Flip Mino HD (2nd gen) review

The people in charge of product development at Creative must be pulling their hair out; as soon as they come up with a challenger to Flip Video's dominant pocket cameras, their rival simply ups the ante, this month in the shape of the updated Flip Mino HD.

The photograph doesn't do this little device justice. It's a beautifully engineered piece of kit. The matte-silver metal at the front feels wonderfully cool to the touch, newly rounded edges lend it a more sensual feel, while the integrated USB connector flips out with Teutonic weight and precision.

The developers have listened to users' complaints this time too, adding the HDMI output that should have graced the first HD Flip camera, although there's still no cable included in the box. And internal storage has been doubled to 8GB, which will allow the Mino HD to store up to two hours of HD footage.

Elsewhere, things look more familiar, with a fixed focal length lens recording video up to 1,280 x 720 in resolution at 30fps, and the controls are just as intuitive as ever. One large red button on the rear is used to start and stop recording, and a series of indented touch-sensitive controls work effectively to control other aspects of the camera.

But despite the static resolution, the Flip Mino HD hasn't stood still. It has somehow managed to squeeze in even better quality footage than before. Contrast and colour saturation in particular has improved vastly, but not at the cost of low light performance, which is superb. This Flip Mino is the best in class, stretching out a noticeable lead over the Creative Vado HD.

Even the onboard editing and sharing software – FlipShare 4.5 – has been redesigned, this time adding Flip Channels. These offer a simple way of sharing collections of videos online with a list of contacts, and once set up every time you add a video to the channel assigned contacts are notified of changes by email. It's another string to the bow of an already accomplished video management tool.

Creative can breathe a sigh of relief, however, because the new Flip Mino HD does have an Achilles heel. At £180 exc VAT, as with its predecessor at launch, the new Mino is simply too expensive, and although it's the best pocket video camera we've seen it can't quite muster itself a Recommended award.

Author: Jonathan Bray