Flip Ultra and Creative Vado pocket camcorders

Both devices come with a small software suite loaded into their memory. Vado Central is a straightforward viewing package that also uploads to YouTube and Photobucket once the Vado's hooked up to a PC. The Flip Video Upload Assistant takes things a stage further by adding an support for AOL, MySpaceTV and Amazon's video reviews service, and an e-mail option to send videos via flip.com.

The Flip software package also includes what appears to be a cut down Muvee-based suite which lets you make basic edits and add music to your footage.

Flip-out USB

While the Vado software package is Windows only, the Flip also comes with Mac code. Both players show up as mass-storage devices, so it's easy enough to get content off them and onto Linux boxes.

The Vado is the cheaper of the two, coming in at £80, while the Flip can be found for around the £95 mark, though that includes an RCA TV-out. We reckon that's too much by a factor of two. If the Flip or the Vado could be picked up for around £50, you could make a far stronger case for them.

Flip will also happily sell you a matching tripod for around £15, an “action mount” for attaching it to the handlebars of your bike, tortoise, etc. for the same price, and a waterproof housing for use underwater or in the bath. That'll set you back £25.

The nagging question we have is why not just spend the money on a decent camera? When we were testing the Flip and Vado, we also shot some 640 x 480 30f/s footage using a FujiPix S5700 7.1Mp camera, a device that can also be picked up for just shy of the £100 mark if you look hard enough. And if you buy something like the S5700, you also end with an extremely fine stills camera.

Verdict

Before shelling out for either device we'd suggest you ask yourself what you'll be using it for. Amateur pr0n and ill-conceived YouTube rants aside, it's just a little hard to see an obvious use given there's no price, portability or functionality advantage over a regular digicam. Be absolutely sure that the extra bulk and slightly higher cost of a decent stills camera with video and sound capability is not a better use of your hard earned.