Pocket camcorders (AKA mini cams or budget cams, or sometimes Flip cams after the pioneer of the category) are simple gadgets. They've got one job to do: Shoot watchable video, often for uploading to streaming video sites. They're also very close to the end of their lifespan, with perhaps only a year or so left before smartphones make them obsolete, but right now they're the easiest and cheapest way to take quick and dirty video. I tested seven of these diminutive camcorders, or more accurately six camcorders and one capable PMP, in five categories: Outdoor, indoor, low light, macro, and sound.

The criteria for judging fell mostly to smoothness of video during motion, image sharpness, noise, and color reproduction. Specs like storage capacity, screen size and battery life are mostly the same across the board, although overall, compared to last year, this crop of mini cams are faster and stronger, with beefed up memory and HD sensors. All save the iPod Nano take 720p video (or better) and add HDMI ports and more memory to accommodate the higher-quality footage. Yet I wasn't really all that thrilled with any of the camcorders—the bar for these cams is so low you could trip over it, and several of them actually did. Battery life was disappointing across the board, as none could break two hours of filming. Anyway, on to the results!

Results

Choosing between the Kodak Zi8, Flip Mino HD and Flip Ultra HD is tricky. The Zi8 is unreliable, but when it's good it's unbelievably good; the Mino HD is diminutive, solid and stylish, but overpriced and with lousy touch controls; and the Ultra HD is a reliably good shooter with a low price and the best controls of all, but physically unappealing (read: fat as hell). In my opinion, you should never judge a book by its obese cover, so the champion is...the Flip Ultra HD!

Flip Ultra HD: First Place

Flip's Ultra HD is the best overall choice. It's one of the cheapest cams around (at $150, it's $70 less than it's younger brother, the Mino HD), but it tied for the highest score in our lineup, and it features nice tactile controls that I much prefer to the sleeker Mino HD's touch-sensitive exercise in frustration. Unfortunately, the Dom DeLuise HD is upsettingly fat—about twice as thick as the Mino HD, but even that doesn't really get across how truly large it feels in the hand. It's not particularly heavy, but it is by a long shot the thickest pocket cam here. On the plus side, that girth hides a useful battery—Flip includes a rechargeable pack, but the John Candy HD can also use two AA batteries, which is great since pocket cams have generally abysmal battery life (usually about an hour, though of course they're often rated for double or triple that). Replaceable, cheap batteries are really nice, but some will have to decide whether the William Howard Taft HD's girth is worth that feature. Given its price, I think it is.

Video quality is just fine, above average if not particularly impressive on every test, and it, like the Mino HD, is extremely user-friendly. Although that simplicity yields less flexibility and a barebones feature set compared to the Kodak Zi8, it's a good distillation of the aims of pocket camcorders, and its 100% tactile controls are a welcome change from the Mino HD. If you're not superficial, it's a very smart buy.

Flip Mino HD: Second Place

Flip's Mino HD is the best-looking and best-feeling camcorder I tried. Its aluminum body feels solid and expensive, which might be because it is—at $230, it's the priciest camcorder I tested. But I wouldn't be surprised if it sells the best, even though it's not the greatest deal, because it looks (and is) simple, cute, and functional. I won't rehash my review, except to say that I hate those goddamn touch buttons more and more every time I use the Mino HD. They're incredibly sensitive and I guarantee that you will accidentally trigger the playback function more times than you can count.

Besides that, it's totally serviceable: It did well on all of my tests, it's thoughtfully designed and stupid-easy to use. But it's definitely overpriced, and I have a hard time recommending it over its physically awkward yet substantially cheaper older brother, the Ultra HD, just for its looks.

Kodak Zi8: Third Place

Wider and taller than the Flip Ultra HD, though not nearly as fat, the Zi8 packs a 1080p sensor and the largest and best screen of the bunch. The controls are easy and tactile and aside from flimsy-feeling plastic covers over the ports (one of mine already fell off), the hardware is high-quality. The Zi8 snagged the bronze medal, because while its highs were higher than either of the Flips, its lows were lower—and given how focused and simple this type of gadget is, reliability is worth more than flashing moments of greatness.

