Hands-on Review: A Camcorder That's Fun and Easy

Last Gadget Standing Finalist

Those in favor of simpler technology, say aye! I recently wrote about Jitterbug, a simpler cell phone. Here's a camcorder that keeps true to the simple theme, too. 

This weekend I played with the Pure Digital Point and Shoot Camcorder, a $129 camcorder designed for easy capturing and sharing of video. I looked at it for our Last Gadget Standing competition here at Yahoo! Tech. (A similar camera is available from RCA as the Small Wonder.) While most camcorders have a steep learning curve and a thick operator's manual, this one couldn't be simpler.

The camcorder is a white box, about the size of a classic iPod, but thicker. It's got an LCD preview; a microphone; and a few buttons for capturing, playing back, rewinding, deleting, and zooming your video. The camcorder body hides a retractable USB that connects to your PC and runs on AA batteries, which makes it one of the few truly "no-wires necessary" devices I've seen.

The video it creates (30 frames per second, 640 x 480 resolution) is stored as an AVI file. The audio sound is really good—no static or crackles. And while the camera has no lighting source, I even made a reasonably decent movie in the NYC subway. You can see a clip here.

If shooting a video sounds easy, wait until you hear about editing and sharing it. These are normally the bane of a videographer's existence. But with the Point and Shoot, all you do is pull out the retractable USB and plug the whole camera into your PC. The Point and Shoot software immediately pops up to let you select the clips you want, compose a very rudimentary movie, and then upload to either Grouper or Google Video.

The movie you create with Point and Shoot is relatively primitive. It's powered by software from muvee; basically, you string your clips together. The software adds some background music and a few well-placed transition effects. If you want a more hands-on approach, just open your PC's media player or software and import the file. You can also email your movie as a greeting card or a link. Or just watch it on your TV or PC. And there are 9,000 retail locations like Target, Eckerd, Ritz, and more that can take your camera and burn your video to a DVD.

Those looking to make the next epic film will want a bit more control over their video capture and production, but those who want to point, shoot, and share their memories will be enthralled with Pure Digital's Point and Shoot Video Camera.