Has The Kodak Zi8 Stolen the HD “point and shoot” Crown from Flip?

Both camcorders, the Kodak Zi8 and the Flip Mino, have been meticulously designed to garner the advancing market of easy to use and exceptionally portable camcorders with built in abilities that make sharing the videos on the computer and loading them up to the popular social networking sites markedly easy. Let’s do a quick digital video camera review of these two products.

Flip and Kodak are both justifiably proud of their own product lines, and make it easy to find lots of information online. Of course, one of the most influential attributes to everyone is the cost, and you will see that they at exactly the same price point, $100 or around £75-£90. So far they’re even.

One noticable characteristic between these two is that the Kodak Zi8 HD, like most digital video cameras, has an extremely meagre amount of internal memory–only 128 MB. The Flip has a much greater capacity of 2 GB, 16 times as much. Score 1 for the Flip.

Kodak zi8 has the edge on memory and sound upgrade

However, and this is substantial the Kodak depends on the use of SD/SDHC memory cards to generate it’s storage capabilities. The Flip Mino leaves you no room for upgrade. The Kodak zi8 digital video camera can manage up to a 32 GB card for those who want to go all out. What does that mean? Up to ten hours of video recording ! That’s a huge plus for Kodak.

One of the things that is similar between them is they both have a very handy built in USB swing-out arm, so you don’t need camera specific cables. You can just pull out the arm and plug it directly into your computer and start sharing. Down with cable clutter! A tie.

Both come with video and picture editing software, but only the Zi8 has HD capable video recording, and a HDMI output on the camera itself to affix directly to your HDTV for immediate review. Kodak wins.

The capability to add an external sound mic also tips the balance in the favour of the zi8. If you want to do a swift interview and don’t want to travel heavy, the ability to clip an external mic or even hook up a beachteck adapter is a generous addition to the electronics for a camera of this price range.

But beyond this, it largely isn’t much of a competition. The Flip Mino, and even it’s big brother the FlipHD, which costs significantly more, can’t compare to the benefits and quality of the Kodak. For the same price, you get a much augmented view screen, built-in image balance, full blown 1080 pixel HD video, and the reliability that comes with the Kodak name.

Kodak zi8 vs Flip: The Verdict

Final result: the race between these two products is not remotely close at present– the Kodak Zi8 HD is first rate. Of course, don’t presume Flip will sit by idly as their market share lessens. Kodak zi8 wins.