RCA Small Wonder EZ201 Digital Camcorder Review

I’ve been playing with the EZ 201 all day today, and I have to say that I’m very, very impressed.

I bought the EZ201 as a ‘GEFY’ (Good Enough For Youtube) camcorder. That’s precisely what I got, and a little bit more.

So what do you get for your money?

You get a digital camcorder less than the size of two packets of cigarettes, that is not only incredibly easy to use, but also has surprisingly good picture quality.

Let me start with the ease of use. Even the most dedicated technophobe will find the EZ201 a total breeze to use. The camcorder has the grand total of five buttons, not counting the on/off switch. A record start/stop, a play/pause, a delete button and a directional pad.

To use you simply turn it on, point it at what you want to shoot and press record. When you’re done you press the same button again. A tap of the play button lets you view the video you’ve just recorded and the directional pad lets you navigate through videos you’ve already recorded.

You can view the videos you’ve recorded by plugging the camera directly into the RCA inputs on your TV, but transferring the video to your computer is where the EZ201 really shines.

You just pop out the USB connector and plug it into your computer. From there, everything else is almost done for you. The software self-installs from the camera itself, and you simply click the thumbnails of the videos you want to download and it downloads them, creating a shortcut to the folder on your desktop.

This software also comes with a very basic editor package (allowing you to set the start and stop points of each separately captured video and save them on your computer as one complete file), as well as options to email your videos directly from the camera.

In fact, if you’re a total technophobe, and find even this beyond you (even though a child could do it), take the camera to a participating retailer, and they’ll download and burn your videos to a DVD for you.

Ok, by now you should have got the point that it’s pretty much impossible to make this camera any easier to use…but what about the quality?

Well, as standard, the EZ201 can store 30 minutes of video at high-quality (640 by 480), or an hour at half resolution. The good thing with this is that unlike competitors like ‘The Flip’, the EZ201 can take SD cards. Given how cheap SD cards are now (you can get a two gigabyte SD card on newegg.com for under twenty bucks), this is a serious advantage.

So how does the video look?

I can honestly say I was surprised. It surpassed my expectations. I plugged the camera directly into my TV and I’d say the video quality was on a par with a regular VHS video camera (when recorded in high-quality).

I have to say that obviously the picture quality isn’t as good as a full-sized mini-DV or DVD camcorder, but considering the camera is only about two inches bigger than a deck of cards, and costs around a hundred bucks, you’re obviously not interested in having the best quality picture and sound.

Long story short, if you accept this camera for what it is, something to slip into a pocket or purse and carry with you, or take a video of the next family barbecue, it’s better than what you’d actually need. While I definitely wouldn’t recommend it to capture high-quality movies to play on a 60 inch HD TV set, if like me you’re more interested in video for the web, it will more than satisfy your needs.

Even the battery life is impressive. If you use high-quality batteries (the EZ 201 takes two AA batteries), such as the energizer lithium cells, you can expect to get around seven and a half hours of recording.

Another positive note is even though this camera is small and really light, it feels solid, and not cheap and plasticy like I was expecting.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of downsides.

The first is the microphone. It’s just not very sensitive. While its not ridiculously quiet, I tried this out in the car, and had real difficulty making out the conversation over the engine. However, this isn’t a huge issue because the camera only has 2x digital zoom, meaning you won’t be shooting anyone from a distance anyway.

Secondly, the digital zoom isn’t great and results in noticeable pixilation when used.

The only other downside I noticed was baffling.

When viewing videos directly from that camera, the picture quality is absolutely awesome considering the size of the camera, with almost zero pixilation in good lighting conditions.

However, for some reason, when that same video is transferred to the computer, the picture quality suffers slightly. Whereas on my TV I saw zero pixilation and compression artifacts, there were a few more when the downloaded video was viewed on my PC. It’s not a drastic drop, but a drop nonetheless.

Anyway to close:

Good points:

Good picture quality.

Good battery life.

Amazing portability and ease of use.

Intuitive software

Bad Points:

Sound is a little too quiet.

Picture Quality suffers after transfer to PC.

In the end, I’d highly recommend this camera to anyone interested in web-video. It’s more than worth the money and is better than you’d expect for the price.