Philips - P44417S Digital Camera Review

I bought this at Walmart for around $17-18.  It comes in all kinds of cool colors like metallic pink, metallic blue, classic silver, and now even translucent plastic colors.  For less than $20, I figure I'll give it a try.

First off is the cool factor.  Your friends will be wowed that the tiny thing is a real digital camera.  It also works as a videocam with the included USB cable.  It's advertised as the world's smallest digital camera.  Talk about cool!

So the camera worked the first few times, and I was happy with the results.  For a digital camera this small and this cheap, I didn't have high expectations.  The photos are decent, as long as you have good lighting (forget about taking pictures in low lighting).  So it worked the first few times, and then after that, something happened, maybe a static shock or something, and the darn thing doesn't work anymore!  It takes the photo, according to the little picture counter display, but as soon as I plug it into the computer, the pictures are erased.  (sigh).  It also eats batteries like crazy.  It uses 1 AAA battery, and a brand new battery will probably last you a few days before it's dead.  This is with the battery just sitting in the camera, not taking pictures!  So much for an "emergency camera" to throw in my car glovebox.

My recommendation: Save your $$ and put it towards a cell phone camera instead