Mass produced camcorders selling for cheap prices have hit the market. The $180 Flip Mino from Pure Digital Technologies Inc. was the smallest and simplest camcorder tested. Both are good attributes when youre making quick videos on the fly.

The Mino weighs just 3.3 ounces, which makes it nimbler than its sibling the Flip Ultra ($150). The Mino has a mostly flat face that features a 1.5-inch LCD screen and a big red recording button.

Its simplicity is also enhanced by a built-in battery that can be recharged by plugging in the flip-out USB dongle that is housed in the top of the Mino. (The other devices I tested lack this recharging ability, but they do have USB prongs that make it easy to connect them with your computer.)

There is no memory card slot on the Flip Mino, but the device includes 2 gigabytes of internal memory, which provides 60 minutes of recording time.

I found this to be more than enough for taking a bevy of short videos (most people wouldnt want to watch more than a few minutes of my “Blair Witch Project”-inspired moviemaking, anyway).

The Mino only has one video quality option – you record at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second. This makes for more-than-adequate YouTube-sized videos on a computer screen. But if you want to blow your videos up to half or full-screen size, you wont be happy with the Mino.

The device has 2x digital zoom, and zoomed in and out in a less jerky fashion than the other devices I tried. But it didnt really add much to the Minos capabilities.

The camera captured sound pretty well, even in noisy situations like a happy hour at a local watering hole.

One simple thing that the Mino includes but some other camcorders lack is a little red light that lets subjects know that you are taping them. The device doesnt have a self-portrait mirror, though, which can make it hard to know if youre filming yourself or your shoulder.

If youre interested in the Mino but want better video quality: Pure Digital plans to release a high-definition camcorder in mid-November. Price details are not yet available.

- Eastman Kodak Co.s Zi6 camcorder ($180) is a step up from the Flip Mino in video quality and recording options. But at the size of a chunky smart phone, it may turn off users who value a sleeker form.

And at 3.8 ounces, it is also the heaviest, even before accounting for the weight of batteries. The Zi6 doesnt have a built-in battery; instead, there are two rechargeable AA batteries and a charger. In a world where myriad devices have at most one removable battery, this seemed passe.

The Zi6s nominal 128 megabytes of internal memory means you must use an SD memory card with the device, and there isnt one included. If you want to make videos in high definition youll need a big card; the devices box recommends a 4 gigabyte one, which I found adequate for numerous short videos.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. You can film in high definition (1280 by 720 pixels at 30 frames per second), HD60 (the same resolution but at 60 frames per second, which is the frame rate in the U.S. for a TV broadcast of that resolution) and VGA (640 by 480 pixels) with the Zi6.

A video I took in HD mode of sea lions at the zoo was crisp and looked pretty good when viewed in full-screen mode, and their burping and splashing were cleanly audible. The videos shot in VGA mode were pretty clear, as long as I didnt blow them up much.

One issue I had – which might be specific to the device I tested – were some black pixel-sized spots on the screen that were most visible when I was filming bright colors. These could be due to dust on the camcorders image sensor, which, unfortunately, is not something a user can really fix.

Source: caang