Single-button movie-making from a pocket-sized camcorder: what’s not to like? The Flip Ultra is perfectly portable (it measures just 100x50x16mm and weighs 94g) and user-friendly, but has a style that’s alien to traditional camcorders. But does it flip us out with its pictures? In a word… hell no. Okay that’s two words, but who’s counting?
The Flip Video Ultra may be one of the simplest camcorders known to man (and woman), but it’s simple for a reason: there’s no autofocus, no exposure options, no video light, not even fast forwarding or rewinding in playback mode!
So we’ve established that the Flip Video Ultra is unlikely to be used by Scorcese any time soon, but it does have some plus points, notably that single-button operation. The standard-def video quality captured by the 1/4 inch VGA CMOS sensor is pretty decent actually – with low-light shots looking pretty bright compared to a lot of camera phone video footage. But that’s the point, we’re comparing this to camera phones – not camcorders. It just wouldn’t stand up to the beating it’d take from say a Sanyo VPC-HD2000 or Sony HDR-TG3.
Okay you can hook it up to almost any computer thanks to that handy flip-out USB key, which is a good thing because it only has 2GB of storage and you won’t want to watch your video footage on the Flip Ultra’s grainy 1.5-inch TFT display, either. And don’t even get us started on its mono audio. Suffice to say, it’s terrible.
But then, what did you expect for the price? We say, keep your money and save up for the impressive Creative Vado HD instead.
