VCamNow Digital Video Camera

$79.99, Smart Toy

Teaches: creativity, photography, videography, editing

CTR Review

Note: See VCamNow 2.0. Finally -- an affordable digital camcorder that works with kids. The camera has a built in preview screen and speaker, for instant gratification. It is small, and easy enough to use so that a busy parent can figure out how to use it. It also can last least a few days on standard AA batteries, and plugs into any TV or computer, letting a child to show off his or her work. There's also a crude zoom, LED "record" light, editing software, and self timer features as a bonus. As you might expect, sound and video quality is limited to just better than the typical webcam, and the one channel sound is fair at best; plus there's not much out of the box capacity -- the camera comes with 32MB of RAM that equals just seven minutes of AVI video. This can be easily expanded, however, with a handy SD memory card port. Our tester, was able to import the video into a Windows computer with no extra software -- thanks to the fact that our XP computer automatically recognized and played the AVI clips. The camera includes software allows you to burn video disks for your Hasbro's $48 VideoNow personal media player. The screen can be hard to pry open (the snap is too tight) and the camera does not do well in low light. It might look like a toy, but this camera successfully combines ease of use with the basic features, that keeps kids smiling on both sides of the viewfinder.