Creative Vado HD (3rd Gen) Review

User interface and video quality

The previous Vado HD was simple to use, with responsive buttons allocated to most of the controls. This newer version ditches many of the main control buttons in favour of capacitive touch buttons for everything but the record button on the front fascia.

Given the dinky size of the Vado HD, they work well – we didn’t have to apply much force to activate a button. This meant that we weren’t making the thing wobble around all over the place as we pressed them, resulting in a less shaky video.

However, the touch-sensitive buttons weren’t quite as responsive and easy to use as actual buttons, as we were continually searching for the right position to get things to work. We did get used to the buttons, but we'd also argue that the lack of buttons makes the Vado HD a little less sophisticated than its predecessor.

In recording mode, the four buttons surrounding the fascia control the 2x digital zoom and also the manual exposure adjustment. This had us a little worried to start with, as the previous model struggled in bright sunlight - we thought Creative was going to make us, the user, compensate for a lack of decent automatic exposure control. However, automatic exposure adjustment is present, and the manual adjustment merely shifts the range of exposure a little. This may give better results if you’re shooting predominantly in very dark or very light situations.


Something we struggled to find at first was the menu to change things such as the recording resolution. With no instructions, we had no idea what to do, but eventually found you had to hold down the button which switches between still and video capture modes for about 3 seconds. How obvious – why didn’t we think of that sooner?

Once you've captured your video and photos, browsing them is fairly simple, with the option to delete files available too. Sound is recorded through a microphone/speaker on the front of the Vado HD, but you can also use the 3.5mm jack on the top of the device to listen through headphones. You can also attach a more sensitive microphone via the 3.5mm mini-jack.

Video quality was good outside in the sunshine, and the Vado HD was able to adapt to direct sunlight, loosing little of the colour and sharpness it showed in abundance. We'd even go as far to say that these features rivalled those of the Flip Ultra HD – the video looked sharper, with much more detail being visible.



Inside was unfortunately a different story. We took a video in our lab of a PC from about 30cm away, but unknown to us, this was too close for the Vado HD to focus. The resulting video looked like we'd smeared the lens with Vaseline, such was its blurriness. In fact, the Vado HD was only able to focus when we moved at least 50cm away from the subject - not what you want with a fixed lens if you want to take videos anything happening in close proximity.

This was a great shame, as the auto exposure worked brilliantly indoors - through the blur we could see that objects were well exposed despite the dimly lit conditions. Photos were much the same, although inside there was evidence of white-outs and other issues relating to over-exposure.

Conclusion

The Vado HD 3rd Gen is about as small and light as pocket camcorders come, and is far more of a true pocketable mini camcorder than the Flip Ultra HD, which is an office favourite here at bit-tech. Unfortunately, this has lead to sacrifices in storage capacity and optic quality, which can only reduce its appeal and weaken its position against smartphones and compact cameras.

Outside, the performance of the Vado HD was good, while inside it coped as well as any other mini camcorder we've seen. However it's lack of any kind of macro ability is disappointing, as it rules out a lot of situations you'd want to use it for, especially if this involves videoing your shiny new PC or taking videos of friends on cramped dance floor. Overall, the Vado HD 3rd Gen offers better video quality than its predecessor, which is important. However, with only 4GB of memory, you’ll need to dump video and still images from it fairly regularly – the one hour of HD recording might not even be enough for a night out, let alone a holiday.

The user interface has received a mixed reaction in the office: at best it's a 'you get used to it' kind of thing which means that Creative has taken a step backwards from the more intuitive 2nd Gen Vado HD. Despite the Flip Ultra HD being larger and heavier, it’s the same price as the new Vado HD, offers twice the storage and copes with any situation well. As such, the Flip Ultra HD is still our pocket camcorder of choice.

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Video Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
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• x
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• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

Score Guide