Flip Mino HD Compact Camcorder Review
The Flip brand is almost synonymous with pocket internet camcorders as TomTom is with GPS satellite navigators. However, just as TomTom has been usurped by some of the other manufacturers like Garmin, Flip too has plenty of competition in its hands. Pure Digital Technologies pioneered mobile style pocket video cameras, and its Mino is still the smallest and the most pocketable mini camcorders that we have come across; and that has not changed with its latest HD version. It is identical physically and just as lovable.
Design:
Pocketable:
The Flip Mini HD looks virtually identical to its non-HD predecessor. We appreciate the pocket friendly design and both models are super compact and weigh a mere 94 grams. It sports a cute, small 38mm (1.5”) transflective LCD display that allows you to view what is on the screen even in bright daylight. While most of the previous Flips came in a choice of colours, and the original Mino could be either black or white; the Mino HD comes in with only options of Black and Silver. But, as they often say in the fashion world, at least black and silver are shades that never ever goes out of style. There is just one indication of the increased capabilities of the model and that is just a subtle Mini HD logo in the rear.
Buttons and Ports:
The USB connector of Mino HD flips straight up, rather than on the side, and for a smaller footprint, that should fit better in a crowded USB environment. There are responsive touch sensitive navigation buttons that are embedded into a shiny, flush surface on the rear. Though we really liked the buttons, we ended up occasionally touching the wrong ones by accident. There is a tripod mount that sits on the centre of the camcorder’s bottom, which will be particularly handy for securing it to a car or bike for action shots. As expected, there is no accessory shoe, microphone input or headphone jack; the target market would never use them anyway.
Connectivity:
Not surprisingly, the port for the AV output features Mino’s same Lilliput jack; in fact, it is smaller than the standard 2.5mm jack. Here is the disappointing news, while Flip includes a cable for connecting to a TV, the AV jack outputs only standard definition video. When compared with the Zi6’s output that supports HD and being shipped with a cable, it allows you to connect to the component video jacks on your television. Having said that, the video that you get out of the MinoHD’s composite connection looks much sharper than that of what you get out of the standard definition Mino and Ultra. Along with this cable, you also get a carrying pouch that doubles as a cloth to wipe down the Mino HD.
Installation:
Just like its predecessors, the Mino HD Pocket Camcorder is designed to be very simple to use, and it does so in an admirable way. As before, a full-sized USB plug pops out of the device at the flick of a switch – from which the brand name ‘Flip’ is derived. The entire bundled software suite resides on-board, and installation starts automatically when you plug the Mino HD in for the first time. So, in theory, you can upload your videos from any PC. Unlike some of its predecessors, the Mino HD offers virtually no setting to fiddle with, apart from date and time. After a reboot, you are greeted by a fairly capable app, FlipShare.
Features:
Ease of use:
All that you get to do with your Flip is, shoot in one resolution, and that is just it. Flip does not have any option to drop to a lower video resolution in order to store more video, but really, why do you want to do something like that? The Flip Mino HD Compact Digital Camcorder is all about pushing the red button to start and stop recording and just hitting the playback button to what you have recorded. That is pretty much it! In fact, after initially setting time and date, there is almost nothing else to control on the Mino HD other than starting and stopping recording. There are plus and minus buttons to operate the 2x digital zoom, but annoyingly these only become active when you are already shooting. So, you will not be able set up the zoom on a shot in advance. Not that we would recommend using the digital zoom anyway, as it clearly degrades image quality.
Upgrades:
In order to accommodate bigger and high resolution video files, the Flip Mino HD is equipped with double the usual memory, that is, 4GB. With this 4GB, you will be able to store 60 minutes of 1280 x 720 pixels resolution video. As in the case of the previous Flips, there is no card slot for upgrade, so an hour will be your limit. Here kicks in the comparison: Creative’s Vado HD comes with twice the memory, as well as offering lesser data rates and resolutions.