The Zi8 absolutely rocked in two of my tests, outdoor and macro, with perfect color reproduction and excellent clarity, and it even takes pretty decent still photos (think point-and-shoot circa 2006 quality). But the conditions need to be just right to get the most out of this guy—I first tried it in 1080p mode (neither of the Flips can break 720p) and while picture quality was amazing, scenes with lots of motion were pretty jerky to the point of being distracting. But even in 720p, it was still head-and-shoulders above the competition—but only in outdoor and macro testing. In the indoor test it proved to have difficulty focusing on objects closer than 10 feet but farther than 2 feet away, and low light shooting was distinctly tinted red and a bit dark. It wasn't unusable in any test (unlike the similarly uneven Creative Vado HD) and at $180 it's fairly priced, so I'd still recommend it—but you and I are likely to be more forgiving of the Zi8's flaws than, say, your mom, who just wants a camera that works pretty well all the time. For her, go for a Flip.

The Rest

The Creative Vado HD scored pretty high, only a point lower than the bronze medalist Kodak Zi8, but while its design is fairly middle-of-the-road (albeit nice and teeny), its abilities were all over the place. It was one of the worst in standard daytime shooting (it has a hard time with sunlight, a serious problem for a pocket cam) and macro, but was the best at indoor, and while its low light video was a little dark, it was the clearest and smoothest of the lot. It also, likely due to Creative's background in stellar-sounding PMPs and sound cards, boasts excellent sound quality. At $150, it's very fairly priced, but I can't recommend a camcorder that mangles sunlight the way the Vado does.

Apple's iPod Nano is the only "camcorder" in this roundup to peak at VGA resolution, and aside from a surprisingly strong macro performance, it shows. It turned vibrant colors dull and lifeless, washed out detail and made everything seem darker than it was. It can't compete with the Zi8s and Flips of the world, but it's still usable and incredibly priced at $150/$180 for 8GB/16GB—if you've got a Nano already, you probably won't need a dedicated cam. Convergence killed the video star, I guess.

The JVC Picsio GC-FM1 sucked. It's spectacularly ugly (think Ed Hardy-inspired) and cheap-feeling, with a confusing button layout (unforgivable in a pocket cam) and a high price ($200, or $178 at Amazon). Besides all that, it scored poorly in every one of our tests. Avoid.

And finally, the worst—Aiptek's PenCam HD. I wanted to like it, I really did—it's got a tongue-depressor-like design and came with a sweet tripod that attaches to a bicycle's handlebars—but it bombed in almost every one of my tests. The 1.1-inch screen is nearly unusable and battery life barely topped 40 minutes, so it's definitely the loser here.

Here's a giant gallery of all 28 videos I took.

Don Nguyen assisted with this Battlemodo.

The Vivitar DVR 150 has a 1.8-inch LCD screen, 2GB of built-in memory expandable using Secure Digital cards, USB male prong built-in, TV out, webcam mode, and comes in four different colors for $50. [Vivitar via ChipChick]

The original Mino HD was one of the simplest, easiest-to-use pocket cams out there. Its video quality was nothing to write home about (and paled in comparison to, say, the Kodak Zi8), but it sold boatloads based on its good looks and respectable performance. So what does the new Mino HD bring to the table?

What's New

The new Mino HD definitely feels better in the hand than its predecessor. It's only marginally smaller (about 1.5 millimeters thinner, same width and height) but the upgrade to aluminum from glossy plastic makes it feel much more solid and expensive. The other improvements are welcome as well—the new screen is both larger (2 inches compared to 1.5) and significantly sharper, and it's now packing 8GB of internal memory, twice that of the first Mino HD. That 8GB of memory allows for about two hours of 720p recording. Also new is an HDMI-out jack for sharing videos on HD screens, and it also boasts a faster processor (I didn't see a difference in performance, but Flip says battery life is improved).

