Aiptek cranks out 720p pocket camcorder for $170

Aiptek certainly knows a thing or two about atypically cheap pocket camcorders, so it's not all that shocking to find that the company's latest has landed for just $169.99 -- quite a bit cheaper than the $280 iteration we saw earlier this year. The five-megapixel A-HD 720P High Definition Camcorder promises to record 720p video at 30fps and offers up AC / USB charging options, a 4x digital zoom, red eye reduction, component output, a 2.4-inch swivel screen, 6-measly-megabytes of internal storage, an SD expansion slot, and the ability to take stills, too. Granted, we wouldn't have high hopes for the quality here, but it's hard to argue with a price tag that low.

[Daniel @ Sep 13th 2007 10:28AM]

Sounds like a deal...

[Baby-G @ Sep 13th 2007 10:33AM]

Man it does but i hope you have a 10gb sd card for that storage.

[Mo @ Sep 13th 2007 6:40PM]

Perfect, but windows users cant do crap with .MOV, i would by it instantly if it was Avi/Divx/mpeg

[farfisa @ Sep 13th 2007 10:36AM]

720p*
* the 'p' stands for 'piss.'

[Dan @ Sep 13th 2007 10:49AM]

If you actually think you are gonna get high definition video of the quality of a 1000 camcorder, think again. It will actually be worse then a $200 Mini-DV SD camcorder. Funny how both cheapo camera makers Aiptek and Kodak are claiming this HD crud now.

[Han @ Sep 13th 2007 11:22AM]

I own a Canon TX-1 and I'm a fan. No it's not the same as a $1000+ HD camcorder or broadcast quality HDTV. But in optimal conditions, the quality of the video is really quite good, approaching true HD levels. Even if it's not broadcast quality, having video at 1280 x 720 @ 30 fps is just nice to have in general.

That being said, no optical zoom kills the product but I'm curious about how the video looks. It'll make my purchase seem pretty silly if the video works well.

[oshean @ Sep 13th 2007 11:38AM]

They also have the GO-HD 720p model R-HDV, with a 3x optical zoom/w auto focus priced @ $299.
If this cam can maintain 30fps, which I doubt, then it would be nice to have.

View the GO-HD 720P "Sample Video"
http://www.goaiptek.com/samples/GO-HD_video-sample.MOV

The sample looks nice, but is it legit?

[Stephen Lang @ Sep 13th 2007 1:58PM]

@oshean,

Thanks for posting the sample. I would guess that it is a legit clip, but keep in mind that shot with relatively unchallenging conditions (mainly light.) One area these budget camcorders tend to perform poorly in is low to moderate light.

[wsnideman @ Sep 13th 2007 11:07AM]

The SD card could cost more than the camcorder. Cooool.

[Kichigai Mentat @ Sep 13th 2007 4:30PM]

It dumps video to H.264, not MPEG-2. Apple's trailer for The Golden Compass is 59 seconds long, uses H.264, and consumes 39 MB. That's .66 MB per second of video. That's 25 minutes per Gigabyte. Four GB SD cards aren't too expensive, and would store nearly an hour and a half of footage. Now, granted, you're not about to be running around with as many 4GB SD cards as you own MiniDV cassettes, but considering how fast you can dump footage, you can probably get by with a single SD card. And that's assuming that the A-HD dumps to the same bitrate as that particular Apple trailer.

[JSM @ Sep 13th 2007 11:26AM]

If you own a nice car this would be just the kind of thing to buy and throw in the glove compartment if you should ever be in an accident and need to get that "sorry sorry sorry" guy on tape before he turns around a week later and tells his insurance company that YOU hit him. Seen this happen twice - had to testify in court for a driver that someone was attempting to screw this way. A little better-than-camera-phone video evidence would be worth its' weight in gold.

[Weeliano @ Sep 13th 2007 11:22AM]

This will make a great throw away camera for aerial videography or photography. Since it doesn't cost that much, you won't feel that much hurt if you crash your RC spy plane. :)

[Matthew @ Sep 13th 2007 11:21AM]

Do not buy this. I repeat. Do not buy this.


Aiptek makes the worst cameras in existence. The only attractive thing is the price tag.
Your better of getting a MiniDV cam.
The Panasonic NV-GS60EG will make you happier than this piece of utter shit.

Aiptek saves to SD. Nuff said.