The original Mino shot VGA video at 640 x 480 pixels and as we just said, the latest model has increased the resolution to 1280 x 720 pixels, with the same progressively scanned 30 frames per second. The Mini HD 4GB Memory Camcorder has received an upgrade from Flip Video’s Pure Digital Video Engine 2.5 processor, to version 3.0. The HD model also incorporates a bigger 1/4.5 inch HD CMOS sensor. This is a fairly healthy size, with positive implications for low light shooting, although Flip does not quote the CMOS resolution. In addition to this, it has improved the low light sensitivity and makes use of a 9Mbps encoding rate, as opposed to the Mino’s 4Mbps one. Hence, the capacity is still quoted at approximately an hour of footage. Last but not the least, the Mino HD sports the H.264 video compression scheme instead of the Advanced Profile MPEG-4 AVI.
From Flip to PC:
The highlight selling point of Flip Video’s camcorders is, how easy it is to get the shot videos off the device and distribute them, and the Mino HD is no exception. All you have to do is, simply flip out the USB connector and plug it into your Mac or Windows machine and pops open FlipShare, which is company’s newly redesigned software. It is a much cleaner interface than before, but the features are broadly the same. You will be able to playback one clip, string a few of them together, pull out a single frame out of the video, and even share your clips with the selected viewers through email or web. When you share videos through mail, instead of attaching a large file or even the small 20 second clips that can result in 25MB file, the recipients are sent a link to your compressed video. Though it does not look anything like your raw video footage, it is not bad and Flip Video has made some serious efforts to preserve some of the sharpness and HD qualities of the video.
Loading on net:
Since this is a pocket Internet camcorder, however, the ease with which you can put your video online is a major selling point, and here Flip just about maintains its crown. Apart from the fact that it can take several minutes to process a video, sharing a file is extremely simple. All that you have to do is, click on the ‘Share Video’ button in the software interface and it takes you to the screen that asks you to select the video clip. You will be then allowed to share the selected clip through email, share a greeting by sending a private video card and share the clip online. In order to publish directly to the social networking sites like YouTube, AOL and MySpace, you will have to create an account for each and log in. Once that is done, you are allowed to automatically upload the videos to the web for private and public viewing with just the click of a button. In case you are allied to some other video sharing website, the same button allows you to prepare the video for uploading. But, in this case, you have to do the uploading the processed file from a folder on your desktop, manually.
FlipShare:
Overall, FlipShare has got a very clean look and seems very easy to use. There are even modest editing facilities. As well as trimming the in and out points of each clip, you can arrange them together to create a longer work, and then add titles and music. Unfortunately, the video trimming feature is buried and it no longer possesses the Movie Mix feature. Previously, you will be able to select the clips that you liked, click a button and, a few minutes later, the software will give you a movie that is complete with transitions, special effects and even some background music of your choice. However, by sacrificing Muvee, that was powered by the Movie Mix feature, the Mino HD Pocket Internet Camcorder has gained the Mac and iMovie compatibility. With this, you will be able to trim your clips, string them together and add titles and music, but not with the press of a single button. You can even prepare a video for burning to DVD, although the actual disc writing will need to be performed by a third-party app. If you are not a video editing enthusiast, FlipShare could be all the software you ever want.
Performance:
Coming to the part of performance, Mino HD’s predecessor Mino’s video was pretty sharp, with fairly accurate, vibrant colours. But it did not scale well to keep it sharp, you had to watch the video in a small box on your computer screen. As far as the MinoHD is concerned, you can play a full-screen clip with no significant degradation. You will not be confusing the video for that of a ‘real’ HD camcorder, but the video quality is pretty impressive for a camcorder this tiny.
Although we never expect camcorders in this class to compete with mainstream models in terms of image quality, we have been mildly surprised at how well most of them perform. The Mino HD continues this trend. Video that is shot in both bright and low light looked good, not great. But, the video is not nearly as noisy in low light as we have seen from some of the other camcorders of this ilk. Most impressive is how the Mino HD copes with low light as the Mino HD shot footage you might actually be able to use, unlike many cheap camcorders. Toshiba’s Camileo P30, for example, failed dismally in this respect. The audio was also very decent and is certainly an improvement over that of Mino’s.