What's Unchanged, but Shouldn't Be

As it's packing the same sensor as the first Mino HD, this new version shares the same strengths and suffers from the same flaws: Good in solid lighting and close-ups, but noisy in low-light and choppy while panning. It still can't take stills, there's no optical zoom, and there's no image stabilizer. Also unchanged are those damn touch-sensitive buttons. I accidentally hit the "Play" touch-button several times because you don't have to depress an actual, tactile button to make commands, which is super annoying. Tactile buttons would be a lot more accurate and result in less accidental presses.

As always, we should mention that the days of dedicated pocket cams like the Mino HD are numbered. They're surrounded on all sides, with the iPod Nano hitting them from the low-end and smartphones hitting them from the high. Since convergence is already killing PMPs, we don't see this kind of gadget lasting all that much longer. That being said...

The Flip Mino HD is a solid choice for a pocket cam, since it's sort of the distillation of what the pocket cam category aims for: It's dead simple, to a fault sometimes, takes decent but not amazing video, and is sleek and pocketable. We'd really have liked to see some improvements to the Mino HD's sensor (as well as the merciless execution of those touch-buttons), but overall it's still a pretty decent cam. This new version sells for $230, while the older 4GB model drops to $200—and we'd say the improvements are worth the extra $30 if you're torn between the two. The Flip Mino HD is available now.

Solid-feeling aluminum case

Doubled memory, bigger and better screen, and HDMI-out are welcome additions

Dead simple UI, but it lacks more advanced features

Video quality is okay, but unchanged from last-gen

Touch-sensitive buttons seem designed purely to infuriate

The Price: TBD, at least as far as subsidized carrier deals go. You can grab it unlocked now for about $650, but 3G may not work on your carrier.

The Verdict: The Omnia HD does everything fine, and a few things extremely well. Video playback is top notch and widely compatible, the camera is among the best I've ever seen on a cellphone, and the video recording can actually hang with a lot of pocket cams, like the Flip or Kodak Zi series. On all other counts the phone never falls flat, but it never really shines, either.

The Hardware: Your first impression of the Omnia HD is that it's big, but that's not really fair: It's a tall device, but it's not meaningfully larger than any of the other popular touchscreen phones on the market today—it's just proportioned differently (see the gallery below for comparison). And for all the hardware crammed inside, it's reasonably thin. Speaking of guts: It's got HSDPA (on European bands), GPS, 8-16GB of internal storage with microSD expansion, and 8MP, 720p-recording camera sensor, a built-in flash bulb, a forward-facing video camera, USB connector and a 3.5mm jack. The lack of HDMI-out is semi-replaced by DLNA network streaming, though it's not really an even trade. At any rate, it's a healthy phone, hardware-wise.

Samsung touts the AMOLED screen over pretty much everything else, and with some good reason. It's vibrant and sharp, but side by side with an iPod Touch, it isn't strikingly better. The benefits of the OLED, such as they are, seem to manifest themselves more in the phone's long-ish battery life than anything else. In terms of touch, it's a capacitive panel, and it's extremely responsive. Any lag or difficulties with touch controls or soft keyboard are entirely down to the software.

Cellphone cameras are generally horrible, so the Omnia HD's camera is a rare treat. Seriously: I even trusted it to shoot a headphone review last week, and it came through impressively well. It'll match a low-end point-and-shoot in most situations, barring low-light—the sensor can't really handle darker situations too well, and the flash is pretty wimpy—and fast-motion scenes. Video, on the other hand, is at least pocket-cam quality. In daylight it's razor-sharp at 720p, while in low light it's passable. Novel-but-not-terribly-useful slo-mo and high-speed modes are thrown in for good measure. The Omnia HD doesn't quite match up to the best-of-the-bunch Kodak Zi8, for example, but it's amazingly close, especially for a phone. A phone, with a decent camera! How did this happen?

The Software: This is where things fall apart a little. Wherever the Omnia HD's hardware shines—along with the kickass camera, it can handle HD video playback in plenty of codecs—the software is fine. The camera interface and media playback interfaces, music and video, are never distracting and usually do what you expect. Everything else? That's a different story.