[Kichigai Mentat @ Sep 13th 2007 4:31PM]

Well, hold on there! Doesn't Canon make a high-def recorder that dumps to SD? What's so wrong with SD? Dump speeds are faster than MiniDV, which means you can more easily do more with a single SD card.

[stencil @ Sep 14th 2007 2:33PM]

No optical zoom? What about auto-focos? Kinda' mandatory for moving pictures, don't you think? Sanyo Xacti might be a better choice for low-cost hd vid cam.

[maruawe @ Sep 13th 2007 11:30AM]

I have on of their video cameras and have tested it against other video cameras.. The difference is minimal at bestuse a 512 card (3) to tape an air show and compared it with a friends canno and mine had less movement in the camera than hers did.. Ya I'll buy one for every day stuff.

[nemi @ Sep 13th 2007 11:56AM]

Interesting that digital zoom might actually work.

If it really does use a 5-8mp sensor then with 1280x720 being approx 1 megapixel there is plenty of magnification that can be done wihtout enlargeing pixels. Of course you will be pushing agsint the quality of the lens and noise of the sensor if not averaging several sensor pixels for each recorded one any more.

[patsy @ Sep 13th 2007 2:37PM]

Nah, unfortunately that's not how they (or anybody else apparently) handle digital zoom. I have a couple of digital camera's with digital zoom (including an Aiptek camcorder), and judging by the rapid pixelization as soon as you apply any zoom, they're grabbing the entire frame, downsampling to video resolution for 1:1, and then blowing that back up for higher zoom levels. You would THINK that with a high rez chip they would do the sensible thing and downsample smaller and smaller portions of the chip until they grab 1:1 pixels from the center for maximum magnification. However, this may very well be a limitation of the chips themselves--perhaps they can only grab 30 fps at reduced resolution, so the camera has no choice but to blow up pixels for zooming.

[John M @ Sep 13th 2007 12:40PM]

WOW!!! Certainly not good for much except family stuff or high quality You Tube! camera but its noce to see a rwlatively cheap high quality camcorder thats HD

[Major Malfunction @ Sep 13th 2007 1:18PM]

Cool, I can get this and be like that kid who taped the psycho-cop trying to bring trumped up charges against him. Including the constant ticking sound, only faster ticking.

BTW, someone said something about recording to SD, now I don't know about you, but the medium it records to is not as important as the format it records [AVI for instance is supposed to be lossless], but I think more important to format is optics and speed [Frames per second] because I know that my DVR sucks as I can't frame by frame through recordings.

MiniDV is the best, but slow to transfer, from my experience in days past.

[DAN @ Nov 17th 2007 11:16AM]

You can easily conver .mov to avi with a free downlaod coverter with PRISM software

[Darnell @ Sep 13th 2007 2:03PM]

Great! It should definitely come with a "you-tube approved" sticker on it though.

[Gerald @ Sep 13th 2007 2:14PM]

This looks so much like Samsung's DivX camcorder!!
http://www.pixideal.ca/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=16&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=2691&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

[Joe @ Sep 13th 2007 2:35PM]

This guy already did a full review and has sample pictures/videos: http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=576996&forum_id=92&page=1

It really isn't bad at all for the price! For anyone who thinks the SD cards are more expensive than the camera: Where the hell do you shop? You can get an 8GB SD card for about $80 any day of the week online.

[babcocca @ Sep 13th 2007 2:46PM]

This camera lacks the hardware decoder and low light capability that made the GO-HD such a terrific deal. You can get the GO-HD and dock for $229 + tax and ship from Costco.com. Don't buy this camera.

[babcocca @ Sep 13th 2007 2:50PM]

Also, the video is encoded in H.264. You will be able to transcode this to DVD or play directly on your AppleTV or XBOX.

[wiedzmin @ Sep 15th 2007 8:42PM]

Unfortunately you can only order to US addresses. Dammit, I want one.

[wiedzmin @ Nov 26th 2007 2:17PM]

So I got it (took over a month to have it shipped to Canada) and it's awesome. For the price - it is simply amazing: super light-weight, slick design and amazing quality pictures and great video quality (although it lacks image stabilizing capabilities so you have to hold it steady). It's blister-packed and doesn't come with a memory card but at the current price of SD cards (I just picked up 2x2GB for $40), it's not a deal-breaker. Highly recommend to anyone that wants an ultra-portable camcorder with good image quality and no movable parts.