A Device of All Trades; A Master of None

Author's Rating:

Pros: Stealthy take anywhere size, good picture quality, feature packed.

Cons: Weak Mac compatibility, Expensive, Requires wired remote (for music play) and bulky dock.

The Bottom Line: 
If you are looking for your first digital camera, this isn't the one for you. Look for a good 4MP camera. But, the SV-AS10 makes for a great 2nd camera.

Author's Review
I’ve been a big fan of digital cameras ever since I experimented and took one on a trip to Israel in 2000. Nothing beats the instant gratification knowing the picture you just took WILL come out like a digicam. And, when you are out in the desert, you don’t have to bother about carrying around rolls of film that could spoil in the heat or get lost or damaged.

My first digi was a Canon S30 3 mega-pixel. I recently upgraded to the Canon S50 that puts out a whopping 5 mega-pixels. But for all the MP power I have I wanted something I could carry around for those spontaneous pictures that really make memories, or when carrying around a pocket camera just isn’t convenient. I love my S50, but it’s not very stealthy.

Then I noticed the new “wearable” cameras. These are credit card or gum stick sized cameras that really can fit in your pocket. The main criticism of these cameras is that they are toy like. To the contrary…they are James Bond spy material.

I looked at several models. The Casio Exlim and Pentax Optio were great, but too expensive for what I wanted it for. I didn’t want to replace my S50, just supplement it. Then I came across the Panasonic D-Snap SV-AS10 at Newegg.com for $168. That was $100 less than any other place I’d looked. I didn’t know if it was a price mistake or a clearance price, but I bought it, sight unseen.

The D-Snap is a little wider and longer than a credit card. It’s small to be sure. It boasts a 2MP digital camera, a QuickTime video camera, a voice recorder, and an MP3/AAC/WMA player all in one. Not a bad set of features for such a tiny package.

Out of the box my only gripe is that a supplied USB dock is required for both charging and uploading pictures and movies to your machine, or downloading music to the camera. Docks are nice, but not if it’s the only way for the device to function. For example, Apple’s new iPods have docks, but if you are on vacation, you can also just use an optional cable.

I find it ironic that such a micro device would force you to bring along a dock with you on your travels. Even more annoying is that the battery has to be in the camera to charge, so forget about letting a spare charge while you are using your camera. I have to take away a full star for this inconvenience.

The D-Snap is controlled by what Panasonic calls a “jog ball.” It’s orange stub that you want to treat like a joystick. Don’t, or you’ll get frustrated quickly. You just put your thumb over it lightly and then move side to side or up and down. If you have big hands you might want to play with this in the store.

Included in the box is the D-Snap unit, a USB Dock, a USB cable, a battery, an 8MB SD Memory card, a power adapter, Software and drivers on CD, and a manual.

Overall the D-Snap is a beauty. So the question is, does she have brains, or is Panasonic just giving us a lot of slick marketing to drool over?

The Camera

The camera features a 2” (diagonal) screen, a flash, and a rotating lens. Panasonic says the lens rotates so you can see the screen if you want to take a picture of yourself, or you and, say, your significant other. Smart idea except that Panasonic left out one important detail. The flash doesn’t rotate with the lens! That means you can either use the flash OR the screen, but not both. Silly.

Picture quality at the highest level is amazing for the size of this camera. No, its not going let you make crystal clear 8x10s, but no 2MP camera will. I’ve read reviews knocking this camera for “poor quality” pictures. Obviously, they either were not aware they could set their camera to a higher quality picture level, or they just want to complain. That said, I wouldn’t but any 2MP camera as my only digital camera. Its just too limiting if you get that once in a lifetime picture.

Uploading pictures to your computer is fairly simple. On a PC just use the supplied software. It works with most recent flavors of Windows. To my surprise, iPhoto on the Mac side recognized the camera as “IOUSB Device.” It imported all of my pictures with no problems. However, once you disconnect the camera, you have to restart your computer again before it will recognize the D-Snap again.

The Video Camera

Many digital cameras now have what is called a “Motion Video MPEG” feature. This allows you to shoot video that is then formatted into Apple’s QuickTime. Its what I call a “cute” feature because it sounds cool, but in all practicality it’s rarely used. The format is different than what a digital video camera would give you, and the quality is computer use only. It would not translate to a Video CD or DVD very well at all. This is why this feature is rarely used by anyone.

Shooting an MPEG is just as easy as shooting a still picture. Just cycle though the menu and select video, and press the red button. The camera will continue to shoot until you either run out of memory or press the red button again to stop.

Extracting the video is also simple, and is the same for both PCs and Macs. Once attached to the computer the camera will appear as an untitled drive. Usually this is the F drive on PCs, and on Macs will show up as untitled on the desktop. Once you locate the drive just open it and extract the files with the QuickTime logo on them.

The Music Player

The D-Snap plays MP3, WMA, and AAC formatted music. It comes with Panasonic’s SD-Jukebox 4 software. Its kind of a disappointment the D-Snap doesn’t work with common jukebox software like MusicMatch. Mac users are out of luck here, as the music player feature doesn’t work on Macs.

One cool feature of the D-Snap is that if you have a JPEG of album art in your music file it will download that with the song and display the art when the song is played. I’ve never seen any other music player with this feature. On the downside, that art does eat up expensive memory.

As with Panasonic’s bungling with the required dock, they also goofed with the way you control the unit for music play. Rather than have the jog ball control play, you have to use a supplied wired remote. Your headphones fit into the remote and the remote fits into the D-Snap. Your headphones will not fit directly into the D-Snap. Again, it doesn’t make sense to make a small device and then require a big, cumbersome accessory. Fortunately, I have an iPod, which is better for music play anyway.

The Voice Recorder

This one is fairly straight forward, and the D-Snap actually does a good job at this. Just jog the menu to voice record and talk away. The only limitation is the amount of available memory. I didn’t test it out too much, as it’s a feature I’ll never use.

So that is the D-Snap SV-AS10. It lists for $299, and it can be had at various Internet stores for less (as in my case a lot less). At $299 I have to say its over priced. Sure it does a lot of things, but it doesn’t to any of them that great. Along those same lines, if you are looking for your first or only digital camera look elsewhere. You’ll be disappointed with this camera, as cool as it is. There are lots of smallish cameras out there at this price point that take great pictures and don’t limit you to 4x5 prints.

But, if you are looking for a cool spy camera to take with you when no one thinks you have a camera, or you want to supplement your existing camera, this one is a one-of-a-kind device that you are sure to be happy with for some time to come.