Aiptek A-HD Budget Hi-Def Camcorder

A pocket Hi-def camcorder for less than $170 puts the Aiptek A-HD in a league of it’s own price wise and is enough to make you wonder how the rest of the camcorder manufacturers can possibly justify their price structure. The closest in price to this is the Sony NSC-GC1 at $199, but the Sony only shoots standard definition and still manages to cost more money.

OK, the A-HD is no Sony HDR-FX1, but comes equipped with a 5MP CMOS chip and records HD video at a frame rate of up to 30FPS in the following modes: 1280 x 720 (H.264), 720 x 480 (D1), and 352 x 240 (CIF). Stills can be captured in the following sizes: 3200 x 2400 (8MP), 2560 x 1920 (5 MP), 2048 x 1536 Pixels (3MP). Video clips are recorded as .MOV MPEG-4 files and can be stored on SD/MMC cards up to 8GB in size. One hour of 1280 x 720 HD footage or 770 8MP stills will fit on a 2GB SD card.

The A-HD also includes 6MB of internal storage, which is a bit of a joke, because that won’t cover one second of HD video in the highest quality.

Picture quality is as you would expect at this price, but if you want to tell your buddies you shoot in Hi-Def without breaking the bank, this is the one for you.

Amazon.com has it for $139 - get it here