Company: Pure Digital
Product : Flip Ultra HD
Price: $199 (white & black)

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I love making videos, so when I heard that Pure Digital released their Flip Ultra HD, I had to get one.  If you are not familiar with the Flip video cameras,  they’re basically little cellphone-size plastic boxes that make recording video extremely simple.

Video bloggers, and other media creators love the  Flip because it’s so stripped-down. Why would people love a video camera that doesn’t have manual controls, doesn’t take still photos, has no video light, no flip-out screen, no lens cap, no removable memory card and no image stabilizer? In fact, it doesn’t even have an optical zoom! It has a 2 times digital zoom that just blows up the picture, making it a little more grainier.

But evidently, the masses (and me) think differently — and they have flipped for the Flip, making it a global success. Today, according to Pure Digital (the company who makes these cameras), the Flip owns 30% of the camcorder market., and according to Deloitte, Pure Digital’s revenue has grown 44,667% in five years!

But why is it such a hit, especially after all the features it doesn’t have? It’s because the video camera is small (it can fit in your pocket), it’s cheap ($199), it turns on in two seconds, and it has an USB arm (meaning no wires), for transferring your footage to the computer (that’s how it got the name “Flip”).

The low-light sensitivity is staggering. You get crisp, bright video in dim situations where ordinary camcorders would produce useless gargled footage. Now there is a lot of video camera’s that can record in HD, but the video those cameras produce is utter crap. Happily, the Ultra HD produces great-looking video. It’s not up to the quality of hi-def tape camcorders, but when the light is good, the Ultra’s video is incredibly crisp and the colors are really rich and true. Best of all, the Ultra HD preserves its low-light abilities like the original Ultra. The scene looks brighter in the video than it does to your eye.

The audio is top-class, even when the audio source is 10 feet away.  In fact, the Ultra HD has a wide-range stereo microphone, while the Flip Mino HD only has one.

The controls on the back are pretty simple. You have a red record button in the center, and around it you have a volume up, volume down button, and left & right buttons for playing back the video you took on the Ultra’s 2 inch (960 x 240) LCD display.  You also have a play button (of course), and a trash button for deleting bad clips.

Since the Ultra HD is fairly small (4.25″ x 2.19″ x 1.17″), you can do some crazy things with it.  You can for instance tape it to your bike helmet, or shirt pocket to get some really amazing footage.  You can also tape it to your car dashboard, the wall, or maybe even your pet’s collar to see their perspective of life.  Of course, Flip’s are not indestructible, so be careful if you try any of the things I listed above .

But there are some weird things about the Flip Ultra HD that I have to tell you about.

First, the Ultra HD has the same 2 inch, square screen as the standard-definition Ultras. A square screen for a video camera that takes widescreen video? What the heck?

That means that you get a black gap above and below the image. Pure Digital tried to make use of that empty black space by displaying the “Rec” indicator and battery status there, but still, it doesn’t really make sense.

Second, there’s no image stabilizer.  Sure this is supposed to be a simple camera, but it wouldn’t make it harder to use if the camera took away some of the jiggles of your hand. Good thing it has a tripod mount.

But beside that, everything is superb.  In fact, Pure Digital fixed a lot of problems I had with the Mino HD in the Ultra HD.  Finally, the Flip has an HDMI output instead of a standard output, so you can see your footage in glorious high definition format on your high-def TV. Since the movie files are in the standard H.264 format, you can burn them on a Blu-ray DVD to watch on your PS3 or Blu-ray DVD player. Just by sliding down a button, the Flip’s U.S.B. connector pops out of the camera and slides right into your PC or Mac. (That’s how you charge it.)

Not only does the U.S.B. jack spare you the hassle of tracking and packing a cable, but software for editing and sharing your movies is also right there on the camera, which is a nice addition, even though I’d use iMovie any day compared to the built in software.

The Flip Ultra HD isn’t the most feature packed camera, or the smallest, but it is really the most convenient HD video camera I have used, and if you want to become big on Youtube, or you just like recording video, you have to get this camera hands down.