On and off: You turn it on with a long push of the button on its top—the same button that you push to take pictures. It greets you with the word “WELCOME,” and when you turn it off (again with a long push), its screen adorably says, “BYE BYE.”
Photo and video: The device is easy to use—with the button on the side, you can toggle between photo and video modes and view your content. There’s also an option to shoot with different color filters (I ignore this).
Battery life: On the screen, you can view both the status of the battery and the date and time (the latter displays on every picture you take). The camera lasts 60 minutes on one charge, which is longer than you might think. I plug it in to charge via micro USB about once a month.
Storage: Files live on a micro USD memory card that you can remove from the bottom with a hard push. To view them, you connect the card with the included USB-connectable reader to your computer. It pops up as a folder on your desktop. It took me some fiddling to figure out that if I want to edit the date and time, I have to do this within a text file that’s also on the memory card. The date is often incorrect on my pictures, but I think this adds to the overall charm.
The pros and cons
Because it is so charming—enough so that people will stop me on the street when they spot it, as if I’m walking a Great Dane (or a Microscopic Dane). The camera is a conversation starter in itself. Strangers and friends pepper me with questions and reactions (“I’ve never seen anything like it,” one wide-eyed man told me while I recorded runners at the New York City Marathon).
Its existence seems to bring as much pleasure to everyone else as it does me. The pictures are minute enough that I snap them without looking closely, so that when I finally upload, it’s like developing them for the first time—much like a disposable camera. It curbs my compulsion to immediately edit memories as they happen, leaving me to focus on the moment and less on how “good” the pictures are. In fact, the grainier and more candid they are, the more reflective of reality that they feel.
And yet, as something of a gift, the photos and videos are beautiful in their own right.
They have a faded, sometimes pixelated look, but mostly the results are startlingly clear—and the depth of the audio crisp, without background noise. The camera is lightweight, long-lasting, and with pictures sharp enough that I wind up toting it with me everywhere, dangling from my keys, to capture the seemingly most mundane moments—a bike leaning against a tree, the rotting teeth of a jack-o’-lantern, the blinking neon light of a bar sign. Then there’s the small, sweet moments—video of my goddaughter tottering in her first pair of shoes; my cat caught mid-yawn; a selfie of me and my dad on a date to the symphony. For all those times, my camera is there, documenting without distraction.
So, have you added my $35 mini memory maker to cart yet (which, I should note, would be the perfect small gift idea, stocking stuffer, or White Elephant present)? Even if not, I hope you read this and felt a fraction of the joy that this precious product brings me.
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