Do yourself a favor and Google around for the numerous problems people have had with this unit before buying.
This product has many users who are complaining that the lens glass broke without much effort.
I have owned it for a few weeks, and had my glass lens break this weekend when it was in my pocket... When I took it out, the lens glass was broken. I wasn't dancing or running or anything crazy, I was walking down the sidewalk with it in my pocket. I've owned many digital cameras and have never seen anything like this!
Worse yet, every person who has reported the problem has consistently said that Flip Video (owned by Cisco) refuses to acknowledge a design problem with the product and refuses to honor any sort of warranty on their flawed product. They say they're not responsible for any accidents of misuse. I don't consider putting it into my pocket while not using it to be misusing it or an accident. I've had more digital cameras than I can count and have never broken one, let alone had it break by simply putting it into my pocket.
Furthermore, they say the glass piece isn't repairable or replaceable, even though it's just a flat piece of glass that covers the actual lens.
Outside of the flawed design, there are a few issues I have with the camera itself. There is another design flaw whereby when you plug it in to your computer to charge, it overheats. I've gotten the "too hot to charge" error numerous times after it's been plugged in for only a few minutes. You drain the battery, plug it in to echarge it, only for it to tell you its too hot to charge? This makes no sense.
The camera's controls are way too over-simplified. Every digital camera I've ever had has had about 20x more features than this thing. This thing is on/off, zoom in/out. That's it. No bells or whistles.
The included software is very simplistic. Basically what you can do is download the videos from it. You can't even crop or merge video files together, which is really annoying, since every time you stop the video to pause it creates a new file that you then have to take into your own video editing software to merge with the prior files. I didn't expect it to come with Final Cut, but basic functionality would be nice.
Also, the file format used to store the videos is not compatible with uploading to Facebook. You would have to convert the file to another format to upload to Facebook.
There are no cables that go with this camera... To plug it in you flip an arm open. Before I imagined the lens issue even, I imagined the first problem would be this arm breaking. Basically the entire camera's weight rests on the arm of your USB port and the USB arm when you have it plugged into your computer. They also say in their warranty that this USB arm isn't repairable or replaceable. They're willing to sell you a USB extension cable to not have this happen for $25. But why not just provide one?
As far as I can tell, this is a cheaply made product relying heavily on trendy marketing and sold by a company that's unwilling to back that up with any sort of customer service. Buyer beware.Get more detail about Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black).
Lefthit