Flip Video MinoHD reviews

Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 10:37
Digital Camera
157 views
View Comments

The MinoHD shares it s design features with its standard definition sibling, the Mino. Both the models easily fit your pocket and weighs 3.3 ounces. The MinoHD comes in black unless you buy the camcorder directly from the company.

The camcorder sports a 1.46-inch LCD display. The transreflective display is bright and you can easily see the screen even in the bright daylight. The USB connector opens straight up instead of opening to the side. This should help the device to fit in crowded USB environment. The navigation controls can be easily operated as the touch-sensitive buttons are quite responsive.

The center of the bottom of camera features a tripod mount. The Mino sports a smaller than standard 2.5mm jack. Though the Mino features the port of AV output along with a cable for connecting to TV, but it can only output the standard-definition video. The MinoHD is extremely simple to use due to its excellent design. Unlike its competitors, the Mino doesn’t provide any settings to play with except setting the date and time. The video can be shot in only one resolution setting. The Mino doesn’t provide any option to change the resolution. The MinoHD is just about pushing the button to start/stop recording and hitting the playback button to see the recorded video.

The MinoHD is powered by rechargeable lithium ion battery. However, the battery can’t be removed and runs only up to 2 hours whereas the battery of its sibling, Mino, runs for 4 hours. The MinoHD comes with 4GB of built-in memory which capable of storing 60 minutes of 1280×720 resolution video. The MinoHD features 9Mbps encoding rate with improved low-light sensitivity.

The biggest selling point of the camcorder is the ease of getting videos from camera and distribute them. You just need to open the USB connector and connect the camcorder to your Mac or Windows. The company’s new software, FlipShare, allows you to playback clips and create movie, pull still photos and share the videos via Web or e-mail. You can also publish your clips to sites like AOL, MySpace or YouTube, you just need to create a user account on these websites.

Overall, the MinoHD features a cleaner look with ease to use. But it lacks features that were present in Mino, like video trimming and Movie Mix feature. However, it has additional features like compatibility with iMovie and Mac.