Samsung's thrown the old Omnia's TouchWiz widget UI, originally designed for Windows Mobile, onto the Symbian-powered HD. This in itself is fine, since TouchWiz has always been a decent, finger-friendly homescreen, wherever it shows up. Outside of the three main TouchWiz panels, though, is a bizarre UI stew, some from Symbian, some from Samsung, and some from the deepest bowels of design hell. For example: Scrolling! Instead of throwing menus and selecting entries, the selection follows your finger. It's hard to explain, but it's a terrible way to have to trudge around a menu-heavy operating system. The onscreen keyboard seems to be a Samsung special too. It's fine—it's spacious and rarely lags—but it's set on a perfect grid, doesn't come with any autocorrect and generally feels like it was designed in about an hour.

Outside of the core multimedia and homescreen areas, the phone is a fairly raw take on Symbian's S60 5th Edition shell, which means the UI is inconsistent and difficult to tackle with fingers. Not to mention S60's needlessly inserted extra steps all over the place. Want to enter a URL? Press a button, type your address, press another button, and press another. It doesn't make any sense. Samsung's given Symbian something of a makeover, but most of Matt's complaints about the N97 software carry over to the HD. Everything—even basic calling, contact management and OS navigation—is overcomplicated and disorganized, beyond the point of a "learning curve."

Functionally, though, it holds up fine: The browser could be easier to navigate with, but renders with WebKit, supports Flash and generally does its job. Same goes for pretty much everything else: The experience could be smoother, but you'd be hard pressed to find a task that the HD explicitly can't handle. And if you do find a gap, remember that this is full Symbian, so you can always go app hunting. As dumb as the UI can be, don't be fooled into thinking this is a dumbphone: It can do pretty much anything an Android or Windows Mobile phone can, and sometimes even more—it's just that sometimes, it's painfully awkward.

Vivid, responsive, generously proportioned touchscreen

Camera shoots nice stills, surprisingly great 720p video

Powerful HD video playback, wide default codec compatibility

3.5mm jack!

DLNA, but no HDMI

Aging, overcomplicated Symbian/S60 software

UI is extremely inconsistent, occasionally unresponsive

No carrier availability yet, iffy US 3G support

[Samsung]

Flip Mino HD
Details
•Sleek, pocket-sized camcorder shoots breathtaking HD video
•Available in black or whatever you want
•4GB of on-board memory records up to 60 minutes of video
•Dimensions: 4” x 2” x 0.6”; weighs just 3.3 oz.
•HD 720p resolution (1280 x 720) in16:9 cinematic widescreen
•No glare display (1.5”)
•Sealed, rechargeable lithium ion battery (up to 2 hours of battery life)
•Flat back-panel with touch-sensitive buttons
•Instant playback, pause, fast forward/rewind, and delete features
•Connects to TV for instant viewing
•New built-in FlipShare™ software works on any PC or Mac:
•Save, organize, and edit videos with ease
•Email videos and video greeting cards
•Upload videos directly to AOL Video, MySpace, and YouTube
•Capture HD snapshots from your videos
•Create custom movies with your own music
•Order DVDs and have them shipped anywhere in the world
Suggested Retail Pricing: $229.99

The Price: $180

The Verdict: When I got my first look at the Zi6, I had an inkling it could be the best "cheap" pocket camcorder yet, and I was right. I've been using it for a while both indoors and outdoors, and found the video quality to be stellar no matter the situation. To make things simple, here's how the Zi6 would've fared if it had been out in time for my Ultimate Cheap Camcorder Battlemodo:As you can see, this is a pretty badass pocket cam. The macro feature, a first on cheap camcorders like this, is a welcome way to film text and gadget screens up close. The camera's thick size actually makes it feel like a real piece of hardware and not something that could get lost in your bag. The HD recording is also great for giving users a bigger size for recording.

Despite all the good stuff, there are a few shortcomings with the Zi6. Most importantly, when switching between infinite and macro focus, or from low-light to full-light, the camera takes a while to refocus. Quick panning was similarly out of focus, and looked jagged at times. While HD was good for size, the Zi6 isn't recording at Blu-ray, or ever broadcast TV HD caliber. Truth is, the VGA should be sufficient for most videos. Finally, the USB connector popped open easily and often, a minor annoyance.

