Ultra Products flip video ultra digital camcorder Webcam
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Clever and Fun - If You're Into That Kind of Thing
Pros
Light and small. Simple to use. Very user-friendly.
Cons
No advanced controls. No light for low-light recording.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you don't want to replace your camcorder but you're just looking for something to add to your video arsenal, this is your camera.
My wife and I decided to buy this last week. We had received a few Best Buy gift cards for Christmas and so it seemed a reasonable thing to purchase, especially since Carmen and I are both trying to be better about taking and sharing pictures of our little family.
It's a pretty cool toy. First of all, I don't think I've ever enjoyed unpacking something from its box quite like I enjoyed removing the Flip from its packaging. What a neat design! The inside of the box is all compartmentalized with places for you to put your fingers so that you can pull out the different sections.
The batteries are included. The other things that are included with the Flip are a wrist strap and some easy to use instructions. I really did dig through the box looking for a USB cable, like a dummy, for about 20 seconds until I remembered that it's included on the camera (which is why, I believe, they call it "The Flip"). The only instructions included in the box are instructions on removing the battery compartment cover and a quick overview on how to turn the camera on. That's it. Which really got me curious.
Using the camera turned out to be extremely simple. You can't go wrong with a play button, a delete button and a giant red record button. No sir. I dare someone to hold the Flip for more than 10 seconds and not be able to figure it out. If you accidentally leave it on the coffee table while you're working around the house, I'll bet by the time you pick it up later you would discover a whole library of new videos your kids had made while you weren't in the room. Which brings up an interesting point - the camera handles so much like a child's toy camera that it's almost hard to take it seriously. Almost.
There's power in the Flip's simplicity, sure, but the real power of the Flip is in how well it combines that simplicity with the quality of what it captures. Within 3 seconds of turning it on for the first time I was recording our cat, Jeepers, running across the kitchen floor to his food. What surprised me was how, even on the little screen, I could tell that every movement was being captured fluidly. Spending a little extra for the Flip Ultra in order to take advantage of its 30 frames per second turned out to be a good idea.
There's no flash or light and so the Flip doesn't work spectacularly well in low or no light. We recently had our first snow of the year and I stepped outside around 11:00pm to record the snow falling. The Flip automatically registered the extremely low light and adjusted to a "night" mode which caused everything to look eerily green. When I moved the camera toward a streetlamp, the snow was illuminated and the camera adjusted itself out of "night"mode into a more normal balance. Unfortunately there isn't any such thing as "advanced" settings on the Flip. You're either recording or you're not. There is a zoom function which works well enough - mid recording zooming was smooth and not the least bit jumpy.
The camera's built in less-jitter handling makes for videos less likely to be filled with nauseating motion. Another plus for a camera with a price tag well under $200.
Finally, I was recently able to experience the feature that really makes the Flip a no brainer of a purchase (besides the freakishly speedy "start recording" time). The PC user interface.
I plugged the Flip into my laptop's USB port and immediately it was recognized by Windows XP. I had read about some of the simple and user-friendly software tools that were to be included with the Flip and I was a little perplexed when none were found in the box. As the Flip booted into PC mode my understanding became clearer - the software was on the Flip. Clever, Flip Ultra. Very clever.
Again, simplicity is key. You have several options from the home screen and then only a couple additional functions within those options. You can either save, edit or delete from the home screen. Once in the "Save" menu you can choose to save your video clips to a folder on your computer (duh), compress your video clips and attach them to an email (cool!) or you can choose to save them in a DVD compatible format (sweet!). You can also upload videos that are on your PC to the Flip to be compressed and attached to emails or converted to a DVD compatible format, which is extremely nifty.
Videos transferred to the PC were saved in an AVI format but required the 3vix codec to be played (which is also included on the Flip). Both the sound and video quality of the video clips, now blown up 20 times larger than what could be seen on the Flip's tiny display, still looked and sounded decent. This isn't the type of quality that you might settle for if you were recording an independent film but as far as capturing family memories goes, it's at least passable.
