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| Brand: Flip Video
Category: Photography
List Price: $149.99
Buy New: $119.19
You Save: $30.80 (21%)
New (17)
Avg. Customer Rating:  958 reviews
Sales Rank: 72
Color: Black
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: Yes
Floppy Disk Drive: None
Monitor Size: 150
Includes Software: Yes
Optical Zoom: 1
Digital Zoom: 2
Display Size: 1.5
Maximum Resolution: 307200
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 1.3 x 2.2 x 4.2
nv:Size: 1/4-inch
Movie Resolution: 640 x 480
Memory Included: 2GB Internal
Movie File Format: AVI (MPEG-4)
Digital Zoom: 2X
Focus Mode: Fixed
LCD Monitor: 1.5-inch
LCD Coverage: 100%
Maximum Aperture: f 2.4
Movie Mode: 30 fps
Movie Image Resolution: 640 x 480
Movie Audio: Yes
Computer Interface: USB 2.0 high-speed
Video Out: NTSC Standard
Battery Form Factor: AA
Batteries Included: No
Battery Charger Included: No
Height: 4.17 inches
Width: 2.25 inches
MPN: F260B
Model: F260B
UPC: 092684000438
EAN: 0092684000438
ASIN: B000V1PXMI
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand New, includes a new Flip ASP1B Soft Pouch -We ship fast and provide tracking information
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| Customer Reviews:
 Verdict is still out on this camcorder... January 3, 2008
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
I was very excited about this camcorder from the reviews and the look of the camcorder itself. I have the orange/white one and think it looks so cool and cute. I only just received this at Christmas, so I haven't explored it that much yet, but so far, I have noticed the following:
-The video looks good when you play the tiny thumbnail version through the flip software itself. However, when you save it to my documents and it plays larger in windows media player, the picture loses a lot of quality. It appears grainy and fuzzy.
-When I videotape and use the zoom, the zoomed in sections of my video look fuzzy. The non-zoomed in parts do not look as fuzzy.
-Something is very strange about the software for Flip. When I open it and save my videos, or edit etc., and finish, it won't allow me to close the screen. I try to "x" out, and it won't let me, and I can't find any button that says "exit." So I am stuck there until I "control/alt/delete" out of it which is annoying and should be unnecessary.
-At the moment, the quality is not as good as the video section of my digital camera that is 4 years old! So I am disappointed in that. But I'm hoping that I'm just missing something and will figure out how to get better quality.
-I have not transferred anything to dvd or tv yet, so I'm hoping that it'll look better there.
-The zoom is not much at all. It says it only has a 2x zoom, and just be aware of how small that really is. A lot of other camcorders might have a 32x zoom or so. So this doesn't do very much (and like I said, looks blurry when you use it anyway).
-It is very convenient to have a tiny camcorder that you can bring with you anywhere you go.
-The sound quality seems normal.
So overall, I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. I'm really hoping I'll figure out how to make it worth it. I plan to try to find an email for customer service so I can resolve some of these issues.
***UPDATE: The flip people did email me back about my issues, but unfortunately, they could not help. I also tried to edit the videos in sony vegas, and they only had sound, no visuals in that program. I, again, asked flip, and while they did respond, they were not able to help. Again, it's a GREAT camera for quick shots. My husband and I have used it a lot while looking at houses to purchase, videotaping the ones we see, and it's been very helpful.
Not Perfect but Pretty Good January 3, 2008
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I bought this camera for my 12 year old son. Our family has never had a video camera before and this one looked easy to use. It is. The quality of the sound and pictures has been good and it has been a lot of fun to be able to plug the camera into the television and view the videos on the large screen. Our problems have come when we tried to download the videos to our computer. First, the software wouldn't load properly. I read the Read Me file and found a way around that. There is no documentation that actually came with the camera itself. Next, we found that if we try to load a video that is much larger than 2.5 minutes long, we get an error message and we have to shut down the program, take the batteries out of the camera, and start over. We either have to stop the videos every few minutes or break the large videos into short segments to be able to load them. The batteries came with the camera but they do not last very long. However, regular replacement batteries do not last very long either so try lithium batteries or have a back up with you. Overall, I think it is basically a good starter video camera for my son. He's already dropped it twice and it is still working (a padded case will be our next purchase as well as the tripod).
