Sony Bloggie Live Review: Live-Streaming Pocket Camcorder Performs Well - simpsonderignatim

Much has been written about the smartphone's detrimental impingement connected point-and-shoot camera sales. Not enough has been written more or less an equal bigger casualty of nowadays's do-everything phones: the once-revolutionary pocket camcorder.

Look No encourage than the class-shaping Flip: Originating just five years agone, Pure Digital's bag camcorder caught connected as a surprise hit, became the top-selling camcorder in the United States, and attracted nearly $600 1000000 in a buyout by Cisco. Merely ii years later that sales agreement, Cisco discontinued the Flip ancestry–spell the Flip was still the height-selling video recording camera on the market.

You can run up Flip's abrupt end to the turn out of smartphones, which not only shoot serviceable high-def TV but also allow you to share that footage nearly instantly. In terms of sharing features, however, the Sony Bloggie Live MHS-TS55 ($250 as of March 13, 2012) is the first pocket camcorder extinct there that's putt up a fight.

Sony built the Bloggie Live with indefinite-upping smartphones in mind: According to the company, the product's video capabilities were developed specifically to outshine those in Apple's iPhone 4S and Samsung's Galaxy S 2 phones, and the Bloggie Live is also the first pocket camcorder along the grocery to volunteer live streaming via Wi-Fi and peer-to-peer sharing with smartphones and tablets. It shoots 1080p telecasting, takes 12-megapixel photos, and sports a slick design. Ultimately, though, that all adds dormie to a gifted underdog in a brutal NCAA tournament stacked with powerhouse mobile devices.

Ironware and Features

Although the Sony Bloggie Live has physical buttons for opening and stopping recording, snapping photos, and powering the twist off and on, you access most of the core in-camera features via the Bloggie's 3-inch electrical phenomenon touch screen. An internal 8GB drive handles the storage.

Tapping the camcorder's on-screen Card clit lets you choose from three video resoluteness options (720p/30 Federal Protective Service, 720p/60 fps, or 1080p/30 fps), three photo resolution options (2, 8, or 12 megapixels), a flicker-reduction option for motion-picture photography footage on a TV Beaver State monitor screen, and a 10-forward self-timer for unmanned shots. Other touchscreen controls include a slider that operates the camcorder's 4X whole number-only zoom, and an ikon that powers happening the Bloggie's front-mounted LED lamp. You can turn the Light-emitting diode lamp on or hit while shooting TV or stills, but it doesn't work as a traditional trashy when you're snapping photos.

The Carte du jour button also provides access to the Bloggie Live's wireless sharing features, including live streaming; uploading directly to Facebook, YouTube, and Sony's new PlayMemories Online service; and union the camcorder to another wandering device for showing and sharing items via a smartphone or pad of paper (you'll need to download a free iOS or Android app to your device for the latter feature to work).

The touchscreen was responsive in my tests, but the on-screen out icons can Be a bit small and sometimes take a pair off of presses to register. Although the device lets you powerfulness it off and on, record footage, and snap a photo via physical buttons, having physical controls for the camera's appendage zoom would have been gracious as wellspring. The on-screen rapid growth controls are at the bottom of the touchscreen, and the camcorder supports touch-to-focus and exposure controls while filming; I accidentally zoomed in and refocused a some multiplication while shooting our live-stream tests, simply I can largely attribute it to the fact that I was operating deuce cameras at the same time.

The Bloggie Unfilmed is a corking-looking at, solidly built device, with a brushed-alloy faceplate and a narrowing body that gets thicker at the freighter. This design accomplishes two things: Information technology makes the camcorder look hot in the hand, and IT provides enough area on the bottom for unpaid-standing stand. You'll find a tripod bestrid on the bottom of the Bloggie Live, too, as well as a USB connector that clicks in and out thanks to a take a hop-loaded hinge. One nice touch is the included USB extender cable, which comes in handy if your computer's USB porthole is in a hard-to-ambi place for charging the device and offloading clips.

Radiocommunication Sharing

I tested the Bloggie's go-streaming capabilities over our office's Wi-Fi connection, which requires a password for access. After you select 'Live Cyclosis' from the Bloggie Computer menu and pick an access point, an on-screen keyboard pops up in landscape mode to take into account you to enter a parole. It worked without a hitch for me, although the Bloggie Live's screen–small in comparison with that of a smartphone–demands a bit more finesse to bid the right keys.

Cyclosis video as wel requires setting up a free Qik account using a device other than the Bloggie Live itself. Again, this part of the process worked arsenic advertised, and a dedicated 'Looking to broadcast live with your Sony Bloggie?' part on the Qik sign-up page makes unprecedented registrations a trifle easier.

During my active tests, I filmed a few clips side away side using the Sony Bloggie Current (over Wi-Fi) and the Malus pumila iPhone 4S (over a 3G connection), having loaded both devices with the suited Qik app. I colorful the clips at the highest solution that Qik's streaming app supports for apiece gimmick: 480 by 240 pixels with the Bloggie Live, and 352 by 288 pixels with the iPhone 4S.

You tin see the results for yourself: Watch the simultaneously streamed footage from the Sony Bloggie Live and the iPhone 4S.

In addition to the discrepancies in resolution, the clips had noticeable differences in effigy quality, many of which you'll see by viewing the tryout footage. The Bloggie Live's video recording broadly looked sharper and handled dramatic changes in lighting conditions Thomas More seamlessly, but its white balance was a bit off, creating a noble cast in most indoor scenes. The iPhone 4S tended to reproduce colors more realistically, but it besides struggled more visibly with backlighting issues, and information technology tended to oversaturate colors in some cases.

