Toshiba Camileo Clip review

Sadly, the Clip has no optical zoom, just a 10x digital zoom. We didn’t have to zoom too far for the footage to suffer from the blurring and digital artefacting of the digital zoom, so it’s best to leave this function alone and crop the video later in editing if you really need to.

The Clip’s controls are a little fiddly to operate. The record button and menu button are easy enough to use, but its four directional buttons are so small and spongy, and none of them provide any real feedback, such as a solid click, when you press them. Navigating the Clip’s menus is fairly straightforward, but you can only see one menu option at a time, so it takes some time to become fully acquainted with all the options in a sub-menu.

Happily, the Clip has numerous features to support your video-making, such as motion detect, face tracking, slow motion, pre-record, time lapse, continuous play, and voice recording, as well as standard scene effects, white balance and colour filters, and it also comes with two DVDs containing a Plus Trial of Video Deluxe MX, and a user manual and instruction guide. Many of the features are no more complex than a toggle switch, but it’s nice to have them, and the desktop software is a bonus.

A neat feature of the Clip is its double function as a webcam. We think it works well as a webcam, although it’s a little expensive if you only use it for that one purpose. You can find cheaper options elsewhere, such as the £15 Logitech HD Webcam C270. There’s a mini USB port and mini HDMI port provided for outputting data and video.

The Toshiba Camileo Clip is a neat gadget, but other than a higher resolution, it’s difficult to see why you’d want to use it instead of your smartphone. Plus, a lot of smartphones now record video in 720p or 1080p. For that reason, we think it’s best suited to those who don’t want to take an expensive smartphone to a party or other rough-and-tumble environment.