Seeing as how our review unit of the Mino is ‘lost in the mail’, I thought I’d share with you what our boss thinks of the Mino. Michael doesn’t actually have one himself, but I trust his judgment and he’s done some perusing of the Web to see what everyone else is saying. I’m sorry we couldn’t share our thoughts on the Mino with you, but Flip only seems to care that Doug got the press release and not the actual device.
So I haven’t actually tried out the new Flip Mino. But I’ve spoken with people who have, and I used the Flip Ultra, which launched late last year, for a while before abandoning it. And I just can’t figure out why people like this thing.
None of the reviews compared the Flip to it’s core competition: normal digital cameras. Instead everyone focuses on the fact that Flip has sold nearly a million units, saying that’s 15-20% of the camcorder market – and the Flip is a fraction of the price of most of those competitors.
The Flip’s video quality (640×480) is much lower than most people would expect from a camcorder. But it happens to be exactly the same resolution as most digital cameras, almost all of which now offer video as well. And nearly 40 million of them sold in 2007. Canon alone sold nearly 9 million digital cameras last year.
I can tell you why I love the Flip Ultra. I have all the devices you mentioned, a digital camera, a camcorder, even an iPhone with camera and a Flip. The Flip just makes the video x10 easier to take and download. David Pogue did a great review/parody (http://tinyurl.com/3b43qw) in his classic style comparing the Flip to the classic camcorder with tapes/dvd/cords etc. Much too complicated.
Just this weekend, my daughter had a school project – to write a brochure on the town we live in to promote it to potential visitors. She’s 7. She made a Flip video all by herself to to accompany her report. Yep, its that easy.
How can you review an item that you have no experience using? Sure I could review an iPhone, and look up every fact about it known to man, but without using it I can’t say that I have an opinion about it. Its like when you used to tell your mom that you hated spinach, only to be asked if you had ever tried it, to which you dutifully replied, “No…” and then your mother asked you how you could tell that you didn’t like it?
Therefore, Michael hasn’t eaten his spinach and his review holds no ground in my book.
I agree. How can Michael review this without using the device? One thing he states is that he didn’t like the Ultra because it doesn’t work well with Macs. Well, my Mino works great with my Mac. And the sound quality is not bad either. I love my Mino because it’s dead simple to use.