I'm glad we got it. It's fun and super easy to use. It's small and can go with us anywhere which will make capturing memories all the easier. We still think we want a full-fledged camcorder though. But since the Flip will always be able to go places a camcorder would never think of, I don't think the Flip would be jealous.
It's a pretty cool toy. First of all, I don't think I've ever enjoyed unpacking something from its box quite like I enjoyed removing the Flip from its packaging. What a neat design! The inside of the box is all compartmentalized with places for you to put your fingers so that you can pull out the different sections.
The batteries are included. The other things that are included with the Flip are a wrist strap and some easy to use instructions. I really did dig through the box looking for a USB cable, like a dummy, for about 20 seconds until I remembered that it's included on the camera (which is why, I believe, they call it "The Flip"). The only instructions included in the box are instructions on removing the battery compartment cover and a quick overview on how to turn the camera on. That's it. Which really got me curious.
Using the camera turned out to be extremely simple. You can't go wrong with a play button, a delete button and a giant red record button. No sir. I dare someone to hold the Flip for more than 10 seconds and not be able to figure it out. If you accidentally leave it on the coffee table while you're working around the house, I'll bet by the time you pick it up later you would discover a whole library of new videos your kids had made while you weren't in the room. Which brings up an interesting point - the camera handles so much like a child's toy camera that it's almost hard to take it seriously. Almost.
There's power in the Flip's simplicity, sure, but the real power of the Flip is in how well it combines that simplicity with the quality of what it captures. Within 3 seconds of turning it on for the first time I was recording our cat, Jeepers, running across the kitchen floor to his food. What surprised me was how, even on the little screen, I could tell that every movement was being captured fluidly. Spending a little extra for the Flip Ultra in order to take advantage of its 30 frames per second turned out to be a good idea.
There's no flash or light and so the Flip doesn't work spectacularly well in low or no light. We recently had our first snow of the year and I stepped outside around 11:00pm to record the snow falling. The Flip automatically registered the extremely low light and adjusted to a "night" mode which caused everything to look eerily green. When I moved the camera toward a streetlamp, the snow was illuminated and the camera adjusted itself out of "night"mode into a more normal balance. Unfortunately there isn't any such thing as "advanced" settings on the Flip. You're either recording or you're not. There is a zoom function which works well enough - mid recording zooming was smooth and not the least bit jumpy.
The camera's built in less-jitter handling makes for videos less likely to be filled with nauseating motion. Another plus for a camera with a price tag well under $200.
Finally, I was recently able to experience the feature that really makes the Flip a no brainer of a purchase (besides the freakishly speedy "start recording" time). The PC user interface.
I plugged the Flip into my laptop's USB port and immediately it was recognized by Windows XP. I had read about some of the simple and user-friendly software tools that were to be included with the Flip and I was a little perplexed when none were found in the box. As the Flip booted into PC mode my understanding became clearer - the software was on the Flip. Clever, Flip Ultra. Very clever.
Again, simplicity is key. You have several options from the home screen and then only a couple additional functions within those options. You can either save, edit or delete from the home screen. Once in the "Save" menu you can choose to save your video clips to a folder on your computer (duh), compress your video clips and attach them to an email (cool!) or you can choose to save them in a DVD compatible format (sweet!). You can also upload videos that are on your PC to the Flip to be compressed and attached to emails or converted to a DVD compatible format, which is extremely nifty.
Videos transferred to the PC were saved in an AVI format but required the 3vix codec to be played (which is also included on the Flip). Both the sound and video quality of the video clips, now blown up 20 times larger than what could be seen on the Flip's tiny display, still looked and sounded decent. This isn't the type of quality that you might settle for if you were recording an independent film but as far as capturing family memories goes, it's at least passable.
I'm glad we got it. It's fun and super easy to use. It's small and can go with us anywhere which will make capturing memories all the easier. We still think we want a full-fledged camcorder though. But since the Flip will always be able to go places a camcorder would never think of, I don't think the Flip would be jealous.
