Flip Style Camcorders Review : Kodak Zi8 vs Flip Ultra HD

Considered Getting A Better Camcorder For Shooting Professional YouTube Videos?

Technology evolves fast. If you wanted to record a video decent quality video 10 years ago, you had to buy or rent a $10.000 camcorder.

Today you can get a pretty good camcorder for less than $200. And if you are serious about your exposure on YouTube you will have to get one eventually.

I was researching for the best low – budget HD camcorder ($100 – $200) that would be most suitable for uploading videos on YouTube.

My research narrowed down to:

Specifications:

Kodak Zi8	Flip Ultra HD	Specifications
720p (bad 1080p)	720p	Resolution
60	60	FPS
2 hours	2 hours	Battery Life
Up to 32 GB	8GB	Memory
Yes	No	External Microphone Support
Yes	Yes	Image Stabilization
Yes	Yes	Tripod Support
Yes	Yes	HDMI port and cable
Yes	Yes	Audio Playback
Yes	Yes	Internal Microphone
Low	Low	Low Light Performance
No	Yes	AA Batteries Support
Yes	No	Face Detection, Macro
$100 - $130	$170.99 - $200	Price

Overall

Kodak Zi8

More Features, The ability to plug in external microphone is really useful if you want to record quality audio since the internal microphones usually suck.

The only Flip Style camcorder that has a macro function (that I am aware of) which is really useful if you want to do a closeup on something. If you are searching for more features and want to save some money you should go with this one.

Flip Ultra HD

Easier to use, I really like the AA batteries support. Also I think it looks better than the Zi8 and it can be fixed without a Tripod. If you want a pretty and stable camcorder that will never run out of batteries and you don’t plan to use an external microphone or shoot in macro mode, than the Flip Ultra HD is the right one for you.* Just make sure that you buy the third generation (With 8 GB memory and 2h of recording time), searching for this camcorder on eBay can be confusing.