Nifty camcorder nifty price January 3, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
We saw this on Oprah's favourite things show and went right to the internet to see it. Amazon had the best price of course. When it arrived, I took it out of the box and made a "little movie" of our Christmas decorations for my Mom within three minutes. I went right to the computer, plugged the USB in and emailed to her. the sound is great, it doesn't need much light and it's ridiculously easy to use.
My only reservation is the fact that it takes AA batteries. We don't know yet how long they last. I hope we can use rechargeables. Buy this, it's worth the money. you can carry it anywhere and zippy doo... you have sixty minutes to record. Oh, you can use the included plugs to put it right on the TV. Wow. I just love technology.
 Dandy little camera January 3, 2008
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I purchased this camera for a ski trip. The camera performed fine at very cold temperatures, had it in my ski coat outside pocket. So, below freezing, I was still able to pull out the camera, point and shoot at a moment's notice. Regular alkaline batteries last a lot longer than I anticipated. It takes great pictures at regular zoom, the digital zoom in gets a bit out of focus. I found it very easy to use, easy to get the movies out, and easy on the wallet. The old addage is: you get what you pay for. 1-hour of movies is very sufficient for most of my uses.
(Surprisingly) Fantastic Value and Quality January 2, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
I purchased the Flip as early Christmas present for my wife.. My goal was to get something we could take videos of the kids with and have it be as easy to deal with capture/storage/burning DVDs as it is with our digital still camera. We have a Mini-DV camcorder and we've never taken the time to get the video off the camcorder, onto the laptop and onto a DVD. It's just a real pain. So, I've wanted for a long time a camcorder that would record to flash memory or HDD but 1) we already had a camcorder and 2) they were expensive. Then I saw the Flip, grabbed one and we spent the month of December, especially the holidays, recording with the intent of producing a DVD at the end of the month.
Last night I burned a DVD with our recordings using the MyDVD software that came with our laptop. Then I put it into my DVD player to watch the videos on our 50" plasma. I expected something very grainy and small. I was shocked when I was greeted with good quality video even on my 50" plasma. The resolution of the camera is 640x480 which amounts to 4:3 480p so it's like watching a SD TV show except to my eye it seemed a little bit better than SD cable but not as good as an SD movie DVD. I was shocked to tell the truth given what we'd paid for it and what I've read about the picture quality.
The Flip has more than exceeded my expectations: it did exactly what I wanted and it made it easy. I can take videos of our family, upload them to our PC through USB and then burn them to DVD to watch on TV. The quality is more than good enough for the price (like I said IMHO something between SD cable and SD DVD) but more than anything it does all the things I wanted to and I didn't have to spend several hundred dollars.
We are VERY happy with our Flip. We now have an easy way to capture our children's childhoods (at least until flash camcorders that do HD come way down in price) -- something we never had as kids. The Flip is surprisingly good and unexpectedly fun.
Some things to know:
- Don't use the zoom. It's not an optical zoom so it just makes the picture quality poor by cropping the image.
- Expect a time-consuming setup. The first time you plug it in it needs to update itself and it takes a while.
- The software is just so-so. It doesn't really come with any decent software so you'll need something like Roxio's MyDVD to edit/burn videos.
- It records to AVI files (MPEG-4) so you can use a much better viewer on your PC than the one that comes with it. I use WinAMP (free).
- You might want to think about that external 500GB USB drive now because this thing eats HDD drive space like it's nothing :-). I think our 250GB WD is going to have company soon.
- The audio is mono
- When viewing with WinAMP it said it was 640x480, 30fps video
Enjoy it!
[Update] This update doesn't change my review because it's not related to the Flip itself but more to the video format it uses. I am hoping what I went through will help other folks The video files are AVI with the video portion as XVID 3ivx MPEG-4 5.0.1. When I upgraded from the Sonic MyDVD 5.5 software to the Roxio MyDVD 9.0 I could no longer view these files or burn them to a DVD. I had to upgrade to Roxio Easy Media Create 10 to get them to work again. Nothing on Roxio's site gave me any indication the upgrade would cause an issue with my files. Only throwing money at it seemed to help the problem. So, if you're using the Flip in combination with MyDVD to burn DVDs just beware it's not because you don't have the right codec or whatever installed. You apparently need MyDVD 10 or maybe even MyDVD9 Premium to view XVID video and create DVDs out of them. It makes me wish the Flip didn't record to such a wonky format but I guess with all the licensing around MPEG-4, AT&T lawsuit, etc. you get what you get as an early adopter. If you're lost (like I was for a long time) here's some information on 3ivx and MPEG-4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3ivx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4
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