Coby intros Snapp pocket camcorders, for those with small pockets
By Sean Hollister 
posted Mar 9th 2010 1:17AM
posted Mar 9th 2010 1:17AM
In a world full of stylish pocket camcorders, there are few reasons to recommend Coby's ho-hum Snapp series, which has only just now managed the transition from cheap plastic junk to tasteful Flip knockoff with today's introduction of the CAM3001, CAM4505 and CAM5001 Snapp HD. Recording 640 x 480 footage over MJPEG, the cheaper two models are still not much better than your average VGA webcam, and with only megabytes of internal storage, all three will require a sizeable memory card to capture any real content. But when you consider the price of these things -- Amazon shows preorder prices of $30 and $50 for the budget cams and $80 for the 720p CAM5001 HD -- you might yet find yourself combing desk drawers for that spare SDHC card.
Considering most phones and digicams can record videos, I don't really see the point in this anymore. Probably will just end up as cheap stocking stuffers, destined to be on Target clearance section.
@pika2000 well guess ill have to get one of these too!
If you want to make low budget Matrix style special effects, here's your chance.
Spend about $900 on 30 of these cameras and set them up in an arc around you, then inter-stitch the appropriate frames from each camera together and you can do a 1 second Matrix style special effect suitable for youtube quality.
Could be worth it for Indie films? Doubt it .. maybe with the 720p version.
If you want to make low budget Matrix style special effects, here's your chance.
Spend about $900 on 30 of these cameras and set them up in an arc around you, then manually find and stitch the frames from each camera to sequence one after the other and you can do a 1 second Matrix style special effect suitable for youtube quality.
Could be worth it for Indie films? Doubt it .. maybe with the 720p version.
(I submitted this comment a few minutes ago but still don't see it .. so if it's a double post please downrank).
Such bad judgment: a 5MP CMOS sensor. We're seeing this over and over now.
That means they've put a tiny crappy chip in there with 5 million puny, noisy photosites, to generate 720p video. They would have been much better off putting a chip with only enough resolution for the VIDEO, since nobody is seriously going to use this for stills. But no: Instead, they've made a camera that undoubtedly sucks at everything.
@Information Central ...I was planning on using it for stills...........maybe.
@Ian324
I think you'd be pretty disappointed by the results, but I guess we'll see. You'd probably be better off getting a point-&-shoot camera; these days most of them shoot video that will undoubtedly beat this thing.
"No comments" my ass. Where's the one I just posted?
Come on, Engadget. It's 2010. Let's get the commenting system together.
@Information Central
It seems to have mostly been working before, but in the past couple of days it's really slowed down. Same with Autoblog. bah!
What an unfortunate product. But surely someone will give it a home.
Oh snap
@yulebellow Damn you! You beat me to it.
Prefer my mino HD flip.
Friends don't let friends buy Coby.
Why the hell is engadget covering a Coby product? I wouldn't wipe my own ass with anything Coby. For shame on Engadget reporting on this and not advising everyone to stay 100 miles away from the product.
as for the camcorder, i think the smaller, the better.
http://www.wholesaleinc.net/cheap-camcorder-ordro-ddvv8-160-mega-pixels-enhanced_p321.html
http://www.wholesaleinc.net/Camcorder-camera-Ordro-HDV-Z30-FHD1920X1080P_p323.html