Pure Digital Flip UltraHD Camcorder Review

Motion & Sharpness Performance Summary
• Motion has less artifacting than the Sony MHS-CM1, although the Flip UltraHD was not as smooth. • All footage is recorded with a 30p frame rate, which gives the video a slower, choppier effect. • Video isn't nearly as sharp as the Sony MHS-CM1, but it is significantly better than the Flip MinoHD.
	Color & Noise Performance	(Page 4 of 17)	Low Light Performance

Motion (5.95)

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the motion on the Flip UltraHD isn't great. The camcorder records video using a 30p frame rate, so moving subjects are a bit slower and choppier than a standard 60i camcorder would capture. The camcorder had less artifacting than we expected, which is a very good thing, but the motion didn't look very smooth. Note that the YouTube clips shown below are heavily compressed, even in the larger HD versions. Still, they should give you a good idea of what these camcorders are capable of—especially since most users of these products are probably going to want to upload video to the web anyway. (More on how we test motion.)

 There was a bit of juddering and choppiness in the Flip UltraHD's motion test. The image was strong—there was less artifacting than the Kodak Zi6, Flip MinoHD, and Sony MHS-CM1—but the motion didn't appear all that smooth. Trailing wasn't bad when we paused the video, but there were some noticeable issues when we watched moving footage (i.e. the train showed some trailing as it crossed the front in our test).

Overall, the Flip UltraHD captures motion better than the Sony MHS-CM1. The MHS-CM1 has smoother motion, but it has a lot of artifacting. Specifically, the colored pinwheel on the right showed multiple splotches of pixelation, artifacting, and discoloration. We don't have videos for the Flip MinoHD or Kodak Zi6 because they were tested last year, before we added the motion test to our repertoire.

Video Sharpness (9.34)

The Flip UltraHD showed a strong improvement in video sharpness over last year's Flip MinoHD. The camcorder's horizontal and vertical sharpness both measured at 600 line widths per picture height (lw/ph). While this represents a big jump over the Flip MinoHD (375 lw/ph horizontal, 500 lw/ph vertical), it isn't nearly as good as the video sharpness performance put on by the Sony MHS-CM1. The MHS-CM1 has a huge, 1/2.5-inch CMOS sensor, which does wonders in producing excellent video sharpness. The camcorder measured 700 lw/ph horizontal and 800 lw/ph vertical in our sharpness test. These numbers are so good they rival many high-end consumer camcorders. (More on how we test video sharpness.)

Video Sharpness Score Comparisons

* Scores for these models were recalculated using the new 2009-2010 rubric.