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Appearing in its second-generation guise in March this year, the Flip Mino HD received a few refinements, the most obvious being the larger 2in screen and an 8GB version allowing for up to two hours of video recording. Yet this popular pocket video camera has always lacked image stabilisation, that is, until now.
Both the Mino HD and the UltraHD have been upgraded with this feature, long-awaited by Flip fans. As with other Flip cams with the HD moniker, the 720p HD video is captured in MP4 format using the H.264 codec but it’s now at 50fps in PAL territories (60fps NTSC), up from 30fps.
The 4GB (one hour) Mino HD sports fashionable, metallic finish, the matt black version signifies it’s the revised 8GB model. The on/off button at the side falls neatly under the thumb. Give it a firm press and let go and it’s ready to shoot in a couple of seconds.
On the control surface, the Flip Mino HD has just one big, hard to miss, red button for recording video clips. If you hold this as it powers up you get the setup options for language, time, bleeps and recording light.
Surrounding the red button are illuminated touch-sensitive keys. The forward/backward controls scroll through existing clips or move along the timeline during playback. Use the +/- keys to operate the zoom when recording or vary the playback sound level. Just below the display are two slightly recessed buttons for playing and deleting files.
The screen itself is a big improvement compared to the earlier style models. Bright and crisp, it looks great and, appears a good deal more scratch resistant than others I’ve tried, such as the Sony Bloggie. It also comes with a soft cloth bag, which helps sustain its good looks and is certainly better than nothing, considering that it’s £30 for Sony’s Bloggie pouch.
For a point and shoot camera, the image quality turns out to be surprisingly good – just about sharp enough to live up to the HD tag, and with bold, strong colours. However, in strong sunlight colours could appear washed-out and some detail burnt out too. In fact, up against the same style Mino HD (but lacking the image stabilisation and increased frame rate), the new version seems even more prone to over-exposure, yet the contrast appears less harsh, so there is more detail in the shadows, but the edges aren't so crisp.
Certainly, you can perceive somewhat smoother shooting thanks to both the faster frame rate and image stabilisation. Cisco describes the latter as "Digital with hardware sensors…" The rest of the explanation is a bit of a blur. "With the mechanical gyro sensor we don’t lose the quality that digital typically implies, since we have a sensor that shifts the frame to centre the objects and reduce shaking." Well, it seems to work.
Even so, with its candybar phone size and light weight, the Flip Mino HD is very susceptible to every little move of your hands, and while the results seem more steady now, given the on-the-go nature of the camera, shake is something to expect. Still, if you really need it, there’s a tripod mount at the base, adjacent to the mini HDMI port.
The fixed-focus lens works between 0.8m to infinity (and beyond), and even clips shot within a range of 2 feet were acceptable. Yet used in low light conditions, the results were rather patchy. They don’t look bad on the small display but blown up on a computer screen, the recordings do exhibit a fair amount noise and some colour smearing, exacerbated when using the 2x digital zoom. Still, the Mino HD does well to capture reasonably well-defined footage in difficult conditions, and just about every time gives you something useable, so long as you’re not too fussy.
The Mino HD has a built-in USB connector that, er, flips up from the top – by sliding a switch on the side – and simply folds away again when not required. Dispensing with the need to carry USB cable when travelling, the Flip doesn’t need a separate charger either. Hook it up to a Mac or PC and it starts charging – with a full recharge taking about 3 hours. The internal lithium-ion battery like sony NP-F550 battery, sony NP-FR1 battery, sony NP-FM50 battery, sony NP-FM51 battery, sony NP-F10 battery, sony NP-FE1 battery, sony DSC-T7 battery, Panasonic CGA-S101A Battery, Olympus Li-10B Battery, Olympus BLM1 Battery, panasonic NV-GS10 battery, panasonic VHS-C Battery, canon EOS 400D Battery lasts for about 1.5 hours on a good day, but is non-interchangeable.
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