The Flip video cameras had been making some waves last year and now that it’s available in Canada we were able to take one for a test drive. The Flip seems to create its own genre – a kind of point and shoot video camera. In a market where almost everything has a built in camera and half of those are capable of video capture it’s interesting to see how the Flip line carves out a niche and justifies its existence as a simple single function camcorder.

What it’s not
When you’re shopping for a video camera it’s easy to find ones which record hours of video, or record in HD quality. You can find ones with built in editing tools or amazing lenses. The flip video is not one of those. If you consider one of those fancy HD video cameras the equivalent of a high end SLR camera, the Flip video is like a point and shoot camera. It forgoes all of those extra (and expensive) features.

What isn’t it
These days phones, hand-held games, point-and-shoot cameras and really anything you can think of has the ability to record video in some form. The problem is that they can be complicated or low quality. Rarely are they ever cheap, simple, and good enough quality all at once. Even with a high-end point and shoot camera or phone which can record video its complicated to get it to start recording and your record time is severely limited. Sure, on paper it doesn’t do much that all your other devices don’t do – it just records video, right? In reality those other devices don’t quite do what the flip does and remain overly complicated.

What it is
The fact is that the Flip is super simple. It has a flip-out USB plug so requires no cable. You just plug it in to your PC and the software loads automatically. It has a very few buttons on it too, making it very intuitive for the novice. Even a child could figure it out. The quality of the video is pretty good too dealing well with action and surprisingly well with low light situations. It records over an hour of VGA quality video using two AA batteries. It somehow combines simplicity and value into a package which seems to have created a new niche for casual video making it simply more fun at a under $150. The fact that the software is built in to the device rather than on a CD allows them to ship the camera with nice small cardboard packaging too.

What it does
When you plug the Flip in to your PC it’s software stats automatically. It’s super simple to use too – seemingly built for the novice. It could stand to be a bit prettier though. I’m confident that anybody could use this thing though. The videos are recorded in a compressed 3ivX format right on your flip so they transfer lightning fast and there is no need for the user to deal with format conversions like with most other devices. The software can even automatically upload to YouTube which one imagines would be the primary use for videos recorded on the Flip.

Conclusions
The Flip may not be ideal for your precious memories. I wouldn’t record my wedding with it. But for casual video its great. It is so very simple, not just in terms of it’s hardware but also it’s software. Your videos are ready to watch and share once recorded. You never have to deal with compression or conversion. The fact that you need no extra cables adds to this ‘hastle free’ principal the Flip seems to be designed around. They have done everything they could to make it as easy as possible. I would even trust a child to use this- especially with its low price. The Flip Ultra’s formfactor is somewhat clunky and the screen could stand to be be bigger but otherwise there is little to complain about. For fun and quick videos it’s ideal avoiding most of the common technological hurdles which usually prevent quick fun videos from being quick and fun. This is a product genre to watch out for with the Flip being a nice exemplar in its own point-and-shoot casual video camera niche.

[Flip Ultra]