RCA EZ201 Small Wonder 60 Minute Point-and-Shoot Camcorder (White)

Ok, I was curious so I bought the Small wonder and the flip (FW160) to compare them side by side. The Small wonder does have the advantage of the SD card reader, plus the flip LCD. However, in dim lighting like around my house, the Small wonder has a pinkish/reddish look to the images (I tried two small wonders with same results). The Flip does do a better job in poor lit conditions color wise in my opinnion. You can see the small wonder gain up light more noticably when lighting gets darker, but the Flip did a smoother job at it and the image was brighter. The Flip also has a much brighter display that you can see much better outside. I wanted to keep the Small Wonder because of the adjustable LCD and the SD cards, but the resulting video with the red/pink tint in dim conditions was no good for me. But not all small wonder indoor video had the red cast, only with certain lighting conditions and it depended on what you subject was. People's faces ended up with a sunburn look inside in certain light angles. Outdoors it did great. The Small wonder's software was also a bit behind the Flip's. The Flips allowed a larger video window for playing back the video, it was also just a bit more user friendly (better video making software with music). I will say that the Small wonder does a good job of updating firmware etc. One other thing about the Small wonder I liked was it's usb connector was easier to connect to my PC because of it's location. I still think the small wonder does a good job, I just think the flip is slightly better image quality wise. Ok, I plugged them both into two different TV's. One was a small 20 inch and I will say they were both about the same (VHS quality was pretty good). You can notice that darker shots have artifacts/blocky but acceptable to me. I tried plugging them into a 50 inch plasma and must say the results are not too hot. While I could watch the videos, they were fairly poor (but this is probably expected for this type of mpeg4 camcorder). I plan to watch these videos on PC or smaller TV anyhow. I ended up keeping the Flip 60 minute version instead of the Small wonder.

i purchased a 60min. flip camera from pure digital and loved it. then, a friend of mine got the rca small wonder, and i was jealous! i had to have one because of the extra features: flip screen, tripod mount and expandable memory. so i sold my flip and ordered the rca small wonder. i was so disappointed. the video is just terrible. so, i returned the small wonder and purchased the new upgrade of the flip which is 2GB, but still 60 min. great picture quality and they have made many improvements: quiet buttons (cannot hear them on your video), separate on/off switch, tripod mount...etc.....

bottom line: spend a little more and get the flip ultra.

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The ergonomics of this device are pretty good. Simple buttons to do all common operations, no complex setup menus. The power switch does tend to get pushed by accident if you put it in your pocket though.

Video quality is OK, and works well for small size playback, but is not good for larger screen viewing. The MPEG4 compression makes things reasonably small, but given the mediocre quality, I would have expected the movies to take less memory than they do. The colors are somewhat washed out, compared to the movies my old Canon digital camera took. The low cost makes this a good camera to let my kids use. I wouldn't use it

for anything I really wanted to treasure though.

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Look, if you want professional grade video out of a $100 digital video recorder, you will be disappointed. If you want a convenient media recorder for personal fun, quick business recordings, web video, etc, then this is a great asset. Point, shoot, upload, edit, move on. It's just a little bigger than an iPod, can be attached to a tripod, lasts for a few hours on standard AA batteries, and uploads right to a PC. The built-in software is OK but nothing to brag about. It is very basic. Now, the unit's compression uses a DivX codec. If you want to work with the avi files that it creates OR if you want to share the raw, larger file and higher quality, video with someone else, you must have DivX installed on the system. It's free and easy to get for a PC or Mac. So, no big deal there but I can see how some non-savvy people could get confused or frustrated. There is a built-in tool to convert videos to WMV. I took this on a two week trip to Italy and had a blast recording sites, commentary, panoramic shots, etc. I have used it at the park with my kids, at conferences, to record meetings, etc. This is a MUST for convenience. If you want to do something like start a vlog or post video to YouTube, this is perfect. It's a fun and functional piece but not a $700+ DV camcorder.

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I have owned a few expensive video cameras and they break far to easy. Just too many potential points of failure with all the mechanical moving parts such as tape reels, rubber belts, gears, bearings, springs, etc. This camera has no moving parts at all. Everything stores on SD/MMC memory and you can use up to 2 GB to get 5 hours of video time! Amazing. Quality is good for home videos... your own UTube or Ebaum's World submission... attach to e-mails, play over TVs with included composite video line, save to your hard disk or edit short takes and string them into a movie. Great low light sensitivity, USB connection, single frame capture (photos)... very easy operation (great for old folks and non-techies too). Very capable and worth every dime. Buy one before the word gets out and there are none left!!!

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