Kodak Zi6 versus the Flip pocket camcorders: The best camcorder for features

The Flip Mino is smaller than the Flip Ultra or Kodak Zi6.

Zooming and focusing

One reason that these models remain so small is that they have no optical zoom lenses – in all cases you are limited to a digital zoom only.

The Flip Ultra and Flip Mino each have a very basic x2 digital zoom that doesn’t let you get very close to the action. Most disappointingly, the autofocus doesn’t adjust as you zoom, so subjects appear blurred as you zoom in on them, making the zoom rather pointless overall.

The Zi6’s zoom has a problem all of its own – it’s extremely jerky. The digital zoom jerks forward in unnatural steps rather than a smooth gradient, and as with the Flip models the autofocus doesn’t adjust as you zoom.

The Zi6 does have one feature that both Flip models lack – an incredibly basic macro mode for close-up shooting. 

There’s a switch on the side of the Zi6 that adapts the camcorder to macro mode, but you cannot zoom any further after doing this, and you have to hold the Zi6 at a constant distance to your close-up subject in order to maintain focus. 

In practice, this mode is so basic as to barely be worthwhile, though it could conceivably be used if you are filming small toys or models.

Small screens and buttons

A major downside to the Flip Ultra and Flip Mino camcorders is that each has a very small 1.5 inch screen – this is barely much larger than a postage stamp, and the Flip screens are rather unimpressive to look at. 

Virtually all modern mobile phones have larger screens than this.

When it comes to the display screen, the Kodak Zi6 outdoes its rivals in style. The Zi6’s 2.4-inch screen is large and clear, and it does a convincing job of displaying the smoothness of 60fps footage versus 30fps or VGA footage.

The buttons on the Zi6 are rather small and fiddly, however. The central recording button is particularly small and not especially comfortable to use, and the four buttons either side are very poorly separated.

The Flip camcorders have fewer buttons, but what buttons they do have are slightly better delineated and easier to operate – the central recording button is larger than the Zi6’s in both cases.

The Mino is by far the smallest camcorder of the group – it’s only 3.2cm thick, and is roughly the size of a modern mobile phone. The Ultra is larger than this, but is still quite narrow in design.

By contrast, the Zi6 is a much wider device – it’s similar in shape to a Blackberry device. If you’re looking for something which will slip effortlessly into your pocket, then the Flip Mino is the most compact model by far.

All three camcorders have integrated USB jacks which can be extended at the touch of a button. But in all three cases the USB connectors proved to be a little awkward to fit into a laptop or computer due to the body of the camcorder itself getting in the way – a USB extension lead is needed to counter this problem.

The Kodak Zi6 lets you store more footage on a memory card.

Memory and battery

All three camcorders are powered by two AA batteries. The Kodak Zi6 comes with two packaged rechargeable AA batteries and a battery charger.

With the Flip, you are free to buy whichever AA batteries you fancy, though we would recommend high quality rechargeable batteries to save the cost and waste of purchasing non-rechargeable batteries. 

Check the Which? reviews of the best rechargeable and non-rechargeable batteries to see which ones we recommend.

For storing your footage, the Flip Mino and Flip Ultra each have 2GB of internal flash memory. Unfortunately, this is the only memory capacity available – there is no way of using an additional SD card, for example. The 2GB memory is roughly enough for an hour of footage with both Flip camcorders.

The Zi6 comes with 128MB of built-in memory space – of this, only 30MB is available for video recording. 

In practice, this is only enough for a few minutes of recording. However, the Zi6 allows you to use an SD or SDHC memory card for saving your footage to. 

Buying an SD card is an additional expense, though it does give you the freedom of having as much recording capacity as you like. It is also easy to remove the SD card from the Zi6 and use it in other devices or put it into a memory card reader.