I love this camcorder, for a lot of reasons.

It comes with quite a bit in the box: the camcorder (with a USB connector that flips out), a wrist strap, a soft (thin) carrying case, and a component (RGB) cable for your TV. The USB connector plugs into any Mac or PC ready to go (the FlipShare software is stored directly on the device, so no install CD necessary). By the way, the software does very little other than download/e-mail videos and clip the starts and ends of them, but you can edit the videos quite well with iMovie (natively because the videos are .mp4) or in Windows Movie Maker (though you'll need to use Avidemux or similar software to convert the audio to mp3 and the video to .avi - I recommend using the Xvid4 encoding in two passes). This TV cable is a cool feature to have, but the cable isn't capable of true HD. However, what's really awesome is that if you have a PS3 or some way of plugging in a USB device to view content on your TV, you can watch the .mp3 files straight from the device. So from my PS3, the videos look pretty incredible on my LCD TV.

The controls are extremely simple. The big red button in the middle (you can see plenty of pictures at the top) is the one-click record button (assuming it's on). The boot time is literally about 3 seconds, so I can have it out of my pocket and recording within about 10-15 seconds. The screen is admittedly small, but what I love is that it's actually embedded in the device, so touching the screen isn't actually touching the screen. The reason it isn't a little wider is that on either side of the screen are the speakers, and if the screen was oriented 90 degrees clockwise then you'd have to hold the device with both hands, which takes away from how easy it is to record with one hand. The screen really just acts as a digital viewfinder: shows you the borders of your shots. It doesn't give you any idea of detail. Anyway, there are no special menus or anything, the buttons on the device are exactly what you get. While recording, up and down will let you zoom in and out (digital, not optical, so it's just the software interpolating pixels), and that's all you can do. Some people might be disappointed by this, but if you want all the bells and whistles then you might as well shell out for a full-fledged HD camcorder. When browsing through your library, left and right goes through your videos, up and down is volume, delete is the upper right corner (it will confirm your deletes), and play/pause is the upper left corner. There are no other options: so you can't change the video quality or anything, which may have been a nice feature but I'm guessing that no one would want to shoot in anything lesser once they get a taste of 720p. Note that on the back side, the only tactile button is the big red one, the others are just touchscreen-like buttons. Surprisingly, I didn't mind this. They're quite responsive, except for the red one. Oddly, this button sometimes can be fickle and not register your pressing on it. This is one of the few low points of the device - it can get annoying, but doesn't always happen.

It feels really good in your hand. It's quite sturdy and feels really polished, which may partially because it's glossy. It won't attract any more finger smudges than your iPhone will though. I've dropped it on accident a couple of times (though the wrist strap, included in the box, helps prevent this) and it survived without issue, and I took it to Whistler with me where moisture didn't bother it. Despite all the snow I got on me, it was quite safe in that little black cloth case, so I guess it has some degree of water resistance. It's not heavy at all and fits really nicely in even my pants that have smaller pockets or in pockets I keep other junk in. It's probably about as thin as an iPhone, but not as long.

Ok, on to the video quality now. One of the reasons I wanted one of these is because I didn't like recording movies on my Canon Powershot SD450. It's a great point-and-shoot camera with enough options to keep me happy, but the movie mode produced movies that sucked up too much space on my memory card and didn't look very impressive, especially in low-light situations. It's comparable or better quality to other cell phones or digital cameras in the price range of the Mino HD. So I decided to shoot the exact same footage on both cameras last week and mash them together to see how the looked in a comparison of standard definition of high definition, which is the video attached to this review.

My overall goal was to get a number of different lighting settings and things to shoot that show you where the Mino HD excels and where it can fall short. A more fair comparison may have been comparing it with a real standard definition camcorder because the quality is just that good, but I feel like it's really competing with other point-and-shoot video recording devices. You can see how sharp it is right off the bat in my first example, where making out the "Edgewater" sign is hopeless in SD but you can make it out if you pause in HD. The sky may seem duller in the Flip MinoHD's version, but it's much truer to how it looked outside and you can even see more detail in the clouds. The second example shows that it actual does a decent job of digital zoom. Remember, this is the software guessing at how to zoom in, but it does a lot better than the PowerShot did. Both do pretty well in the cityscape shoot, but you can see more snow on the mountains in HD than in SD, and the cars are much sharper. Plus, if you have a family member who thinks that you get less in widescreen than full screen, that example pretty easily nullifies the argument. The Christmas tree shot was trying to show a couple of things (besides that I'm too lazy to put up a Christmas tree): it handles edges really well and it's not afraid of a lot of light. You can even see the brick on my building outside the window from the Flip MinoHD Camcorder's perspective. The pasta doesn't look all that tasty, I'm afraid, but it really is quite good. Anyway, the colors did look better from the PowerShot because it made the light look less artificial, but the Mino handled smoothing better. I wish I had a better low light example, but the bedroom shot has virtually no light aside from the window with closed blinds, but you could barely tell there was a bed in the PowerShot's version and there was way more noise in the picture. Speaking of which, the Flip MinoHD Camcorder does a great job of filtering out ambient noise, like wind when you're outside (which is why I kept the original audio in all my examples). Anyway, I've been astounded overall that the Mino HD works at all in low light - this is very useful for concerts. The last example is from my favorite movie, and it also proves that the Mino HD is a lot better at handling a lot of light. Uma Thurman doesn't even seem to have a nose if you believe the PowerShot, but the picture clarity really shines on the Mino HD and the colors look much better and truer to the source material. The only downside was that some of the fast transitions that involved a lot of light did look a little washed out on the Mino HD, but I'm willing to accept that from a camcorder that fits in the palm of my hand.

I haven't yet mentioned my biggest gripe with the Flip MinoHD though: it really requires a steady hand. This has become a constant concern for me now when using it (which may have shown in my examples in how much slower I moved the camera in the HD shots), but it's a consequence of the fact that it's shooting at 30 fps and the quality is so ridiculous that your eyes are much more likely to notice the slightest jitter. Fortunately, you can get a tripod for about $15 with bendable feet (I've heard great things, and I'll be getting one very soon), so that can help if you need to take videos where you don't have to move around.

I think I've gone on long enough on this camcorder. The final verdict? I love it. It's a great device and it's pretty much exactly what I was expecting and wanted it to be. If you can get over the lack of manual controls and having to have a steady hand (maybe the next iteration will include stabilization software on the device), it's well worth the $200. It's no-fuss video shooting that may restore your faith in it's ability to automatically shoot scenes with the best settings, something that I never trust my PowerShot to do because it always wants to use flash. If you want to dabble in video podcasting or video editing, this is exactly what you want. If you get a bigger camcorder then it'll become a chore to carry it around for shoots (I know this from personal experience) and you're not as likely to play around with it. When you use the Flip Mino HD Video, you can literally have it with you at all times and it looks like a cell phone so you take secretly film for your explosive documentary or at a concert where you want to record your favorite song. If you have baby, then you owe it yourself to get one of these because kids to fun/funny stuff in the blink of an eye so you want to be ready to snap those moments. Life's too short to leave great memories behind, and that's why I love this device. It's the epitome of an easy-to-use camcorder.