Tuesday, June 17, 2008
My quick Aiptek A-HD+ review
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 
Tonight I grabbed an Aiptek A-HD+ 1080p video camera, a 8GB SDHC card and a little media card reader (which I didn't really need). I figured since it's so small, I might capture video more often than I do now with a larger expensive video camera.
Upon opening the thing up, it's remarkable how light the thing is. Of course no tapes or drives or optical media... just the SDHC card you need to supply with it. And the fact that the entire thing is made of plastic. This is good & bad. The lightness results in the need to keep a steadier hand (there is no stabilization in this thing). However the lightness also means you can easily slap it in your pocket for easy travel.
You can capture video from your HD TV if you have AV outs... our big Samsung LCD doesn't seem to have them, although I only spent a few seconds looking back there... the TV has a million inputs, just not many outputs.
I shot some low-light interior video at 720p (30fps and 60fps) and the video quality was pretty decent for such a cheap unit. I then shot at 1080p (30fps) and it looked pretty tight, but reducing the 1080p down by 50% resulted in a really crisp video image. So you could shoot 1080p knowing you'll take it down to 720p yourself. I tested this on a Macbook and not on our big set yet, but I know it will look pretty good.
The microphone on the unit pretty much sucks. It's passable for most situations, such as family events and the like, but nothing approaching professional (or even stereo for that matter). Again, the unit is cheap, so I wasn't expecting a completely amazing experience here.
For the money, this thing is really awesome. I was suprised even though I read a lot of reviews on it before deciding on it.
I know a lot of people (vBloggers, Adobe employees, etc.) are running around with those Flip Video units, and they are cute and portable. But they can't touch the Aiptek A-HD+. Maybe the audio on those things is better, but everywhere else the Flip gets shattered (for about the same price too).
Go out and try one out. It's easy money spent.
Upon opening the thing up, it's remarkable how light the thing is. Of course no tapes or drives or optical media... just the SDHC card you need to supply with it. And the fact that the entire thing is made of plastic. This is good & bad. The lightness results in the need to keep a steadier hand (there is no stabilization in this thing). However the lightness also means you can easily slap it in your pocket for easy travel.
You can capture video from your HD TV if you have AV outs... our big Samsung LCD doesn't seem to have them, although I only spent a few seconds looking back there... the TV has a million inputs, just not many outputs.
I shot some low-light interior video at 720p (30fps and 60fps) and the video quality was pretty decent for such a cheap unit. I then shot at 1080p (30fps) and it looked pretty tight, but reducing the 1080p down by 50% resulted in a really crisp video image. So you could shoot 1080p knowing you'll take it down to 720p yourself. I tested this on a Macbook and not on our big set yet, but I know it will look pretty good.
The microphone on the unit pretty much sucks. It's passable for most situations, such as family events and the like, but nothing approaching professional (or even stereo for that matter). Again, the unit is cheap, so I wasn't expecting a completely amazing experience here.
For the money, this thing is really awesome. I was suprised even though I read a lot of reviews on it before deciding on it.
I know a lot of people (vBloggers, Adobe employees, etc.) are running around with those Flip Video units, and they are cute and portable. But they can't touch the Aiptek A-HD+. Maybe the audio on those things is better, but everywhere else the Flip gets shattered (for about the same price too).
Go out and try one out. It's easy money spent.
Comments:
There are currently 5 Comments:
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Rick Curran said...“Interesting, does it record straight as h.264 video? If so then I think I need one!”