That said, the Zi6 may finally usher in the death of DV cams for most practical tasks. It takes clear video that can be imported to your PC immediately without fuss, and the AA battery slots ensure that you won't be stuck without power should the included rechargeables run dry. The Zi6 is truly best in its class, though that class is still "cheap pocket camcorders." [Kodak]

Examples of the Zi6 at work up close and at a distance in a variety of lighting situations:
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Yes, the camera captures video in 60fps 720p HD, the highest quality of any pocket cam so far, and it looked great when I saw it projected on a 40" flat-panel TV. The Zi6 also shoots stills and lower quality VGA video for wannabe YouTubers. Its SDHC slot supports cards up to 32GB—if you can find one—and my favorite sleeper feature is its ability to shoot well in macro focus mode.

It's thicker than the Flip, more like the RCA Small Wonder EZ210, so it has a more sturdy feel. It runs on rechargeable Ni-MH AAs and will also take regular AAs, but I'm told that standard batteries won't last as long. That all makes me skeptical of the battery life altogether.

The unit is $180, the same price as the new Flip Mino, and it has much more functionality, and so far a better look and feel. Mark me down for one of these (in black, not pink, pictured below) when they arrive in September, so I can round up some lab assistants and put it through the paces.

Here's the press release:

Zi6 Pocket Video Camera Unveiled, Boasting HD Video Capture and Instant Uploading to YouTube™

ROCHESTER, NY, July 10 — Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE:EK) today announced its entry into the fast-growing pocket digital video camera market with the KODAK Zi6 Pocket Video Camera. This stylish HD video camera makes it fun and simple to shoot and share high-quality videos in moments, thanks to 720p HD video capture, a large 2.4-inch LCD screen, and easy-to-use software.

“Today’s connected consumers increasingly turn to video to express themselves and connect with others. The KODAK Zi6 Pocket Video Camera satisfies their thirst for an HD video camera that is simple to use and can go anywhere life takes them,” said John Blake, General Manager Digital Capture and Devices, Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company. “With the launch of the Zi6 Pocket Video Camera, consumers now have a high-quality solution from the trusted brand in digital imaging.”

With the exploding popularity of video sharing sites such as YouTube, the demand for easy to use video devices is also growing rapidly. At the same time, the expanding penetration of HDTVs is driving consumer demand for HD quality personal content.

The KODAK Zi6 Pocket Video Camera is designed to meet these needs at the touch of a button — no lens cap, dials to turn or settings to adjust.

A range of advanced features enables consumers to:

Capture video in HD quality on this fun and super simple pocket video camera (720p at 60 fps with 16:9 aspect ratio).
Upload your videos to YouTube quickly and easily using the built-in USB and software.
Record hours of video with the expandable SD/SDHC card slot that can hold up to 32 GB.
Experience your videos on HDTV in stunning HD quality with included cables.
Edit videos, add pictures and music, and share your creation anywhere with the included video software CD.
Go green with included pre-charged AA Ni-MH rechargeable batteries and battery charger.
Watch videos on the vibrant 2.4” LCD screen.
Catch the highlights with slow motion playback right in the palm of your hand.

Uploading to YouTube
YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community. The Kodak and YouTube relationship will enable consumers to quickly and easily upload videos to YouTube directly from the Zi6 Pocket Video Camera, or from the included simple and powerful video editing software (ARCSOFT MEDIAIMPRESSIONS for Kodak).

Accessories
A range of accessories will be available for the KODAK Zi6 Pocket Video Camera:

KODAK 2GB and 4GB High Performance memory cards
1-hour battery charger with 4 AA pre-charged Ni-MH batteries
KODAK tripods
KODAK camera bags

Pricing and Availability
The KODAK Zi6 Pocket Video Camera will be available from late September 2008, retailing for US$179.95 MSRP.

[Kodak]