However, there are a few disappointments too. You do not get image stabilisation, there are clear signs of compression artefacts and bright areas easily blow out, but colours are reasonably faithful in good lighting, and there is an acceptable amount of detail. The Mino HD does a much better job when held steadily, this just means, you might just want to invest in a mini tripod. The camcorder also suffers from some focus issues, like choosing the ground and not the animal that scampers across it, and you also cannot get too close to your subjects, or they will be just out of focus. You might also notice that the videos do not always play smooth precision of true HD video; there is some slight jitter on an eight core Mac with nothing else running.
Battery:
The same non-removable, rechargeable lithium ion battery used in Mino is the one that powers Mino HD too. But, note that, here it shoots only for 2 hrs, compared to the standard Mino HD’s 4 hrs or so, and as you can guess, this difference is mainly because of the fact this Mino is a High Definition camcorder.|
Verdict:
Flip still has the biggest name in the pocket Internet camcorder market, and with Cisco recently acquiring the company it will have the marketing muscle to maintain its brand. The Mino HD certainly marks another step forward for Flip Video and even the mini camcorders in general. Of course, the device is not without caveats, and they include a relatively high price tag, no memory expansion slot and a short lived, non removable battery. So, the big question here is, if the MinoHD is better than the Kodak Zi6; and the good news is, it is. Although some might prefer the larger Zi6 with a larger LCD display, we feel that the main point, the Video quality of the Mino HD is slightly better and its smaller footprint will appeal to people who are looking for a camcorder that makes barely a bulge in your pocket.
Check other Pocket Camcorder Models, Flip Camcorder Reviews in this website.
Flip Mino HD Camcorder – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | Pure Digital |
| Model Name | Flip Mino HD |
| Camcorder Type | Digital mini video camcorder |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 51 x 99 x 15 mm |
| Weight | 94 g |
| Screen type | LCD – TFT active matrix |
| Screen size | 1.5″ (diagonal) |
| Resolution | 176 x 132 |
| Sensor | 1/4.5″ HD CMOS Sensor 2.2 µm pixels |
| Interface | Touch-sensitive capacitive buttons |
| Power-up Time | Less than 4 seconds |
| Integrated memory | 4GB |
| Camcorder internal storage type | Flash memory |
| Memory card support | None |
| Shooting modes | Normal movie mode |
| White balance and exposure modes | Automatic |
| Lens Type | Fixed Focus (1.5m to infinity) |
| Aperture | f/2.4 (fast lens for great results in low-light environments) |
| Zoom | Smooth multi-step 2x digital |
| Recording Time | 1 hr |
| Video resolution | 1280 x 720 |
| Light Sensitivity | Ultra low-light sensitivity (>1.4 V/lux-sec) with automatic low light detection |
| Set date/time function | Yes |
| PC connection | Built-in flip-out USB arm |
| Online sharing | Unlimited private video emails or video greeting cards. Direct Upload to MySpace™ and YouTube™ |
| Video Trimming | Video trim – set start and end points. Create movies with multiple video clips – add titles, music and credits. |
| Video Performance | Flip Video Engine 3.0 |
| Frame Rate | 30 frames per second |
| Average Bitrate | 9.0Mbps (auto-adaptive algorithm) |
| Video Format | H.264 video compression, AAC audio compression, MP4 file format |
| White Balance & Exposure | Automatic white balance and black level calibration Automatic exposure control with dynamic exposure compensation |
| Battery type | Internal Lithium-Ion |
| Battery Life | Up to 2 hrs of use between charges |
| Charge Time | Via computer USB port – approx 3 hrs Via Power Adapter – approx 2 hrs |
| Box contents | Composite TV cable, wrist strap, soft protective case, quickstart guide |
| Warranty | 1 year |
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