VTech Kidizoom Camera

This digital camera isn’t waterproof and doesn’t have pictures of it bouncing down stairs like the Fisher-Price model, but it is so much more than just a camera. Kids can record videos, play video games, add voice memos, and perform simple photo editing tasks. The camera is rated for kids 3+, which seems right although older kids will use more features than the younger ones.

On the first day we received this camera, we unboxed it and packed in the batteries – a process that involves a screwdriver and not one, but two, battery compartment doors. The Kidizoom started right up and my 4-year-old son took about a hundred pictures. After a few hours he started playing with the buttons on the back and he found that he could take pictures of people with animated “stamps” on them – for instance, a pig nose on mom or a funny nose and glasses on dad. He flipped through the options using the joystick and when he found one he liked, he would stand really still and say something like, “Put your eyes over here.” He would line up my nose with the pig nose and snap his picture.

The “stamp” options include a Viking hat, a pirate hat, bat wings, a funny nose and glasses, googly eyes, a pig nose, yellow cat ears, bunny ears, a car frame, an alarm clock-like frame, a snowy scene, and a curtain frame. My son never got tired of these. The stamps can be added in the “photo workshop” mode, along with various frames, distortion effects, and even animation.

After hours of fun taking pictures of me as a pirate and bunny, my son found the “mode” button. This makes a simple menu pop up with easy-to-understand icons that represent the camera, movies, photo workshop, games, and system settings portions of the menu. He immediately found the games and was hooked for at least a few days – almost forgetting that it was a camera.

The camera has three games – all very simple to play for preschoolers and up. The first is a matching game with 6-8 cards that show the answer for a brief moment before flipping over. The joystick is used to move to different cards and the “OK” button to turn them over. The second game is tic-tac-toe and the third game is a rotation puzzle with 4 or 9 pieces (like the matching game, the game advances with more pieces as you progress). There are a few preloaded images for the puzzle – a turtle, a sunflower, a peacock – but the camera also uses images you’ve taken. This can be fun, but can also be tricky if you get one of those overblown images that is completely white from the bright flash.

Unfortunately this cute camera doesn’t take fabulous photos – albeit they are much better than the Kid-Tough’s photos. They have truer colors and are sharper, but pictures taken while the photographer or subject is moving still come out blurry. The flash is quite bright and since little photographers tend to stand way too close to their subjects, the resulting images are usually a blinding white.

The Kidizoom has a movie mode that went almost unnoticed by my son for several days. He was too busy putting pig noses on me and matching yellow ducks and red trucks. Once I showed him that he could make movies, though, he was captivated. He loves to watch movies of himself, so he wanted me to take videos of him although I wanted him to take videos all by himself (maybe someday…). The Kidizoom videos aren’t fabulous: they are only 160 x 120 pixels and shoot at a choppy 11 frames a second. They are viewed just fine on the LCD screen but look tiny and pixilated on a computer screen. There is a microphone on the camera that picks up audio, and two volume buttons on the back to pump it up or down (and of course kids will pump it up). The audio is decent for a $60 camera, but don’t expect surround sound.

This camera has the ability to connect to a television; it comes with an AV cable and a port on its side. Most kids won’t be able to hook the camera up themselves, but every kid enjoys seeing their pictures on the big-screen.

The Vtech Kidizoom has a body just as big and chunky as the Kid-Tough, but it isn’t waterproof and doesn’t come with any pictures of the camera bouncing down stairs (although I’d like to note that the Kidizoom comes with a 3-month warranty while the Kid-Tough doesn’t come with anything). The Kidizoom comes in several colors: pink, blue, orange, and green. Each model comes with two faceplates for further customization.

There are more buttons on this camera than the Kid-Tough. I thought this might confuse younger kids, but my son fiddled around with the buttons for a few minutes and then after a little tutorial from me, he was fully fluent in performing the functions he really wanted: taking pictures, playing games, and reviewing images. The buttons are easy to push, especially the ever-important shutter button atop the camera. The only complaint I have about the camera is that it’s so heavy little kids can barely carry it around.

Vtech includes a CD with photo editing software that is compatible with Windows, but not Macintosh (But just so there’s no confusion, the camera itself functions on both Windows and Mac platforms). The software is simple; there are only four functions you can choose from: frames, stamps, distortion effects, and animation effects. My 4-year-old isn’t computer savvy yet, so he is not interested in the software at all (which I’m okay with – I like that he has his own camera to play with but now he needs his own computer too?). Still, older kids (maybe 5 or 6+) may really enjoy making animations from their pictures (similar to what screensavers look like) or adding rainbow wigs to their friends’ portraits.

The Kidizoom can store about 200 images on its internal memory, which is plenty – especially for a camera that can only delete one image at a time (although you can delete them all while connected to a computer). However, it’s worth getting a small SD card because when the batteries die (or in my case, when the camera freezes up and you have to take the batteries out and put them back in again to get it to function at all again…), the images on the internal memory are lost whereas images saved to the card will remain.

All in all, the Vtech Kidizoom wins the prize from my son. After playing with this camera for a few days, I tried to get him to pick up the other models and he said, “No, I want the camera that has games on it.” Granted, he didn’t want it to take pictures. But it sure kept him busy and happy. This camera would be perfect for vacationing. It can take photos and videos for those special moments, but it can also keep a kid busy when waiting in line at the airport or sitting at a restaurant waiting for dinner. For that kind of versatility, this camera gets my vote too.

http://www.vtechkids.com/product.cfm?productID=520