No, You Shouldn’t Buy That $60 ‘Vlogging Camera’ From Walmart
This week, a decades-old technology and commerce site recommended taking advantage of a 79% discount on a digital camera which is now available at Walmart for $60. No, you should absolutely not buy this “popular vlogging camera.”
The story praises this compact plastic piece of junk as a screaming deal worth jumping on, but no one should buy this camera under any circumstances. The camera that is currently “on sale” for $60 is an unbranded 4K “vlogging camera” with a flip screen that promises to take 4K videos with its 48-megapixel sensor. Aside from the description that it is a “DSLR camera” type (which should already be a red flag since there is no “reflex” to speak of on this thing), the low price should tell you all you need to know about this e-waste.
This is the same camera that is being listed on Amazon as discounted from $80, so the original price of $290 as advertised on Walmart is completely made up. It is one of several different flavors of crummy, cheap camera that you can buy if you looked at the footage captured on your smartphone and thought, “this doesn’t look crappy enough.”
There are actually more expensive versions of this same general concept wrapped in slightly different camera body shapes, including one that PetaPixel‘s Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake called “the worst camera gear we’ve ever reviewed,” and for good reason.
“The footage is at least 4K as advertised but with heavy doses of over-sharpening and some of the worst rolling shutter anyone will ever witness. Skin tones are a plasticky mess, with no detail whatsoever, and often go from various shades of pink to a spray-tan orange,” the two wrote of their experience with what should be a higher-quality version of the “vlogging camera” available on Walmart, since it has an actual brand name: NBD.
“Although the specs list optical stabilization as being present, this is not truthful in the least. The NBD does have an autofocusing capability which is not capable at all. Often, the focus will search for a subject at minimum focus ranges even though no subject is there to be found.”
All of the benefits of this camera are suspect. It promises 16x digital zoom, which is only going to make the quality of the footage worse. The 48 megapixels are crammed onto a tiny sensor, so low light performance (and even standard light performance) is bad. It has built-in microphones and a mic jack, but as Jordan explains, they don’t work well.
“There is a 3.5mm mic jack which only seems to be for show but the camera does have a built-in microphone that goes from peaked volume levels to what sounds like an interview in a diving bell at random. Jordan cannot in good conscience recommend this camera to anyone, ever,” Chris writes.
“There is no situation where Jordan will ever pick up the NDB vlogging camera again, and we will only hold on to them so that they don’t end up in a landfill. Sadly, the vast majority of products like the ones we tested end up in the garbage all too often. Buyer beware when hunting for deals that are too good to be true.”
There is a litany of these low-quality, super-cheap cameras on Amazon, Walmart, Ali Express, and Temu and not one of them are worth the cost of entry.
Image credits: Actitop
