb sometimes hit the area around the controls instead of the control itself. This is especially true when the Nano is docked.

The paint job is also a little different, with a much shinier and brighter appearance than the previous generation’s comparatively subdued matte finish. Oddly enough, it actually feels slightly lighter than the last model, though no less solid—this is an extremely durable player. It doesn’t bend under pressure from any angle and a nerve-wracking fall onto a hardwood floor had no adverse effects. However, I found that sharp metal objects like keys will leave scratches, while the previous matte Nano showed no scratches under similar abuse.

Features

Did I mention Apple crammed a bunch of new features into the iPod Nano 5G? And that the most notable—and most thoroughly leaked—is a video camera? Here’s the rundown:

This is the “cyborg” filter. Very geeky and cool, and matches perfectly with the tunes we were blasting (it’s LP by Discovery, for the record). Notice that you can actually hear the click of the button right as the video stops.

The scratchy film-strip filter is great for arty shots of the back of Brian Lam’s head.

This one’s a security-cam type filter that makes these innocent passersby seem suspicious.

This is the normal setting (no filter) on a bright and sunny day. You can see that the colours are a little washed out, there’s a bit of visual tearing as I pan and due to the awkward placement of the lens itself, my finger blocks part of the shot.

These next two are for comparison. This one is taken by the Nano, a simple rotating panoramic with differing light and a lot of colour. The next is the exact same video, but taken with a Flip Mino.

This is the Flip. The colour reproduction is definitely better on the Flip (most notably in those flowers outside the window), and the video is noticeably sharper as well. But all in all, it’s not a huge difference, which is very much to the Nano’s credit.

Low light, predictably, is not the Nano’s strong suit. It’s serviceable, and obviously pocket camcorders like the Flip and Vado aren’t all that much better, but you’re going to want to have some decent lighting when using the Nano’s camera.

Closeups are also a weak point for the Nano—its 640×480 resolution, with no macro mode, is just not detailed enough to pick up the nuances of this gold sparkly thing on Brian’s bookshelf. But like the low light shows, if you’re looking for the Nano to have amazing video capabilities, you probably haven’t noticed that it’s actually a super thin MP3 player and not an HD camcorder.

X-ray mode is actually cool and glosses over some of the Nano’s lack of detail, not that it’s particularly practical.

This is thermal mode, so you can tell that Brian and Lisa are red-hot. Literally.

Tunnel vision is another filter brought over from Photo Booth. It’s one of my favourites, so I’m glad to see it on the Nano.

Video Camera
The big selling point of this Nano is that the video camera theoretically puts it in a position to compete with the Flip, Creative’s Vado, and Kodak’s Zi6 and Zi8. Steve Jobs said so himself. But is it true? Well, yes—and no.

Like the Flip-class cameras, there’s no optical zoom, and it can’t take still shots (very few of these new camcorders can). Also, there’s no on-device editing, just the option to delete what you shot. It too has video output, but only if you buy the right cable.

But the Nano is limited to VGA resolution—640×480—far less than that of current HD pocket cams which hover in the same sub-$180 price range. Casual videos meant for YouTube may not need more than VGA, and Apple sort of makes up for it by adding creative video filters, similar to those found in iChat and Photo Booth. These aren’t just for fun, they tend to cover up the limitations of the video itself. On the other hand, if you’re shooting your baby’s first steps, or anything meaningful, no matter how short, you might end up regretting that you didn’t shoot in HD.

That being said, it’s a remarkably high-quality camera, as good as standard-def pocket cams like the Flip Mino (which I used in the comparisons below).

When you hold the Nano, you discover that the lens is placed in an awkward location—the lower right corner of the device’s back. You can rotate it and the accelerometer will adjust, so it can actually be held in any way you choose, but the natural motion is to turn it 90 degrees counterclockwise (so the screen is on the left and the click wheel on the right), which leaves your fingers right in the lens’s way. You get used to it, though. It’s annoying but not a dealbreaker.

In video-camera mode, you can bring up those creative filters—cyborg, security camera, film grain, tunnel vision and more—by holding down the centre button. They fit right in with the idea of the Nano as a quick-and-dirty camcorder: You wouldn’t want your serious short film to have a red, pulsing cyborg filter, but it’s really fun for 30-second clips. Speaking of which, the only limit on video length seems to be the remaining memory in the Nano itself.

Here are a couple comparison clips. This first is low-light, notoriously difficult for any budget camcorder to capture.

The Flip is far better here: You can actually make out the features of my kitchen with some certainty, and while it’s blurry it’s still watchable.

