Creative Vado Camcorder Review

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Riding on the coattails of Pure Digital's Flip series, Creative has launched its own ultra-compact, ultra-affordable camcorder. The Creative Vado (MSRP $99.99) is in many ways an exact clone of the Flip Ultra and its successor, the Flip Mino. All three are a study in bare bones simplicity, offering as few features and as few buttons as possible. They aim to reinvigorate the home movie phenomenon by making the process easy and cheap.

But these camcorders are honing in on another trend as well. Both the Vado and the Flip come with built-in software that lets you upload straight to YouTube. By trying to cash in on the YouTube phenomenon, these manufacturers are targeting the demographic of young and hip videographers, out on the streets capturing their nights at the club and days on the slopes. But with more manufacturers entering the fray every day, Creative has a lot of competition.

Our opinion? Even at just $100, the Vado isn't worth the money. The Flip performs better, offers more, and looks and feels sexier. All for just $30-$80 more. Even for a cheap, no-nonsense camcorder, you could do better. Read on to find out why...

The Front (4.00)
The front of the Vado is where you'll find the small, fixed lens. "Fixed" means there are no moving parts in the zoom, aperture, or focus. This comes as no surprise, given that the Vado is slimmer (and cheaper) than many cell phones. As a result, there is little flexibility in how you record video: the fixed aperture is f/2.4 and there is no optical zoom—just a 2x digital zoom. You'll also find no auto focus element adjusting from subject to subject. We tested the focal range under moderate, indoor lighting and found it to be around 7 inches to infinity. This could vary depending on available light.

Though the lens is an important functional part of the Vado, it is by no means the most noticeable feature on the front of the camcorder. On our Vado's stark facade, the sizable wash of fuchsia is more prominent than anything else. This camcorder sure is pink. With the less colorful alternative, you can be greeted instead by an unremarkable field of gray. Whichever color you choose, the front of the Vado does not offer a particularly elegant aesthetic.

The empty expanse is also where the plasticy texture is most noticeable; it feels lightweight and cheap, though the surface is less prone to attracting oily fingerprints than the glossy black Flip Mino. This sea of pink (or gray) actually doubles as a cover for the removable lithium-ion battery—a feature remarkably similar to most cell phones and different from the AA batteries of the Flip Ultra or the internal battery on the Flip Mino.

The front of the Vado features little more than the lens and battery cover: an internal microphone mounted to the right of the lens, and a red tally light to indicate when the camcorder is recording. The Vado's light—a thin half-moon nestled against the left side of the lens—isn't terribly useful on the pink model; the red is dim and difficult to distinguish from the bright pink surface. It's also impossible to turn the tally light off, which can make for a red glow in low-light situations.

Creative has attempted to design its facade with the same simplicity seen on the Flip Mino, but the execution is ultimately less effective. The Mino could have been designed by Porsche, while the Vado is more like Fisher Price.

The expansive pinkness of the front of the Creative Vado		The Vado's battery cavity is remarkably like a cell phone.

The Right Side (2.75)
The right side holds just two features: the On/Off button and the wrist strap anchor. The anchor will only come in handy if you supply your own wrist strap—unlike the Flip Mino, the Vado does not come with one. The power button is designed to blend subtly with the white stripe and is, in fact, hard to find if you don't know where to look. The button itself can only be activated with a firm push, which means you can toss it in a bag and not worry about the camcorder turning on by mistake. And if it does get a good knock and switch on, the LCD automatically goes dark after about one minute of inactivity and the Vado itself automatically shuts off after five.

The right side of the Creative Vado

The Back (3.25)
The back is the Vado's hub of activity. This face is adorned with the main control interface and a 2-inch LCD screen. The screen is larger and purportedly better than that of the Flip Mino. The Mino's resolution comes in at 70,000 pixels, while the Vado's is a surprising 153,600—higher even than an iPod Nano. The controls are an emulation of the Flip Ultra interface: Play/Pause and Delete sit over on the right side, while the left side features a prominent directional pad. The d-pad features the controls for Previous Clip/Rewind, Next Clip/ Fast Forward, and Zoom/Playback Volume. The large white square at the center of the directional pad starts and stops the recording process. The small cluster of holes below the Delete button is the Vado's playback speaker.

The back of the Vado is a hub of activity.		The back of the Flip Ultra looks familiar...

The Left Side (2.50)
Aside from the decorative white "racing stripe," the left side is as minimalistic as the rest. At the top is a standard 1/8-inch AV jack. At the bottom is the rubber hinge for the USB connector. We had trouble getting the Vado to function with our generic AV cables. The USB connector, which hinges from the left side and pulls out from the bottom, works just fine. (See Connectivity section, later in this review.)

The left side of the Creative Vado

The Top (2.75)
Looks like a delicious pink Oreo. Not a single port, switch, or other feature to be found.

The featureless top of the Creative Vado

The Bottom
The bottom of the Vado is home for the extendable USB arm. USB is how the Vado connects to a computer for transferring video clips and recharging the battery. Unlike the clever mechanism for which the Flip is named, the USB on the Vado does not snap out like a switchblade. Instead, you tug on a mundane rubber tab. The connector is attached to the body of the camcorder by a flexible rubber arm and held in place by a light magnet. It's true that the protruding rubber tab isn't aesthetically pleasing and that the rubber arm feels distinctly less sturdy than the Flip's hard plastic. In practice, though, this design is quite practical; since the USB arm is flexible, the Vado can fit in practically any hard-to-reach USB port on your computer.

The extendable USB arm pulls out from the bottom of the Vado

As for the rest of the bottom, it's cheaply constructed and inelegantly designed. On the side of the USB cavity is a switch for opening the battery compartment—a switch that is incredibly difficult to operate. Next to the USB arm is a plastic tripod mount. We doubt many people will be mounting the Vado on a tripod, but those who do should take care not the strain the plastic. (We broke the plastic mount the third time we screwed it into our tripod.)

The bottom of the Creative Vado