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Quick Review

What is it?

• The Flip Mino HD is a tiny, pocketable, HD camcorder by PureDigital.

What’s Cool:

• Very easy to use.
• Form factor makes it easy to carry around.
• HD video quality is okay.

What’s Not:

• Shiny surface is a fingerprint magnet.
• Low light performance is not as good as the Kodak Zi6.
• Limited to built-in memory / No port for SD or microSD card.

The Crux:

• The Flip Mino HD is fine for what it is, a pocket HD camcorder.  The Kodak Zi6 may be a better value, but the Mino HD is smaller and a slicker looking device with decent quality footage.

Out of the box

When you open the box, you remove another box.  This second box is very iPhone-like and presents the Flip Mino HD like a fine piece of technology.  You’ll get the camera, a fabric case, wrist strap, and a composite cable to hook up the camera to a television.  Unfortunately, there are no component cables to watch your footage in HD on your television.

Camera hardware

 
The camera looks slick with its black and silver color scheme.  The screen on the Mino is about the same size as the screen on the iPod nano first generation at 1.5 inches.  Speakers flank the screen and most of the camera controls are located under the screen.

The power button is on the side and is somewhat recessed to prevent accidentaly turning on the camera in your pocket.  There is a TV out on the other side of the camera.  The top of the device features the flip out USB connector.  There is no USB extension cable included.  The bottom of the case sports a tripod connector which is always nice.

There is 4GB of built-in memory and no expansion slots for a SD or microSD card.  PureDigital claims that you can get about an hour of 720P video with the built-in 4GB.

Performance

Using the camera is very easy.  Turn it on and the touch sensitive buttons light up.  To record, hit the big red button.  There are no modes to choose from—all videos are recorded at 720P and 30 fps.

The viewfinder/display tells you how much time the built-in memory can record.  The small screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio, but all video is in the 16:9 format.  When recording or playing back video on the device, there are black bars on the top and bottom of the display.  Flip fills up those black bars with information like battery life and time remaining.  Since the text is on the black bars, they are easy to read even on the small screen.

Video quality is decent.  You will not replace a $600 HD camcorder with the Flip Mino HD, but you will have high resolution videos that are just fine for sharing with friends and family.  Like any camera, lighting is key to video quality.  The colors are a little washed out and the microphone is a bit weak on the Mino HD, but it does the job. 

The Mino does not have any image stabilzation, so a steady hand is important.  The built in tripod socket can be helpful for this. 

Wrap up

The Flip Mino HD is very easy to use.  Since there is just one shooting mode, you won’t be fiddling with menus and settings.  The small screen does a fine job as a viewfinder and can be used to see what you just recorded.  It would have been nice if there were component cables included to easily watch HD video on a television.

The camera goes for $209 on Amazon.com at the time of this writing.  The price is a little high compared to the Kodak Zi6.  The Flip Mino HD is a very slick looking device with good enough performance that it may win over more fashion concious users.  If you are indifferent to the looks, the Kodak Zi6 is a better value.