You Say You Want A Revolution? Notes on the Polaroid Pixie Video Camera

Back in the late '80s Fisher-Price came out with a chunky cam for tweens that used audiocassettes as a video recording medium, playing back pixelated black-and-white directly through eager kids' TVs and inspiring a contemporary auteur subculture. FP parent company Mattel was among the first on the scene again in 2005 with its Vidster, a handheld DV camera with no LCD screen that was aimed at kids 8 and up. Hasbro checked in that same shopping season with its VCam Now, which disappointed parents of kids in its target 8 and up demographic with its poor video quality. We think Polaroid, a new entrant this year into the kids' media device market, is taking some major strides forward. As much as we like their Polaroid Pixie digital camera, we think the line's new digital video camera is their biggest success story yet.

Even in those early days of the Fisher-Price PXL 2000, the problem with kids' versions of these adult electronics was obvious. I was nine at the time, and had an uncle who only a year or two away from letting my cousin and I make short films with his real video camera; kids are among the most unforgiving when it comes to treating technological shortcomings as a form of character, and we would have scoffed at the PXL's lousy quality, if we'd ever even heard of it. Today, with DV prices dropping steadily and new technological advances every year, the gap between sexy kid-tech concepts and consumer reality is even starker: There's no reason why eight- to twelve-year-olds can't handle a used or slightly outdated "adult" digital video camera, and in terms of both price and features, using an old camcorder is an affordable learning experience in the proper handling of electronics.

The Fisher-Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera changed a lot of perceptions about the audience "kids' versions" of digital devices should be focusing on, and in the year-plus following its initial launch we've seen companies redesign everything from music players (Sandisk's Sansa Shaker) to computers (the LeapFrog ClickStart, the Comfy EasyPC) to reach preschool demographics.

There are three places to go with tech devices for kids ages three to six that make any sort of sense: lowering the price, increasing durability, and enhancing usability. Polaroid has taken the second and third of these in stride, and as for the first, the Pixie has entered a product area that has been temporarily evacuated, and seems comfortable at the established $80 selling price. (The Vidster and VCam both launched at $80 but have fallen out of production and now sell via scant retailers for the price-gouging rates of $150 and $175, respectively, and the only other new digital video camera brought to market this year, RipRoar's Digital Creation Station, has been met with withering reviews and appears to have major bugs.)

Polaroid stakes its claim with a bold move towards simplicity. Mattel and Hasbro's moves in digital video were downright conservative compared to the streamlining and rethinking Polaroid has done with its new Pixie camcorder, which hits what we believe is the new sweet spot: devices for kids too young to manipulate slightly outdated adult electronics but old enough to start feeling their way through the world with creative digital devices.

At three and a half, Z is just barely able to use the Pixie camcorder, and not very productively - there's a hand-eye coordination required of small devices like this that hasn't quite registered. But based on the camera's streamlined functions and friendly style, we think she'll be a pint-sized Pennebaker by the time she's four or five. This gives potential users a few solid years before they're really ready to handle Mom and Dad's handed-down digital video camera.

The Pixie has a 1.5" TFT LCD color screen that is easy to see outdoors, even in moderately bright sunlight. (TFT, or thin film transistor screens are used in digital TVs and are brighter and clearer than the standard LCDs in most kids' digital equipment.) The camcorder weighs in at 3.5 ounces, with two AA batteries and an SD card bringing it up to just over five. Its dimensions are designed for small hands, standing just over 3" tall, just under 3" deep, and with a body under 1" wide, and its features are extremely simple: there is a still photo button, a record button, a zoom toggle, and two buttons used for browsing menus to play back and delete clips. The camera turns on automatically when you open the clamshell screen, and shuts off when you close it. There's a USB jack and a TV out jack for playing the videos from the camera on your television, and hidden under a screw panel are two AA batteries and an SD slot.

Video is captured at 1.3 MP, and the native capture quality appears better than our limited experience with cell phone cameras, but the Pixie's automatic adjustments to different lighting conditions are as choppy as cell phone camera users are accustomed to. Uploading to a web-sharing service like YouTube makes things look worse. We played with this camera on a trip to Seattle last week, and the videos below, shot last week on a trip to Seattle, look significantly better on our computer.

Here we are playing outside the Pacific Science Center with its fabulous water toys:



Here we are riding the monorail to get there, one of the highlights of the excursion for both Z and her cousin G:



Here's Z playing with her grandfather, and then a shot of a model train set on display in the Seattle Center's food court. This video deteriorated the most when we exported it and uploaded it to YouTube, but I thought I'd share it anyway because the parents most likely to invest in this device are going to be using social media to share videos with friends and relatives, not trying to email them around.


We believe that parents interested in getting their kids engaged in digital video can't make the same rigorous demands for quality imaging that they now can with digital still photography, so we are loathe to apply the same standards as we did in our Digital Camera Showdown. We think the Pixie does a good enough job that parents and kids can benefit from and enjoy the product, and the $80 price point looks reasonable to us.

There is an odd, additional challenge when designing video devices for very small children: the amount of "jiggle" in captured video increases as the camera dimensions shrink, and young children are very jiggly already. It will be interesting to see how digital video cameras evolve to accommodate this. A head-mounted camera would help reach the youngest users by eliminating the hand-eye coordination gap; what kid doesn't know how to look at the thing they're interested in? Another divergence from the "handheld" model could be a bigger design, as long as cameras maintained a low weight. Young children might do well with a dinner-plate-sized camera with handles on each side that they aimed at their target; the LCD could be swapped out with a giant viewfinder. The limiting factor in drastic redesigns is really parents' perceptions of what a digital video camera should look like.

As for the Pixie's basic features, we think Polaroid could take this camera even a bit further and strip out the zoom function; a 2.0 optical zoom isn't enough to get you significantly closer to your subject, and feels like a vestigial, obligatory feature that won't get much use. The same goes for the internal memory; in the case of a digital video camera, the Pixie's 16 MB isn't much different than the previous Vidster and VCam's 32 MB; it isn't enough, and we'd rather see a lower price.

There is probably a bit more that could be done to protect the flip-out screen's hinge, which is surely the device's weakest point and is particularly vulnerable considering that it must be kept open if you want the camera to stay on. Overall, though, the Polaroid Pixie Video Camera seems durable enough for a four-year-old.

We are excited to see Polaroid moving the ball forward in creating devices useful to a younger demographic than the "eight and up" that has dominated media devices for twenty years, and we're even more excited to see what kids do with these new technologies as they become more accessible. Based on its ease of use, design, and overall quality, we're giving the Polaroid Pixie Video Camera our Top Pick status, and will be adding it to our 2007 Gift Guide as well.

You can purchase the Polaroid Pixie Video Camera from Amazon.com in pink/yellow or blue/orange for $80.