Avon Sharper Image Camcorder

Happy Anniversary to me.  It is not a blogging anniversary, but tomorrow is my wedding anniversary.  You may or may not have noticed, but I have a banner on this blog for Avon.  It is for my wife who is now selling Avon, and it is a link to her site.  For my present, my wife bought a portable camcorder made by Sharper Image for Avon.

I am a gadget guy.  I love getting little electronic toys.  A couple weeks ago, I was browsing through one of my wife's Avon catalogs and saw this little camcorder.  So I casually mentioned that  it would make a great present for somebody, hint, hint.  She was originally going to give it to me as a Christmas present, but decided to give it to me for our anniversary so that I could show it to some co-workers who might be interested in it.

The camcorder is very compact.  It can easily fit into a shirt pocket or purse.  In addition to being a camcorder, it also comes with the following functions, digital camera, photo album, mp3 player, mp4 video player, games, calendar, FM radio, e-book, voice recorder, and PC web camera.  It comes with 128MB flash memory built in and can be expanded to 4GB with a mini SD card.  It also comes with earbuds, USB cable, electric charger, and carrying case.

As a camera, it really doesn't take high resolution photos.  It does take pretty clear pictures that could probably make decent 4x6 prints.  For my purposes, though, I will most likely use it for snapshots to use for this blog.  It works pretty well for those purposes.  Below is a snapshot taken with the camera.

The camcorder function is pretty nice, and the best feature on the camera.  It is not a high def camera that you will want to watch on TV, but for nice basic videos to share on YouTube or for blogging, it does the job for me.  The video example below is kind of shaky because I was walking while recording.  I think, though, that you get a pretty good idea of the video quality.

About the only thing that I don't like about the camera is that there is no zoom feature at all.  You also need it to be fairly bright.  I am not sure if it was the brightness in the house, or the CFL bulbs we use, but the pictures that I took in my house had a bit of a greenish yellow hue.

All in all, though, I am pretty happy with my anniversary gift.  I think it would make a great gift for a husband or a wife.  It will soon be on sale at my wife's Avon site for $79 with a $20 purchase.  The regular price is $129. 

UPDATE:
At the request of a commenter, I am adding a new picture to this post at the highest resolution available on the camera.  This is 1280x960.  If you click on the picture it will open at full size.