By: Bodhipaksa

Bodhipaksa — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:26:20 +0000

Beware — this is a hand-held video-game that also takes pictures We imagined our three-year-old son enjoying taking pictures. Instead he’s obsessed with the games that come on the camera, and our household is bombarded by the repetitive sound effects and music that accompany the games. As a parent who doesn’t want his young children to play computer games, I’m now in a bind, having to constantly regulate his use of what I believed would be a simple camera. I should have been more careful in reading the description, obviously, but I wish VTech would make it possible for parents to disable the games, or would make a camera without them.

By: Sapere Aude

Sapere Aude — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:20:37 +0000

A Favorite Toy – but don’t expect amazing pictures My daughter got a VTech Zoom camera several years ago. It’s been a longtime favorite toy and she is now 8! This camera has not changed much from the version we have.The camera is sized really well for little hands, they can grip on the rubber handles on either side. Instead of having a single viewfinder like typical cameras, this one has two – so the child looks through with both eyes, eliminating the need to squint through a single eyehole. The camera itself is okay, 1.3 megapixels is enough to take some viewable pictures, but it does poorly in low light conditions (which is a lot of places). This never bothered my kids.What makes this camera a hit is the games on it. You can take a picture, then play games with that picture – it makes the picture into a puzzle, you have to rotate the pieces to fit it back together. You can also choose scenes which place cartoon images around the outside of the picture. There are settings where you choose to be a pirate and then a little pirate outfit appears and the child can line the persons face up with it and take the picture so they look like a pirate. They also really enjoy taking videos – this is something that children universally enjoy, saying silly things into the camera.If you have a child who is really into photography and you think wants to take really nice photographs they want to be able to say print out, or look at on the computer later, I recommend you look into getting them an inexpensive real camera. This camera is not going to take amazing photographs. It’s much better than the Fisher Price version though, which we test drove as well – that camera only takes .3 megapixel pictures, but you aren’t going to get amazing photos out of it. In face, after downloading pictures the first time, we just stopped bothering with this camera – the kids enjoy tremendously as a toy.

Comments on: VTech – Kidizoom Digital Camera

By: Bodhipaksa

By: Sapere Aude