The Nano’s low-light video is pretty much pitch black until I hit a patch of light, and it’s extremely jerky. I should add that the kitchen wasn’t really that dark, but it looks like that tiny sensor is just no good for situations with less light.

This pair of clips is to demonstrate macro. The Nano is actually a little better than the Flip here, with a sharper closeup picture, although colour reproduction is a little more accurate on the Flip. Still, closeup shots are difficult and I’m really impressed with the Nano’s clarity here. Here’s the Flip:

And here’s the Nano.

This last series is what most people will likely use the Nano’s camera for: Shooting with a decent amount of light, natural or artificial. It’s not quite as good here as the Flip—notice the tearing in the video as I pan, and again, colour reproduction is a little darker and muddier than the actual object. But given that the Nano’s camera is a tiny little lens crammed into an already-tiny music and video player that you may be intent on buying anyway, I’m really pleased and a little surprised at how well it performs.

This is the Flip:

And this is the Nano:

The microphone does a pretty good job at picking up sound. Speech is totally audible and it’s sensitive enough to pick up a fairly quiet conversation three metres away. Wind shear can get really noisy, unfortunately, but unless it’s incredibly windy it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

So is the Nano better than a standard-def Flip? No, it’s not: Besides poor low-light performance, the straight video quality is slightly inferior and there are no features like digital zoom (which some people like). This is a PMP with a camera, not a camera that plays music. But should Flip be worried? Absolutely. If you have a Flip already, you may not be swayed to purchase the Nano because of its video, but if you buy the Nano, you don’t really need a Flip—and Apple’s going to sell boatloads of these Nanos for reasons other than video camera anyway. Speaking of which…

FM Radio
Defiantly coming dead last to the FM radio party, Apple finally bestowed an iPod with a real FM radio, not some costly optional accessory. Why did Apple cave? Every single other MP3 player since about 2001 has had this. Your guess is as good as mine. The addition was announced without fanfare or explanation at the Nano’s unveiling, and the tuner itself doesn’t bring any new features like HD Radio, but it does come in with a suite of features proving, at least, that this wasn’t an afterthought.

The radio gets excellent reception, though you have to use your headphones—not just Apple’s white earbuds; I used my Shures—as the antenna. There’s support for RDS data (station name and song title). That song title data can be used to tag favourite songs so that you can, well, buy them later on iTunes. The coolest radio feature is “Live Pause.” You can pause a program for up to 15 minutes, and it caches it to memory. It’s really nice addition, and you can even fast forward through the cached content, though you can’t truly record and save radio. (That would mean instant RIAA lawsuit.)

Built-In Speaker
That’s right, there’s a teeny little speaker on the bottom of the new Nano. It’s not particularly loud or high quality, but it’s damn impressive that Apple could cram it into such a thin player. It’s definitely audible in quiet rooms, although you’d probably want to use it for spoken word or video rather than music, as songs tend to get washed out and distorted. Still, I have a feeling I’ll take advantage of the speaker even more than the video camera—there was one on the Samsung P3 and it proved extremely useful for those times when you want to share a quick video, or don’t feel like plugging in earbuds.

Pedometer
It works, mostly, though it’s not a substitute for Nike+. I tested five sets of exactly ten steps, and it registered the correct amount twice, but it also registered nine steps twice and thirteen steps once. It’ll probably even out for longer walks, but you will never get perfect accuracy. It’s still kind of fun, though: Turns out my nearest coffee shop is only 278 steps away from my bedroom, and I burned 14 calories getting there.

Voice Recorder
Using the built-in mic, you can record little voice memos. Sound quality is okay, but very limited by distance. I tested from different distances and found that while about one foot away from the mic, talking at a normal conversational volume (as in an interview or quick voice memo situation), sound quality was very audible and clear. From 1.5 metres back at the same volume, it was still clear but soft enough that the volume had to be upped quite a bit. From ten feet back it was still clear but only after I plugged it into my stereo and cranked the volume. When recording very loud music from a bit of a distance (sorry, neighbours!), the volume was fine but the recording came out way too distorted to be worth listening to. It looks like the recorder would be a good tool for memos or lectures, but forget about recording concerts with the Nano.

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The Verdict

The iPod Nano is the best-selling MP3 player of all time, and this new model should keep that record alive. It’s still an incredibly small and thin player with intuitive navigation and popular software, priced competitively. The new features are really nice—the video camera is good in a pinch, enough to supplant standard-def pocket cams—and the bigger, brighter screen makes navigating through the added options.

