Question for You All
July 3, 2008 by Karen Weideman
Filed under toys
We want to buy Alligator a digital camera for her birthday. She will be turning five and her younger brother will also be using the camera. We need something that is durable and will hold up well, yet take decent pictures. We’re willing to pay a little more to get one that will do what we need.
We’re looking at getting a VTech Kidizoom camera. It sells for $60 and it allows you to take photos and movies and then view them on the camera, or on your tv or pc. You can also hook it up to your tv to play games. It includes all the cables that it needs for the tv and computer, a wrist strap, 2 changeable faceplates, a photo editing program on cd-rom, and 16MB internal memory.
Have any of you used this camera? If so, do you think it’s a good camera? If you have another one you’d recommend, please let me know. We don’t mind spending the $60. We just want to be happy with the purchase. Thanks for your help!
My son has the Kidizoom camera. It’s great for a kid’s camera – durable; takes decent quality pictures AND it has a game feature that my son enjoys. I recommend it.
I don’t have any first hand experience with kid’s cameras, but I remembered Z Recs reviewing some late last year. I found their review for you:
http://zrecs.blogspot.com/2007/11/zrecs-kids-digital-camera-showdown.html
They also had done a review back in 2006 that might help – just keep in mind it’s older
http://zrecs.blogspot.com/2006/12/best-camera-for-toddlers-and-young.html
Hope that helps.
Coral: How funny that you sent that article to me. My husband also found it and we have been reading it. I even gave the article a thumbs up on stumble upon. We’re thinking the vtech may not be a good choice now, especially finding out that it deletes the memory on the camera if the batteries go dead.
If you are dead set on getting a “kids camera,” I would recommend the entire line that is licensed by Disney. My younger sister has one, and she uses it for decent (not great) looking stills and for youtube videos (her youtube account has an impressive number of viewers).
However, it might be worth thinking about to get an entry level regular point and shoot in your price range. They aren’t packaged with “fun and games” software, but they usually make up for that in quality. If you can find a reasonably priced lower end HP or Kodak camera, you will be so happy with your point and shoot results. I used to sell a lot of HP’s to people in your situation and they were always really pleased with the end results.
We wanted to get a kids camera because they’re more durable. With a regular camera, I’d be really concerned about her dropping it and it breaking into a bunch of pieces.
i don’t really know which kid’s camera to recommend. at her age though, i would definitely go with a “kid’s camera” for the durability. one of my daughters borrowed another daughter’s camera that i had bought her for christmas. she dropped it or it was knocked off the table or something or other and the button you pushed to take the pics popped off and of course, she couldn’t find it. it was a fairly good camera so i took it ionto the repair shop to have the button replaced….$50.00. i would definitely go with a child’s camera!!!!
I like the Fisher Price Kid Tough because it has a case as well.
http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=2620&e=cameralanding
We LITERALLY just bought my yo dd a camera for her birthday. We bought a camera called “The Bean” from Best Buy. It was $60 and we had to buy an SD card. The camera is not a kid camera, but it is designed to clip on for people to take with them hiking, mountain biking, etc. I like it because it its perfect in her little hands, it has a bg loop that shecan hold o to easily and it has an LCD screen. It does not take great indoor picture, but at 3 she doesn’t really mind. It is also rechargable (charger comes with it), so I don’t have to worry about batteries, it also comes with the USB cable and software. Easy to use, durable- and it takes better pictures than the kids cameras.
We got the VTech at Christmas for our son, it was on sale at Target with the case for $49.99 (I’d look on line to find a similar price). It has 16mb of internal memory (FP only has 8, unless they updated since then) and takes an SD card to avoid losing images if the batteries go.
My son was only 2 1/2 when we got it, and he loves it. No problems figuring out how to use it, and there are good features for kids who are older and more computer savvy. A great camera for little ones!
We have the VTech one, but we still haven’t opened it yet. We’re trying to do more research before we open it. I’d hate to spend $60 and not be happy with the purchase. Thanks for your input!