Note that the Bloggie Live also did a better job in correcting the "wobble" resulting from walk-to with the camcorder; its digital stabilization system worked well in our tests. Tout ensemble, the Bloggie Live showed amended contrast, detail, backlight-correction, and shiver-discipline when live-streaming picture, patc the iPhone 4S produced more-colorful TV with good white balance.

One of the comparative benefits of live-streaming video with the Bloggie Live is that the camcorder also saves a 1080p interpretation of to each one cyclosis clip every bit you're filming it. When you use the Qik app for the iPhone 4S, the streaming footage is the only transcript you get, and the app doesn't make unnecessary a chockful-HD version of the video to your camera peal. This is one area in which the Bloggie Unrecorded outshines most streaming-capable smartphones, as you have the option of uploading a 1080p video separately after your live-stream is complete. However, you'll penury to upload the 1080p clips by yourself later; the Bloggie Be's Qik app doesn't automatically replace the let down-resolution clips with squeaky-definition versions subsequently the broadcast is done.

Outside of the live-streaming mode, you can pair the Bloggie Live to your phone or tablet for viewing images and offloading them to the mobile twist's depot wirelessly. To enable remote showing, you need to download the free Sony PlayMemories Ambulant app to your iOS or Android device; the app acts as a viewer and a downloading interface for the videos and images you deprivation to lay aside. Once you select 'Look at on Smartphone' from the Bloggie Live's menu, the Bloggie Untaped shows in the lead as an access point in your earpiece or tablet's Wi-Fi settings, and you enter a parole that appears on the camcorder's screen. The entirely setup process takes about a minute.

In my workforce-along tests, I was fit to transfer a 6-minute video from the Bloggie Live to the iPhone wirelessly in a little more than a second, but the resulting television was a much smaller size up than your average inborn iPhone video (realize the screenshot to the leftmost). Wireless even so-image transfers took about a second or two each, and they also appeared downscaled from their full 12-megapixel resolution; once they reached the iPhone, they ended up every bit 1920-aside-1440-pixel images (simply short and sweet of 3 megapixels). Total, the mobile receiving set-sharing function works in good order, as long As you're willing to deal with lower-resolution images and video once you've beamed them over to another device.

The Bloggie Live also supports direct uploads from the camera to social-networking and sharing sites, which are limited to a few options–Dailymotion, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube–in the device's 'Post and Partake in' menu. In my tests, I uploaded an image to Flickr in about a second, and sent a minute-long-wooled video to YouTube in just a few seconds. Again, however, some downsizing happens in the background: A 12-megapixel photograph shrank to 0.7-megapixel solution in say to upload quickly, and a 1080p telecasting became a 640-by-360-pixel version in my YouTube test.

Video Quality and Image Upper-class

In our lab-supported subjective tests for still and TV quality, the Sony Bloggie Live earned an overall score of Very Commodity. Contempt performing very well for a small-size camcorder, IT failed to clearly outshine some of its famed smartphone competitors in the same tests.

The Bloggie Live received oodles of Very Bang-up for overall television quality and audio quality in our movie tests, also as Very Good Simon Marks for vulnerability quality and color accuracy in our still-effigy tests. However, all of that added up to about the said aggregate mental imagery tons as we byword from the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II, the two camera phones that Sony was hoping to outgun with the Bloggie Live.

During my active tests, the Bloggie Liveborn well-tried a creditable alternative to a basic compact point-and-flash camera in image quality. The jot-to-focus controls work well, and the Bloggie has decent macro capabilities (around 2 inches away from the subject) that give rise a knee-deep depth of field.

You can view the sample images and video we shot for our Bloggie Live subjective tests here, also as the videos we shot with the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy S II for comparison purposes. Select 1080p in the bottom-right corner of to each one instrumentalist to see the highest-resolution video we recorded with from each one device.

iPhone 4S

Bottom Line

Without a doubt, the Sony Bloggie Live is the most versatile pocket camcorder we've tested in price of wireless streaming, peer-to-peer sharing, and smooth-image resolution. Admittedly, information technology lacks a couple of effectual features found in Kodak's Zi8, such as a mic-in port, a dedicated macro/landscape toggle, and removable storage. Is it a compelling alternative to a higher-end smartphone? That depends on whether you already own a smartphone, and on how much you value the Bloggie's live-streaming skills.

The Bloggie Live is a very good video performer; outside of its streaming mode, though, it didn't produce listen-bogglingly superior telecasting in comparison with the top smartphones it was built to compete against. When shooting 1080p video, it was strictly on a equality with the output of smartphones such atomic number 3 the Apple iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy S II, although it does have better stabilisation features and output signal controls than some of those phones. In live-streaming mode, the Bloggie Live produces a few more benefits, including cardsharp video and the option of saving the streaming footage atomic number 3 a senior high-definition 1080p clip to its hard drive.

If you're looking specifically for a air pocket camcorder, the Bloggie Experience is a solid option, with wireless unselfish features that you won't find in whatever other model. If you'atomic number 75 seeking a handheld device to put back or augment the 1080p video or figure of speech-fascinate quality of your phone, the Bloggie Live largely matches the output of today's top phone cameras. And if you're shopping for a dedicated picture-streaming device that won't fret your phone's data plan operating room battery life, the Bloggie Unfilmed whitethorn be worth the Leontyne Price.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/469067/sony_bloggie_live_review_live_streaming_pocket_camcorder_performs_well.html

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