Aiptek's Digital DV4500 Toy

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent sound recording and playback Small size Easy operation

Cons: Poor picture quality No AC adapter

The Bottom Line: 
This camcorder is a lot of fun. For everyday occasions it fills the bill and can occasionally produce acceptable results. Too bad, though, that the picture quality is so lacking.

Author's Review
The Aiptek DV4500 is a sophisticated toy, most of whose many advanced functions are lost to its relatively poor (640 x 480 MP) picture output in stills and videoclips. Regardless of settings (including focus), most pictures are fuzzy, even more so with digital zoom (which really isn’t a zoom at all). Under anything other than ideal lighting, the DV4500 simply cannot make pictures any better than low-VCD quality.

The DV4500’s sound recording and playback, however, are surprisingly good. Its voice recorder, video soundtrack, and MP3 player all work very well. It’s a snap to dump MP3 files to a SD card and play them immediately on the DV4500. Access to input/output panel is awkward, and the necessity of having to open the battery compartment to access the SD card was poorly designed. It is much easier to use standard card readers to read from and write to the SD card than to set up the USB cable and work with the software supplied with the unit.

Still, the DV4500 is a lot of fun--and that’s the bottom line. It’s hard to beat for quick videoclips shared with others on the Web, and this is really what this little wonder was designed to do. It’s just not appropriate for most serious applications. It never fails, however, to gather crowds whenever it appears in public. It’s just a shame that its video output is so limited.