The SiPix StyleCam Blink is an amazing example of what’s possible with cutting-edge technology: a fully functional 1/3-megapixel digital camera, only slightly larger than a matchbox, for just $39.
While pictures taken with the Blink won’t win any awards for sharpness, I found its images to be surprisingly good, given the camera’s tiny lens and low pixel count.
The Blink went on sale in April through the Home Shopping Network in limited quantities but should be available in electronics stores by June.
I’ve tried a number of what I’ll politely call “low-end” digital cameras–models that sell for under $100 and offer less than 1 megapixel of resolution–and always found image quality so low that I couldn’t recommend them.
I’m now changing my mind. The Blink is cheap enough and good enough to become a fun accessory for anyone interested in taking pictures. It is absolutely not a replacement for a quality digital camera, but is a great impulse buy for those approaching the Blink with an appropriate level of expectation.
SiPix (www.sipixdigital.com), based in Milpitas, Calif., is the U.S. subsidiary of a large Taiwanese electronics company called Cheng Uei Precision Industry, also known as Foxlink. The Taiwan connection explains how SiPix can get the inexpensive components and manufacturing capacity required to offer digital cameras at such low prices.
The Blink looks somewhat like a normal digital camera that went through the wash and shrank–it’s a silver square 2 1/4 inches on each side, three-quarters of an inch thick and weighs 1.6 ounces with a single AAA battery required for power.
This makes the Blink the first digital camera I’ve seen that not only fits in a shirt pocket, but can get lost in a shirt pocket.
There are just two buttons on the Blink: a “mode” button for turning on the camera and cycling through its settings, and a shutter button. There is an optical viewfinder and a tiny monochrome LCD screen for showing how many shots you’ve taken.
Of course, you don’t get everything for $39. The Blink has a fixed-focus lens rather than a zoom lens, no flash and no color LCD display.