PLEASE SEE "Notes and Tips" AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

Price: cheap, £140 - £150 (US $ even cheaper)

Weight: weightless

Video Format: AVI

Video Sizes: Large. I have some clips that are 500MB

Storage Capacity: about 2 hours of video (1 clip or many mixed length clips)

Battery: lasts about 2 hours. works great for the first 2000 movies, after that you need a new one

Portability: extremely portable, can be placed in your pocket

Usability: a kid can figure it out without instruction

Sound/Audio/Microphone: great clear audio, rough during some loud concerts as it is sensitive and picks up everything

Tripod Use: there is a hole on the bottom that is a universal tripod connection size

Action Clips: This camera does not lose focus during full motion

Focus: you can be within 10 inches of something and keep focus

Zoom: zooming in pixelates the video and is not a good idea if you are interested in true HD

Color: true color and good in low light conditions as well

Comparison: I would give the Flip HD a 3 because of focus and color issues

Web Sharing and Video Conversion: You can connect this to your computer's USB port and if you use Twitc (http://twitc.com) you can upload a video straight from the camera to the Twitc website and it will generate a streaming Flash video clip for you that you can take anywhere and link to from anywhere

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Notes and Tips
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Four things you need to know:

1. Mac OS X users will need to download Perian software, which is a collection of video codecs that will allow you to view these videos on your Mac. Without it, you cannot view them at all.

Perian URL: http://perian.org/

2. You might want to consider purchasing two or three of these if you have children because they will steal it from you without your knowledge, even if it is hidden away. In addition, if you have a husband or boyfriend, buy one for him because he will also steal it. They will hunt it down and capture it (and not tell you they did).

3. If the camera appears to be stalled out, just pop out the battery on the bottom (take the cover off first). It may be out of juice and if so, charge it up.

4. If you are an iPhone owner and you have the car charger: you can charge the Vado HD in your car using the same cigarette lighter charger that sells to iPhone users. Just unplug the USB cable for the iPhone and plug in the one that comes with your Vado. Works like a charm.

I bought the Creative Vado as a gift for my 10 year old grandson who is sharing it with me on occasion! He is into making movies big time right now and was using it to record within 3 minutes of opening the box and had figured out all it's simple working capabilities within an hour.

I found the small size and easy to use functions perfect for slipping into a purse or pocket. The microphone isn't great but for the price and size it works well.

I don't believe in marking down a good item just because Amazon does a lousy job at delivering it but I need to at least mention that fact as it is so annoying! I recently used the "free shipping" option when buying a Creative MP3 player and it took SIXTEEN days for that player to arrive from Colorado to Idaho! I know Amazon is trying to force people into paying $79.99 a year for Amazon Prime just to get good fast shipping service but 16 days delivery time is ridiculous!

So since this Creative Vado was to be a gift and I needed it to arrive promptly I paid the basic $5.98 shipping cost for the promised 3 to 5 day shipping time AND still had to wait NINE days for this camera to arrive in Idaho from CO. On the same day I ordered this Pocket Camera I also ordered a Joby Tripod from one of Amazon's "Partners", that Tripod arrived in three days!!! To say I am disappointed in Amazon's shipping practices after more than 10 years as a faithful customer is an understatement!

I will not be forced to pay extra for good service from a company!! I have since bought several more items via Amazon but I have continued to used their "Partners" each time and I can testify to the fact that the Partners appreciate your business and for the same price Amazon offers an item for or a couple of dollars more you get fast 3 to 5 day shipping because they are happy to have your business, unlike Amazon these days!

OK, I'll admit it. I was a skeptic. There was no way that this small, inexpensive video recorder could produce a decent video. I was wrong.

Of course, you won't get movie theater quality, but you will get adequate video to put on You Tube or a website, video that is good enough to viewed on a large computer screen. I tried shooting in a variety of conditions, from daylight, to overcast and indoors with backlighting and in each case the camera produced clear video with accurate color and decent audio.

The camera is simple to use and stows easily in a shirt pocket. The 2x zoom is a bit limited but it helps to get closer to the subject. The USB connection makes charging the battery and transferring videos simple.

There are a couple of things that could make this a better product. First, the USB connection, it is a standard sized plug on a short cord. This would work fine on a laptop, but reaching to the back of a computer to plug it in is inconvenient. A better solution would be a mini-USB port. Second, there is software included that runs on Windows, but, there is no Mac software included. This is not a problem for viewing, as Quicktime will play the AVI movies, but editing requires additional software. iMovie did not recognize files.

To summarize, this is a great little product for those who like to share short videos on You Tube or on a website, but it is not the ticket for creating a video masterpiece. It has a home in my camera bag.

Dave Lochner
NauticalReads

Its specs have been exhaustively reviewed here already, so I won't go into all of that. You take it out of the box, turn it on, press the record button. To upload, you connect the onbooard usb to your computer, the onboard sw starts up and then you click on whatever video you want to upload to YouTube, PhotoBucket, or Box.net without fuss and not much thinking. This device sits between a bonafide camcorder/camera and phone camera/camcorder. It's small and light like a phone cam but delivers much better video then any phone cam I own.

Little things that stick out to me are the rubberized coating on the case which gives a decent grip. The short usb cable was clearly designed to connect to a laptop or a usb port on a keyboard. It's somewhat disconcerting to see the camera dangling from the usb port on my desktop pc. The uploading sw is on the device itself which is handy - no need to download client software to different pc's - just connect and upload. Of course, in true Creative fashion, you can also navigate to the device in My Computer and open the video folder and drag the contents out to wherever. The on/off switch is thin and requires a push, but then again that keeps it from getting turned on accidentally.

All in all a device that does what it is suppose to do well and at a very competitive price.

It's a great little video camera, it would be a great little camera if it was also had Mac based soft wear.

After reading reviews, I decided on this camera for my classroom. It's cool and ever-so-easy to use. Being a Mac user, I needed to use Quicktime to view my movies. Working on several different operating systems between school and home, I initially had problems. I found an application, ViddyUp to put my video in a format that moved between computers and between my Quicktime and iMovie. I'm entirely satisfied with the portability, quality, and ease of using this movie camera.... and it's soooo inexpensive!