Toshiba Camileo P30 review

Pocket video cameras in the mould of Pure Digital's Flip Mino and Creative's Vado are arriving at quite a rate right now and, after testing the waters with standard definition models, manufacturers have followed up quickly with HD alternatives.

The latest to join the gold rush is Toshiba's Camileo P30. This is a low-cost, flash memory-based video camera like the Creative Vado HD and the Flip Mino HD. It's simple to operate, and very reasonably priced at £130 too, but that's where the similarities end.

For starters, its pistol grip design sets it apart from the mobile phone-style camera crowd. This makes it a little less pocketable but at just 166g and 104mm tall it's still far from bulky. Plus, rather than relying on built-in flash memory (it has only 96MB), there's an SDHC card slot.

There are more differences. First, it claims to record in 1080p and, though in practise it falls short of this at an unusual 1,440 x 1,080, it's still the highest resolution we've seen in a pocket video camera to date.

More importantly, it's equipped with the sort of features we'd expect to find in more expensive, semi-serious camcorders. The P30 not only has a 5x optical zoom, but also a macro mode, digital image stabilisation (limited to 720p mode and below), an LED light/flash for dim conditions and five megapixel still image capture.

There are more bonuses to be found in the list of accessories supplied with the camera. The P30 comes with a protective pouch, a wrist strap and all the cables you need for connection with a PC or directly to your TV ??" that includes an HDMI cable on top of the usual composite, and USB connectors.

It's an impressive list of features, but the results can't quite back them up. The image stabilisation works well and the zoom is smooth and easy to operate, but colours are over-saturated, the autofocus extremely slow and the lens doesn't produce the sharpest results either. The extra features are nice to have, but we'd rather have the Mino HD's better quality recordings.

Also on the negative side, there's no on-board software of the type that makes the Vado and Flip cameras such a joy to use, and Arcsoft's MediaImpression supplied on the CD isn't the most elegant of editing/viewing tools.

All in all then, despite the impressive list of capabilities, features and low price, Toshiba's handy Camileo doesn't make the grade. It's lacklustre image quality sees to that.

Author: Jonathan Bray