When it comes to digital cameras, I think we can all agree that there is a certain nostalgia to those slightly fuzzy, date stamped shots that some of us grew up with. I was hoping that this could be a sort of “modern analog” especially for such a budget price. In some ways I was satisfied, in most ways I was sort of let down.
The build quality is the definition of cheap. Thin, hollow plastic is what you will get. With as small as electronics have become these days, it makes sense that theres a lot of empty space in a device like this, so the camera itself weighs virtually nothing. Install the battery and it gets some heft, but nothing too much.
Camera comes with some accessories, like a spare battery, a 32GB SD card, a wrist strap (for the smallest of wrists) and a storage bag. The device comes with a charging cable, though not the one I expected. The description mentioned USB C, but this comes with Micro USB. Not great, especially in 2023.
Photo quality is pretty poor. This is mostly due to the sensor. There is absolutely no stabilization and the auto-focus is pretty tricky to manage. Even when you can get it, the shutter lag is horrendous. The camera can shoot from 3MP to 44MP, which is nice, but when there is virtually no light hitting the sensor, and no stability, theres basically no reason to take a photo with this. Maybe outdoors this would be better, but in mid to low lighting, this thing is useless. The flash is extremely bright though, which does help a little with the low-light noise, but the focus issues still persist.
Video is where this camera shines. The camera can shoot up to 4K and defaults to 2.7K (A weird resolution TBH) but the video quality is actually decent. In the viewfinder screen, everything looks pretty bad, so you’ll only know if things “worked” once you plug the SD card into a computer.
Manual controls are messy and dont reflect live in the view finder, so you’ll be playing with settings for a while if you need to. Display brightness only has two settings, seemingly, on and off. Not great, but could be worse I guess? Modes are switched via a physical switch, which feels VERY plasticky and cheap, leaving me worried it may not last very long if used a lot. Buttons are okay feeling, but overall very mushy and the screen is very low resolution and so bright that it illuminates the thin plastic case.
Battery install was a pain, need to manually move the spring loaded restraint, and the spare battery might be useless to most if you dont have a charger for whatever cell this is. Maybe you charge both up through the camera, but charging over micro USB will likely take a while.
Overall, not bad, but not great. If youre looking for a cheap camera for average quality photos and videos, this would probably be fine for you. If you want a camera for a kid, this probably wont be a bad choice, since its not that expensive and does all of the basic functions you could ask.
There are no reviews yet.