The video camera is a major feature addition, but this Nano is still an incremental upgrade. Apple hasn’t changed the capacity or price in years—does it really not make sense to release a 32GB version? The 8GB version, only $50 cheaper than the 16GB, seems undesirable and outdated. But at this point what else could Apple add to the Nano? I’m just surprised everything they have added actually fits.

The iPod Touch and other full-featured touchscreen players like the Zune HD and Sony X-Series are the big attention-grabbers these days, and the Nano will surely be left behind as dedicated media players yield to convergence. The steady price and capacity of the Nano and the dropping price and skyrocketing capacity and functionality of the Touch signals the sea change better than anything: Soon the Touch will be top seller, and the Nano will slip into being a niche product for people who really prefer small form factors. There is much speculation that the Nano got the video camera—and the Touch did not—in order to slow this inevitable decline.

So the big question: Should you buy the Nano? Yes, if you want an easy-to-use, slick, full-featured and small PMP. Especially yes if you’re also considering a cheap pocket camcorder. If you’ve got last year’s Nano and you have an interest in decent video quality, better to spend the money on a Kodak Zi8 (or the newly discounted Zi6). Or just wait for the iPod Touch to get a camera—now that’s an upgrade. The camera alone isn’t worth $199 or $249 if you’ve already got every other feature—maybe that’s the reason Jobs himself said it was “free.”

Retains stylish and durable form factor, with bigger and better screen

Camera is surprisingly good and really fun

Price is very tempting considering camera addition

Design, battery life and UI are unchanged, but still good

Capped at 16GB capacity

[Apple Store]

Head to iFixIt for the rest of the autopsy. [iFixIt]

Starting with the iPod Touch, the 8GB model will sell for $269, with the 32GB costing $399 and the 64GB set at $549.

The iPod Shuffle now starts at $79 for 2GB, or $109 for a 4GB model. It comes in the same five colours as the US.

The new Nano starts at $199 for 8GB or $249 for 16GB, and is available in silver, black, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, (PRODUCT) RED and pink.

iTunes 9 and iPhone 3.1 updates are available now as well. iPod Touch owners with software older than 3.0 will have to spring $5.99 for the iPhone update though.

[iPod launch on Giz]

We found out that the camera’s unfortunate placement (on the lower left of the back, if you’re holding it normally) is due to there not being enough space to cram it in under the screen. The accelerometer adjusts if you want to hold it some other way, but the natural position for taking video is made harder by the location of the lens.

Why can’t the Nano take still photography? Let’s hear it from Steve Jobs himself, via the New York Times:

The sensors for doing video are fairly thin. The sensors for doing a still camera, at much higher pixel resolution – and we’d really like to have autofocus – they are just way too thick to ever fit inside the Nano.

This is the “cyborg” filter. Very geeky and cool, and matches perfectly with the tunes we were blasting (it’s LP by Discovery, for the record). Notice that you can actually hear the click of the button right as the video stops.

The scratchy film-strip filter is great for arty shots of the back of Brian Lam’s head.

This one’s a security-cam type filter that makes these innocent passersby seem suspicious.

This is the normal setting (no filter) on a bright and sunny San Francisco day. You can see that the colours are a little washed out and due to the awkward placement of the lens itself, my finger blocks part of the shot.

These next two are for comparison. This one is taken by the Nano, a simple rotating panoramic with differing light and a lot of color. The next is the exact same video, but taken with a Flip Mino.

This is the Flip. The colour reproduction is definitely better on the Flip (most notably in those flowers outside the window), and the video is noticeably sharper as well. But all in all, it’s not a huge difference, which is very much to the Nano’s credit.

Low light, predictably, is not the Nano’s strong suit. It’s serviceable, and obviously pocket camcorders like the Flip and Vado aren’t all that much better, but you’re going to want to have some decent lighting when using the Nano’s camera.

Closeups are also a weak point for the Nano—its 640×480 resolution, with no macro mode, is just not detailed enough to pick up the nuances of this gold sparkly thing on Brian’s bookshelf. But like the low light shows, if you’re looking for the Nano to have amazing video capabilities, you probably haven’t noticed that it’s actually a super thin mp3 player and not an HD camcorder.

X-ray mode is actually cool and glosses over some of the Nano’s lack of detail, not that it’s particularly practical.

This is thermal mode, so you can tell that Brian and Lisa are red-hot. Literally.

Tunnel vision is another filter brought over from Photo Booth. It’s one of my favorites, so I’m glad to see it on the Nano.