Creative Vado HD Camera – Best Affordable HD Pocket Camera
Thumbs Up:
Ultraslim Design with removable/rechargeable batteries, mini HDMI Connector/Cable for 1080i HDTV output. Great picture quality, easy to use and one touch uploading to Box.net, YouTube and Photobucket.
Thumbs Down:
No optical zoom and no external slot for more memory. Vado Central oftware do not work for Mac OS. Slightly off white balance.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
100 gram weighed Creative Vado HD Camera has a dimension of 3.9”×2.2”×0.6” (H×W×D) having 8GB Flash Integrated Memory can record 2 hours (HD+ quality), 4 hours (HD quality) and 8 hours (VGA quality). The HD Camera has HD CMOS sensor to provide the video quality of 1280X720 pixels and supports H.264 AVI video format at 30 frames per second which makes easier to edit the video in Windows Movie Maker or any windows based editing package. The camera performs perfect in low light with high sensitivity at 3.3V/Lux-sec.
The camera gives 2x digital zoom. LCD screen is 2” diagonal made up of TFT active matrix display having 16 million colors with a resolution of 640X240. It has built-in flexi USB Connector, provides output to RCA and HDMI. Speaker, Microphone and Software are built-in. It also offers the online sharing at YouTube, Photobucket and Box.net.
The Creative Camera offers the features like Auto-Power Save, YouTube Capture Mode and Date/Time Stamp. Its package includes Rechargable Battery, HDMI Cable, Silicone Skin and USB Extension Cable. The camera can be charged also from the USB; however, the Creative provides extra rechargeable battery with a charger.
The system requirements for Vado is as Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or faster, operating system Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Apple Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. The battery life is 2 hours. The camera comes with one year warranty.
Razzle Dazzle:
Creative Vado HD Camera gives a better approach to pocket cameras. Its low price makes it great deal. Vado HD has retained some designing aspects of original Vado to make an appealing look with an antiglare LCD with some modifications. The Vado HD has black color and its lens extends out from the body. HD Camera has a few more weight than earlier Vado. In this Vado HD, the microphone has been relocated to other side of lens.
Inside Dope:
Previously, the market is captured by popular Mino HD Camcorder from Flip Video, however, the situation got changed when Creative has launched its Vado HD Camera which takes the pocket cam wars to a new level which effects the competitors like RCA and Kodak.
Vado HD provides a mini HDMI Connector with a HDMI Cable for providing 1080i video output to HDTV with standard AV Output but did not provide any AV Cable. This feature is missing in Kodak Zi6 and Flip Video Mino HD. Built-in 8GB flash memory is enough to store the 2 hours HD+ Video, 4 hours HD video and 8 hours VGA quality video. However, we cannot insert more external memory
This small size Camera stunned us in video quality. The company is providing a protective Silicone Skin and built-in Vado Central Software for formatting and editing the videos after shooting. We observed that the Vado Central Software did not work at Mac and we have to use QuickTime to view the recorded video after copying them to computer.
The Vado HD Camera’s processor is impressive and intelligent enough to apply the correct automatic settings in different situations. We tested the camera at a stadium and observed that it records all the noises perfectly which results that audio recording is better than perfect.
As soon as we connect the Vado HD to your computer, it installed Vado Central Software and drivers automatically from the camera which is simple application to format, edit and view videos, and uploads your clips directly to Youtube, Photobucket and Box. The best part is that Vado Central Software installation file stored in the camera itself, so there is no need of any software/CD etc.
There is a tripod mount at the bottom to help the tripod for keeping the camera steady. This feature helps a lot to ensure that video is not jittery. Vado HD has a rubberized finish but it is worth nothing that it absorbs stains easily as compared to plastic finished camera. Being rubberized finish, if Vado HD comes in touch of a pen then its mark is difficult to remove completely.
The Vado HD Camera has maintained better color reproduction and less pixel-ization than Flip Mino HD. During our test in direct sunlight, the Mino HD captured sharper and cleaner images, however, some of images are slightly blend and undersatutrated, while the Vado HD pictures was muddier and colors were blown out a bit. The Vado HD Camera did not have Optical Zoom, however, it gives better picture quality than Kodak Zi6 and Flip Mino HD. The white balance is good enough to avoid the yellow tints and it handles the moving between different lighting conditions very well and adjusts itself in less than a second.
Nitty Gritty:
The Creative Vado HD Camera is better for pocket camera users with HD capability and far better than Flip Video Mino HD and Kodak Zi6. The Video quality and features of this HD Camera makes it best and its cost $230 makes it affordable and great deal in front of other expensive non-HD Cameras. Creative’s Vado HD is the only pocket camera we would recommend at the time of this writing.
