This Cheap Camera Has a Huge Screen, a Tiny Sensor, and Plays Music
Alongside importing and selling many foreign products, Japanese company Saeda also makes some things itself, including under its internal “BECKS” and “Be” brands. Through the former, Saeda has just announced a new digital camera, the Becks B-Quest BQ1, and it is an interesting mixed bag of style and specs.
As reported by DC.Watch, the Saeda Becks B-Quest BQ1 has immediate market appeal thanks to its price tag of just 18,800 yen, which is just under $120 at current exchange rates. As shown by the $140 Kodak PixPro FZ55, the best-selling camera of 2025 at Map Camera in Japan, cheap cameras can be extremely successful.
However, just like with the PixPro FZ55 and its small sensor and even smaller lens, there are compromises. In the case of the Saeda Becks B-Quest BQ1, the company is cutting corners more on the inside of the camera than the outside. In fact, from the outside, the BQ1 looks pretty nice, especially for its price point. Having the circular red “10x” zoom badge on the front look like a Leica logo is a shrewd move, and one other companies have tried before. The 10x zoom is entirely digital, by the way.
The BQ1 also has a shockingly large rear display. The compact digital camera sports a 4-inch touchscreen, which occupies much of the back of the camera. The IPS LCD touchscreen has just 854 x 480 resolution.
The rear screen is not the only notable thing about the back of the BQ1. The camera itself has a camera, positioned above the rear screen, allowing users to easily capture selfies. This is a 5-megapixel unit with a tiny Type 1/3.2 sensor.
Speaking of small sensors, the “main” camera, the one on the front of the BQ1 that has a built-in 25mm equivalent prime lens, has an 8-megapixel Type 1/2.9 sensor, much smaller than the main cameras on most modern smartphones. As mentioned above, this is a fixed lens, so the promised 10x zoom is entirely digital. An 8MP camera doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room, so users can expect these digital crops to be best served sticking to social media applications. The camera does have built-in Wi-Fi, so it should be relatively straightforward to transfer photos to a smartphone.
The camera captures JPEG photos, features 15 creative filters, and has a cold shoe on top that accepts an optional add-on mini LED. The BQ1 also records 4,096 x 2,304 video, which is a bit above the typical 4K UHD resolution, at up to 30 frames per second. It records to a microSD card slot and has a built-in battery that charges over USB-C.
But wait, there’s more. The Saeda Becks B-Quest BQ1 is not just a camera; it’s also an MP3 player, for some reason. The digital camera does not appear to have a headphone jack or Bluetooth, as neither feature is listed on Saeda’s specs for the BQ1, so it’s unclear precisely how users listen to music. A product photo shows a woman wearing wireless headphones, so it’s an interesting mystery for now. The camera plays back both .mp3 audio and .mp4 video files.
Saeda has a lot of photos on its BQ1 product page, but it is important to recognize that, given the camera’s specifications, including its sensor size and built-in lens, most, if not all, of the displayed photos were almost certainly not taken on the BQ1. Users should instead expect the look and image quality of mid-range smartphones from a few years ago. That is a much more realistic expectation than the photos Saeda shows with shallow depth of field and relatively broad dynamic range.
Pricing and Availability
The Saeda Becks B-Quest BQ1 compact digital camera will launch in Japan on May 7 for 18,800 yen, or $118 at current exchange rates. There is no word yet on any sort of global release.
Image credits: Saeda
