The craze for mini versions of everyday items is well and truly here. Whether it’s a fad or not remains to be seen, but one of the latest additions to the trend comes from Canal Toys, who has released its Photo Creator Mini Cam. Available in four different styles – Retro, Pro, Compact and Instant – the tiny camera is capable of taking photos and video. Only around 2 inches in width, the camera comes with a key chain so you can attach it to your keyring or bag, and take it with you wherever you go.
The Mini Cam is easy enough to set-up. It’s packaged with a USB-C cable so that you can charge it, and you simply press the on switch on top of the Mini Cam to turn it on. At the other side is the button to switch between photo and video modes, and you can tap it to take photos. On the side of the camera is a third button that enables you to add filters to images before you take them, and switch on the camera’s light so you can take a better photo. So far, so good.
The first issue I noted with the Mini Cam is that while it does have an internal memory, there’s no way of getting photos stored on it onto a computer or phone. The functionality simply doesn’t exist, which is frustrating and you can only see them on the tiny display on the back of the Mini Cam. There is a slot for a Micro SD card, but the Mini Cam doesn’t come packaged with one. According to the instructions you can only take photos from the camera if you have a Micro SD card, which costs as much if not more than the actual Mini Cam itself.
As I didn’t have a Micro SD card to hand, I wasn’t able to test out this feature of the Mini Cam but to me this seems incredibly flawed. For a device aimed primarily at children, it should be as easy as possible to use but it feels like this is a barrier that most children won’t bother to overcome. Instead they’ll use the Mini Cam and likely barely return to it when they realise they can’t extract or share their photos.
The important thing to remember here is that this is aimed at children. Maybe being able to simply takes photos and see them on the tiny screen will be novelty enough, but I suspect a lot of kids will get quickly frustrated. It’s a great idea in practice but the execution really lets the Mini Cam down.
Photo Creator Mini Cam is unfortunately nothing more than a gimmick. While the Mini Cam looks great and it operates relatively easily, the lack of ability to take photos off the internal memory is a huge flaw. Not everyone will have, or want to buy, a Micro SD card for a device like this, which renders the whole thing pretty useless. Smart phone cameras will offer better overall photo and video quality, but this Mini Cam could have been a cute gift for kids.
Released by: Canal Toys R.R.P: £12.99 Buy Photo Creator Mini Cam now
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