Home > Consumer Reviews > Polaroid i-zone 0.3MP Digital and Instant Combo Camera

Santa brought this camera for my 7 year old son. He loves the instant stickers and although we went through 3 packs of film the first day the kids all enjoyed it and the stickers can be used for a number of things. The digital camera is excellent for beginners. This is the first digital camera we have owned and it has worked well. It is easy to use, the software is relatively simple and is fun. Had a little trouble with the serial ports - which could have been more a problem with my computer than the camera - once I had my brother-in-law look at it he figured out the problem. He did say a USB would have been better. The quality of the pictures is good and you can adjust the quality through the software. I have had as much fun as my son with this camera. It only stores about 16 pictures in the memory and then you need to download them onto the computer and clear the camera so it wouldn't work well if you wanted to take alot of pictures on vacation and didn't have a computer handy! I think for the price this camera is a really good deal and seems to be pretty sturdy. My son has had it outside and all over and it hasn't broken yet!! I would recommend this for anyone with children who want to enter the world of digital photography!! I will eventually buy a more advance digital camera for the family but this one will be great for the kids and definetly has been a good learning tool!!

... this limited capability hybrid is an affordable toy. It blends the popular I-zone Polaroid instant camera with a *very* basic digital camera. Well, it does neither task well, and no one is going to come to love this thing once the initial cuteness wears off. As an I-zone, a fun little camera that prints instant postage stamp photos (from pretty expensive Polaroid-only film), it's no longer way overpriced, though the film will keep setting you back. As a digital camera, it's way underfeatured. It lacks a zoom, an expandable memory, a decent resolution (it's not good enough to print even 5 x 7s), and, most woefully, a USB connection to download the few pics the onboard memory can handle. You may think that's no big deal, but it makes getting those pics onto your computer a slow, painful and battery-consuming process. If you want an I-zone, buy one; if you want a basic digital camera, look at Amazon's great collection (or the ones I've reviewed). If you're looking for a bargain on Christmas gifts, this just might fit the bill!

The Polaroid i-Zone combo digital camera is a 640x480 digital camera with one meg non-expandable memory, fixed focus lens, automatic flash, and no preview screen on the camera jammed onto a mini-polaroid i-Zone camera. It's big and awkward, which is probably why it hasn't been successful. I can never figure out how to grab it without putting a finger into a lens. I only bought it because I got an extreme bargain on it at my grocery store of all places. Overall I'm happy with it and will use it for my web site and to send photos by E-mail, but it's no replacement for a 35mm camera and a scanner.

It's a TWAIN device so you can acquire photos directly from the camera with any TWAIN-supporting software, such as Paint Shop Pro. Photos are compressed as JPEGs inside the camera. It holds "up to" 18 shots, but unless you're taking photos of blank walls, it'll be more like 16. It takes about 2 minutes and 20 seconds to transfer a full load of photos from the camera through your PC's serial port. You can download the photos selectively, but you can't selectively delete. You can only clear the entire camera memory at once. The JPEGs are copied directly from the camera to a folder, so you don't have to worry about appropriate recompression unless you want to make modifications. The compression is a little too extreme. If you brighten with gamma correction, you can really see the JPEG squares.

The flash doesn't go off unless it needs to, so you can get non-flash-lit pictures by providing enough light. The exposure isn't very well controlled. Indoor pictures at less than 2 feet are totally washed out by the flash, but that's easy to fix. Either light the subject better so the flash doesn't go off, or partially cover the flash. I used several layers of masking tape. The lens is so small that you can take pictures really close, like a few inches, and they'll only be a little blurry, but the flash must be totally covered with aluminum foil.

It uses 4 AAA batteries and doesn't have a plug for a DC adaptor. I'll probably install one myself.

It uses a 9 pin serial port, so if you have a serial mouse, you'll need a second port. Most computers have a second port, but it might be a 25 pin rather than 9. If so, you'll need a converter which will be about (dollar amount).

It does not have a tripod mount or a timer, so you'll need help if you want to take pictures of yourself.

It comes with a mosaic application which converts images to mosaics of other images. You'd think it would be fun to play with, but it lacks a simple browse option to select your own photos to use in making the mosaic. They don't let you use your own images because they want to sell you their supplemental image CDs. Of course they don't tell you this up front. I got very aggravated struggling to make it use my photos.

The camera works reasonably well for its price; however, the software it comes with for recognizing the camera when plugged into your computer via the serial port fails to work properly if your computer has scanner software installed. Polariod tech support identified this as a potential problem when I couldn't get the Izone software to recognize the camera. After uninstalling the (HP) scanner software the Izone software did recognize the camera and downloaded the digital images as advertised.

Polariod tech support suggested that reinstalling the HP scanner software after the IZone software was installed would solve the problem. It did not. Anyone with scanner software installed are likely to run into this problem which is not covered in the IZone trouble shooting guide. If you don't have a scanner this might be the gift to get for the child who wants a camera otherwise skip it.

I found this camera to be totally useless. The instant polaroid shots are so small that one needs a magnifying glass to see anything. Digital frustrations have been expressed in other reviews. I bought one for each of my kids for Christmas, but they are now sitting in the closet. They are not incredibly expensive, but in this case, you get what you pay for.