Aiptek is going up a steep incline in trying to wean consumers off their image as producers of budget imaging devices. First gaining fame with their line of pistol-grip type web-cam quality videocams, they’ve sent us one of their newest products for review, and lo and behold, it’s now a more standard, horizontally-oriented  videocam, and now sports a neat gold-and-black “HD” logo.

The Aiptek name has long been connected to the chintzy but affordable.

The H220 uses standard SD cards for storage, and it can support up to a 32GB maximum. The H220 sports a 2.4” LCD display that unfortunately cannot be twisted for better viewing, and has some ugly lettering in large fonts just below it. The Aiptek also brings to the table Music Player capabilities (presumably through the 3.5 mm jack if through headsets and through the tiny on-board speaker), mass storage (through the SD card and the internal 32MB of memory), voice record, and webcam capabilities when connected to the PC through its USB cable.

Certain items immediately jump out at us: the lens, the plastic construction, and the H220's tiny size.

A closer look at the almost-pinhole type camera lens.

A somewhat flimsy-looking strap doesn't help in the looks department.

Dubious looks set in again among the editors in the HWM offices, as we noticed the Aiptek PocketDV H220 HD’s pinhole lens, seemingly all-plastic construction, and cheap fabric strap. I could tell just from the tiny lens that low-light performance would be bad, and I wasn’t mistaken – color bleeding from the “frequency” lines, a lot of noise, hardly-resolved subjects. What surprised us however was how well the camera performed under normal, i.e. office fluorescent lighting. While I would not go as far as calling the video “crisp”, the captured vids proved to be clean and noise free for the most part, and lacked the common cheap-videocam ailment of slow response and jerky movement when panning / tilting.

Press the right directional key and this configuration screen pops up.

The left directional key leads to this function-select menu.

A somewhat optimistic maximum still-picture resolution pops up in its still-camera settings menu.

The camera has the typical digital zoom function, plus the capability to capture video or take rudimentary pictures, although Aiptek’s tendency to exaggerate surfaces once again when it shows a capability to capture up to 16MP (!) still pictures in its configuration menu screen. White balance, Stabilizer, Night mode, EV Exposure, plus different effects-processing are all present, although there is no ISO adjustment to be had. Focusing speed is average, but digital zoom performance is predictably horrible, with noise and artifacts immediately showing up even at 2x zoom. On-screen controls are intuitive enough that you could get used to it in a few minutes of fiddling, but hampering easy operation is the poor spacing of the video and camera actuation buttons, and even the directional and confirm keys are somewhat hard to press with a thumb, mostly due to the H220’s small size.

Directional keys are somewhat hard to press becuase the thumb is usually too close to the camera body due to the H220's small size.

The three buttons correspond to still, video and playback modes on the camera.

The Aiptek boasts of three highly useful connection ports: 3.5mm jack, mini-USB, and HDMI.

Other surprising features include the connectivity suite, which includes a mini HDMI port on the camera, and an included mini HDMI to HDMI connector. This is what was used to quickly connect the device after we captured a few clips to our currently-resident Samsung 8-series, which in hindsight is very much overkill for displaying content from this little camera. Nonetheless, as mentioned above the displayed video is passably decent, certainly for the low expectations we previously assigned to it.

From left to right - USB, 3.5mm jack to 3-head RGB, and HDMI to mini-HDMI cables.

The packaging looks sleek and professional.

Other connections include a mini-USB port for data transfer to computer, which also serves as the camera’s charging port. The 3-section 3.5mm jack-out is accompanied by the compatible cable with a triple RGB head. The package also includes the charger, a driver CD, and manuals. The whole package is in Aiptek’s typical packaging design of sleeve plus actual box container, all in a matte black that exudes “professional”.

The right side of the device holds the battery compartment - here seen with a sticker describing the H220's capabilities.

Marketing hype, or a just-barely truthful specification?

It seems as if an excess of marketing rhetoric has left Aiptek and its products with a distinct lack of superlatives to describe their increasingly capable set of products. That is, Aiptek has labeled this product “HD” but actual performance when compared to the real thing is closer to “just a little bit better than clean, standard definition”. Which is as much a compliment as a complaint from this writer. The price for entry must also be considered – for a single “real” HD camera from a higher-end brand, one could get perhaps 6 or 7 Aiptek H220’s.

The H220 uses SD or SDHC memory cards - up to 32GB in size.

If Aiptek’s products continue to improve, then we will soon be looking at product names such as “super-duper HD resolution” or something similar, and performance that equals today’s actual HD performance. Also considering the barely-passable quality of its previous products, the Aiptek DV H220, be it actually deserving the moniker “HD” or not, has improved enough over the years that most people wouldn’t mind some of its products pretending to be so, as long as the price remains as reasonable as it is now. Aiptek might not be able to wean consumers off its low-end image with the H220, but this device is still a major step up for Aiptek on its way up to the more mid-range flavors of the imaging marketplace. More pictures to follow.

"Home" screen for the H220. Note the chintzy lettering below the screen.

The H220 is also capable of macro shots.

Zoom actuation is accomplished with rocker switches - much better than separate buttons.