Kodak Zi8 vs. Kodak Zi6, Flip Mino HD, Sony Webbie HD and JVC Picsio

I orig­i­nally wrote this review when the Kodak Zi6 was pretty new. Since then, Kodak’s Zi8 has been released. It does higher-resolution 1080p video, has a mic input and a bet­ter view screen — but loses the abil­ity to inter­change bat­ter­ies. It also shoots at a native wider angle. (I found the Zi6 to be wide enough.) And Kodak refined the design — it looks and feels bet­ter in your hand.

If you com­pare the video qual­ity at 720p, there really isn’t much dif­fer­ence. Basi­cally, you will pay about dou­ble what the Zi6 costs to get the newer Zi8. My ver­dict? Go for a used or refurb Zi6 unless you have a big HD TV and will play your home videos on it (and even then you prob­a­bly would have a hard time telling the difference).

The JVC Pic­sio is also a new entry into this mar­ket niche. It does 1080p video — but why would you want to buy some­thing with such a stu­pid name? And it has that lovely Gucci purse look about it too, which I would avoid with a ten-foot pole. Appar­ently other con­sumers agree with the idea of avoid­ing this one, based on how few have been bought.

Below is my orig­i­nal review. If you don’t read it, at least scroll down to the bot­tom for the punchline.

-

The Flip Mino was the first real player in this mar­ket. The con­cept: a small, pocket-sized video cam­era that will let you down­load video directly from the device to the web. Kodak came next with the Zi6, the first to offer HD out­put (720p). Flip then fol­lowed with the Mino HD. And then Sony released the Web­bie. Their traditional-video-camera-looking CM1 seems to have hit the mar­ket first, in terms of the num­ber of reviews out there. But the PM1 is the smaller model that is a real com­peti­tor for the Zi6 and Mino HD. The PM1 is shown at the left. Mid­dle is the Zi6, and at right is the Mino HD. They are not to scale with each other.) The CM1 costs $30 more but adds a 5x opti­cal zoom lens. But its bulkier size rules it out of the com­pe­ti­tion, for me

The device qual­ity prob­a­bly goes in this order: Sony, Flip and Kodak.

Prices: the Sony is mid-pack, the Kodak is the cheap­est, and the Mino HD is the most expen­sive of the trio. (I used to list the prices here — but they keep dropping!)

I bought the Kodak Zi6: I like it. I got a really good deal on it via bestbuy.com. If the Sony were avail­able when I was in the mar­ket, I prob­a­bly would have gone for it. (I have a W-series point-and-shoot still cam­era that I love.)

One of the crit­ics’ com­plaints is that the Kodak’s low-light per­for­mance is poor. Not true!! I took this video at a con­cert recently, and the result was almost brighter than the live event! The auto­matic sen­sor for light lev­els kicked in and did a great job.

Here’s a review fea­tur­ing things like pic­ture quality.

If you’re con­sid­er­ing the Mino HD, skip it. Rea­sons? When the built-in bat­tery runs low, you’re stuck. (The Kodak uses AAs. Like the Mino, Sony also uses a built-in bat­tery.) When the mem­ory runs out, you’re stuck (4 gb inter­nal and not increasable). The Kodak uses the biggest SD card you can afford. Sony uses Mem­ory Stick Pro Duo cards, which are slightly more expen­sive. Finally, the Mino has a smaller view screen (1.5″) than the Sony (1.8″) and the Kodak (2.4″).

The Sony has 5 mp still capa­bil­ity. The Kodak’s is 1.6 mp. Flip? None.

Sony’s swivel­ing lens is unique in this class. You can film your­self and see what you look like with­out hav­ing to stop, play back and then re-do.

A fourth player in the mix is the Cre­ative Labs Vado. It’s roughly in the same price league but requires Per­ian for Mac peo­ple to play the cre­ated videos.

Rec­om­men­da­tion? Buy the Sony unless you will be tak­ing a trip where you can’t charge the bat­tery (a week-long wildlife safari in Kenya, maybe). It also does not have a direct-USB out port. So if you do the fast-onto-YouTube thing, go with the Kodak.

Remem­ber that these are not meant to com­pete with real video cam­eras. None have image sta­bi­liza­tion, for exam­ple. But for my fam­ily, the Kodak has effec­tively replaced our higher-quality larger Canon, because of its size and ease of use. Down­load­ing a video from flash mem­ory is way eas­ier than the old Firewire from tape method.

The punch­line? I sold my Kodak Zi6 and bought a Canon SD960 IS. It does opti­cal zoom and takes great stills too. I also sold my Sony still cam­era. Two into one = best way for­ward for me! I have been very happy with both the still images and the video. And now the Canon SD-1300 is the rough equiv­a­lent to my SD-960.

Note that all the Ama­zon links on this page are affil­i­ate links. They used to give me a small amount of earn­ings, but the law in Col­orado changed, and Ama­zon made it where no one here can earn money through their affil­i­ate pro­gram. So now the earn­ings go to a friend of mine in Indiana.