Pure Digital Technologies has been in the ‘affordable’ camcorder market for quite some time. They developed the first ‘one-time-use’ digital cameras and camcorders you can find in your local drugstore or gift shop. Their line of highly-compact digital camcorders, the Flip, has been extremely successful with people needing to have access to quick video recording without alot of hassle. Now they have released the Flip Video Ultra and completely raised the industry bar for this class of camcorder.
Design/Construction: The Flip Video Ultra features a plastic body measuring 4.17′ x 2.16′ x 1.25′ and nicely fits in one’s hand, despite what its blocky appearance would suggest. The central body of the unit is rubberized, making it much easier to handle. The Flip Video Ultra features a slightly recessed 1.5′ TFT screen that produces very little glare, even in broad daylight. Under the screen are the unit’s video control array: A 4-way directional pad with a central record/stop button in its center. A playback and delete button are situated slightly above and to the sides of the 4-way pad. On one side of the unit is the power button and lanyard strap loop while situated on the opposite side is the TV output and USB interface.
Connectivity: One of the unit’s biggest selling points is that it has a USB connector built in, as opposed to needing a loose cable to carry around with you. The connector is housed on the end of a small arm which ‘switchblades’ out at the slide of a button. Retracting the arm is done manually, and it snaps back into its recessed housing. The USB connection itself is high-speed 2.0 spec, which transfers video from the device very quickly. The Flip Video Ultra can also connect straight to a television via an output port on the side of the unit and an included cable. One thing that bothered us about the unit was that after releasing the USB arm, it is slightly worrisome to plug in. The arm swivels about a hinge and pushing it into the port while holding the main body feels somewhat ‘unnatural’. Also, unplugging the unit means pulling it from the USB port by the main body. This also feels slightly worrisome as the arm is not directly in the middle of the Ultra. When you apply force to the main body it is not transfered equally to the USB arm, making the unit wobble a bit.
Usage: Using the Flip Video Ultra is as easy as can be. A simple press of the center red button starts recording while a second press stops it. The up and down buttons control the digital zoom while the left and right buttons control the selection of recorded videos when not recording. You can playback recorded video as alluded to before, with full sound which is a very handy feature. The unit comes with some basic editing software as well as the necessary codecs to watch/edit the Ultra’s videos. This eliminates the need for external CDs to carry about and makes the Ultra a very ‘self-sufficient’ device. The Flip Video Ultra comes with 2 Energizer-brand AA batteries as well, which is a nice step up from the usual generic brands some companies will ship out. Two alkaline AA batteries will last about two and a half hours which is not bad considering the 2GB Flip Video Ultra only records up to 60 minutes of video.
Video Quality: The Flip Video Ultra takes 640×480 video at 30 frames-per-second. The quality of the video is quite good. Much better, in fact, than the Ultra’s competitors in the highly-compact category. Recording in low light, the Ultra’s quality does not diminish much, and takes surprisingly good video. The video is compressed using the 3vix codec, which apparently still has some issues (not any fault of the camcorder mind you). We couldn’t edit any video taken with the Ultra until we removed Divx from our machine, which the 3ivx codec conflicted with for an unknown reason.
Audio Quality: One of our biggest concerns when recording is getting too much ambient noise and not enough of what we want the viewer to hear. The Ultra handles loud situations quite nicely and its microphone is able to focus on what is in front of it surprisingly well.
Druthers: If I could change the design of the Ultra in some way, my additions would be rather simple. First, I would include a lens cap/cover of some kind. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be built-in, but maybe something that would have from a lanyard off the device. Second, I would have added a 3.5mm microphone input. This device almost screams ‘Blogger’ and ‘Podcast’ so loud it could be deafening. The only thing that would totally push it past that point for me would be a dedicated microphone input. I would much rather have that feature than the TV out, especially considering you can playback your videos on the device before transferring them off.
Final Thoughts: You will notice I used the word ‘surprisingly’ in the last two sections and that is one of the best things about the Flip Video Ultra: It pleasantly surprises you constantly. Just when you think you have found a situation it cannot handle, being the inexpensive camcorder it is, it takes it and comes running back for more. Now we are not willing to trade our 1080p video cameras in for an Ultra yet, but you can bet we would supplement our footage or create video podcasts with the Flip Video Ultra any day of the week. The unit comes in two base models: 1GB and 2GB. The prior will afford the user with 30 minutes of recording time while the latter, 60 minutes. It is also available in five vibrant colors. You can also buy some very cool accessories for the unit such as an underwater case, ‘action mount’ which will connect the Ultra to a set of handlebars or any custom mount you can rig up, and even a small mini-tripod.
Test Video Compilation:
Test video note – we compressed the video from the Ultra down for this compilation – ACTUAL direct Ultra footage is even better.
