Rating

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RCYCFGUCFC9W9 This thing is fantastic. I tried the Oregon Scientific ACT3K and the picture quality of the Muvi is far better.

The Veho folks aren’t doing us or themselves any favors by shipping it with such a sub-standard memory card though. At first I was slightly disappointed until I place in a 4Gb class 2 MicroSDHC card I had lying around. What an improvement. I’ve got a couple 8Gb class 6 cards on the way so I should be all set.

Some things to note:

1. Files are limited to 30 minutes at which time it will start a new file.

2. For some reason all files are dated 12/31/2000 12:00 AM

3. Files are huge. The 3:25 min. video I submitted was edited in Movie Maker and saved as a WMV at 2mbps and is 52Mb. The original raw 5 minute AVI file at 64kbps was 175 mb.

4. The audio is dreadful but not really an issue for me.

The edited video in WMV was as close as I could get to the original. There was only a slight loss in quality.

Rating

I do a lot of walking, typically 3 to 6 miles every day from my home to my work, or to nearby businesses. Like most pedestrians, I’ve had my share of close calls with inattentive and careless drivers. After recently being hit by a car (fortunately, I wasn’t too terribly hurt), I started looking for a small videocamera that I could wear to record what happened during my walks. The Veho MUVI seemed ideal, and I’ve now had a couple of days to use it. So here are my impressions:

(1) The MUVI is both smaller and heavier than I expected. It came with a rotating clip to hook to the front of my shirt, and a lanyard to wear around my neck. It looks and feels quite sturdy. I wouldn’t want to bounce it off a sidewalk, but it certainly feels tough enough to endure normal handling, or being dropped a small distance. It does get warm to the touch while recording.

(2) Despite what the product photos on Amazon show, the camera must be mounted or carried vertically, not horizontally, with the lens on top for proper orientation. The video quality (640 x 480 pixels) is brilliant given the lens size, and the Muvi quickly adapts between outdoors and indoors lighting changes, and gives very excellent results with both.

(3) As many others have pointed out, the 2 GB card that comes with the MUVI is simply inadequate. Buy yourself an 8 GB microSDHC class 6 card. The MUVI requires about 2.6 GB per hour of recording, so the 8 GB card will provide sufficient capacity for about 3 hours of video, which should be more than enough given the battery life of the MUVI.

(4) Despite what the instructions say, you cannot record while the MUVI is being recharged. On the other hand, with two MUVIs, four 8 GB SDHC cards, and a USB auto charger, you could record an entire 12-hour road trip by charging one MUVI while recording with the other.

(5) My Macbook mounts the MUVI exactly like a USB thumb drive whenever it is plugged in. Videos can be easily dragged and copied, or dragged and deleted. The MUVI does not support high-speed USB data transfer, so I recommend that you get a high-speed SDHC card reader if you want to copy off movies quickly.

(6) Audio quality is adequate but not very impressive. The voices of the people I talk to really sound clearer than my own, and are understandable as long as you don’t have a lot of background noise. You could probably know a conversation recorded in a silent room, in my opinion, but I wouldn’t gamble on it in a large crowd.

(7) Best of all, the MUVI doesn’t look like a videocamera. I’ve had lots of people look right at it and not realize what it was. I’m guessing they dismissed it and assumed it was an MP3 player or some sort of Bluetooth earpiece. It is ideal for discreet recordings, especially if you find yourself dealing with government authorities and want a video record of your interactions with them. (First make sure to review the wiretapping laws for wherever you live.)

So what would I like to see for a future version of the MUVI? Full HD quality recordings, longer battery life, better audio, and right optical stabilization would be a nice wish list, although fitting any of them into the MUVI’s form factor would require a lot of engineering effort. Nevertheless, the MUVI is still an incredible small videocamera for its size and cost, and I’m looking forward to using it extensively in the coming months.

Rating

Bought one of these and promptly rigged it up on the tiedown mount of an RV8 aircraft and flew it thru barrel rolls and high speed (200mph+) passes at airport. Camera did a very excellent job, only a slight pause for some unexplainable, reason (very slight). Handled the lighting variables in excellent shape. Brilliant for the cost, and this is coming from a retired USAF Motion Picture Cameraman who has done several kinds of these applications on higher speed aircraft.

Rating

This is an incredible small device. Shoots 640X480 color video an an utterly smooth framerate. Makes AVI files on SD media. Multiple files, looks like it makes a new one every 30 minutes of video. But simple to join multiple files if you are shooting for that long. And it will run for a long time — I place a 4GB Class 4 mini SD in it and ran it continuously for over 90 minutes with no issue. Charged it back up off the USB port in less than an hour. Comes with a removable clip to help mounting the camera. Also works fine as a web camera. Awesome.

Only thing I want to see is the ability to rotate the camera lens orientation 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise (for situations where a horizontal vs vertical orientation of camera body is required).