I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the video produced by a digital camcorder costing well under £100. Although these low end camcorders can look like a bit of a toy, this device is incredibly well made - it feels very solid.Like many of the other digital camcorders it has a "flick out" USB port that makes connecting the device to a laptop an absolute breeze. The camcorder appears as a mass storage device and files can be uploaded by dragging and dropping them onto the laptop.
I like the fact that the device uses rechargeable AA batteries. The batteries and the charger are included. These means that the batteries will be cheap and easy to replace and if they run flat while you are away from home, you could use disposable batteries as an alternative.
The downsides:
- The interface is not as simple to use as similar devices. The Flip is easy to use and it is surprising that such a simple hardware UI could be made this confusing. The UI to the Flip is much simpler and easy to use;
- To compound this, the instructions are pretty minimal (a folded up piece of paper about 3 inches wide and 12 inches long). I was expecting to find detailed instructions as a PDF document on the enclosed CD. No such luck. Why didn't the manufacturer do this? It wouldn't have cost anything (other than producing the material in the first place). Failing that, why not include a URL to the instructions? No luck here either. Strange.
- The battery life is pretty poor and doesn't last more than about 30-40 minutes if you are lucky, so an 8Gb memory card probably is going to lead to a flat battery. Maybe there was a reason why the batteries are replaceable!
- I was disappointed that the recorded format is .mov. I would have preferred either .avi or .wmv. The enclosed software does allow you to edit and then transcode to the content to .avi or .wmv, but it is an additional step. Some video editing software (e.g. Pinnacle 12) won't import .mov files for editing, so watch out. More fool me, I should have checked before purchasing the device.
I would be tempted to use a Flip rather than one of these devices, but the quality of the video is pretty impressive for a digital camcorder under £100. If you are looking for an inexpensive HD video recorder, then take a look at the Flip HD. It is slightly more expensive than the Enova, but it is probably worth the extra cash (I only have the "normal" version of the Flip).
