Creative Vado 3rd Gen HD Camcorder Hands-On At CES 2010

Just headed over to the Creative booth at CES, largely in part to try my luck at a free Vado HD which the company is giving away with the spin of a wheel, I unfortunately missed it by one spot. Regardless I had a chance to have a hands on with the Vado and it’s a very nice handheld unit for the budget minded consumer market.

The unit features a very simple setup, just click Record and you’re making video magic in 720P, while the front panel allows users to zoom in/out and fast forward and review view, it couldn’t be any more simple to use the player. One issue with the unit, the buttons other than record are all of the touch nature, which makes it really simple to accidentally brush up against a button while recording, messing up your whole shot.

A button on the side then lets you change from video to still pictures when needed, while the unit also features a pull out USB connection so you can easily send your videos to your computer, an important feature since the unit offers 4GB on-board memory, but lacks any type of memory card support.

The back of the unit where the lens is housed is pretty basic with just the camera lens showing, however the units also feature unique designs which bring with them a good amount of personalization rather than your typical stark looking one colored options.

Finally, the unit features MP4 recording so MAC and PC users can both rejoice, while the video playback shown on test videos at the booth were vivid in their appearance, at least as much as 720P output would let them be.

Overall at $179.99 it’s a nice unit that budget shoppers will find useful for taking quick videos of family trips, but it’s not really for power users who are recording more than quick snippets of their lives.