"Retro Snap" Review
A fifty dollar mistake and a free camera.
A few weeks ago, I found a video on YouTube's Shorts page showing off a tiny camera that shoots video that looks like it was recorded on a late 90s/early 00s camcorder. It was called the Retro Snap. I followed their channel for a week or so, watching their shorts, and was enticed to buy one from their website. It came in a week ago, and I've been using it every now and then when I go out with a friend or on a walk. I think it's safe to say that I have enough experience using it to make a sufficient review of it.
TL:DR: I got scammed. I made a 50 dollar mistake. Buy it on AliExpress and don't give these Indiana assholes your money. They use fake recordings to market it and they doubled the price. I doubt AliExpress really ends their "50 percent off sales," so buy it when it's like 20 bucks. From now on, the camera will be referred to as the Y4000 (read more to see how I found out its real name).
The AliExpress link in question.ANYWAY, I'm reviewing this camera on some criteria, such as the photo quality, video quality, and battery life, and I also have some things to talk about concerning the camera itself.
Photos taken on this camera look nice a majority of the time. With a camera like this, I can't exactly judge its quality like a normal camera because you're intentionally buying a low quality camera. But, the photos have this dreamlike quality to them that I felt when using an old digital camera from the mid 2000s or a 3DS camera. It's about 8 megapixels, if that's what the 8M means on the camera display. The product states that it shoots photos at 3760 by 2128 pixels, and the files do come out that way. It's not exactly that resolution, though. It's like it has a base image and it up-scales it. These branches are a good way to describe what I mean: There's a base resolution, and then there's a higher resolution where it's trying to reach its resolution, and detail is not the goal. That's probably what megapixels are. I'm no expert.
My favorite photos taken on this camera are outdoor shots. I do like seeing how the sky is blown out in these photos. The dynamic range is low, but it makes photos feel more believable. It does a good job at emphasizing the subject by removing unneeded detail. High dynamic range is a hit or miss on some cameras, mainly phone cameras, because they try really hard to composite it in a way that looks good. Oftentimes, the mix-down doesn't feel real at all because the contrast is too low, which makes it look blurry without blurring the elements of the photo.
It doesn't surprise me that low-light shots are noticeably more noisy and shadowed areas are blurry. Modern cameras are just now becoming better at shooting in low light, so it gets the benefit of the doubt. I suspect that having a shaky hand does not help when taking pictures on this thing. I believe that since the photo is already holding its digital aperture open for some amount of time, moving the camera could affect how blurry the image looks.
There is also an amount of denoising that takes place. It is most noticeable when taking pictures of trees where sunlight is poking through gaps in the leaves, and where leaves may have moved during the camera's shooting. I forget if it was windy enough for that to apply to the photos where the denoising is most obvious, but I wouldn't put it past me that it is a factor. It reminds me of my optical zoom camera that I mentioned on my July 18 post. The relationship between video and picture quality are not the same as this camera, but the way that camera takes pictures feels similar with its denoising.
There are "filters" in the photo mode. If you press the minus button on the side, it'll swap through different filters. They're really just color overlays. It's a shame they're not available in the video mode, because it would help out. Might as well buy some little plastic bits to put in front of the camera instead.
So, the photos are not sharp by any means. If you buy this camera, do not expect it to be a high quality photo taking experience. It's a bit of a no-brainer. I like how they look though, and I enjoy taking photos on it because of its unique look. It's fun!
Here's where things get more complicated. The colors are strange. Lower light colors are heavily crushed. If I knew more about low quality cameras, I would say this is normal with a lot of them. The product does not state the camera's color bit depth, but I assume it's not high at all, or lighter colors are prioritized.
The camera has no video stabilization, which is understandable for a cheap camera. I don't like how wobbly it is sometimes. It's like there's the lack of stabilization, and on top of that there's like a rolling shutter from top to bottom. It appears on faster camera movements. It also has no zoom. I'm glad it doesn't, because it would be digital zoom only, and that would look terrible. The sound quality is not amazing, either, but it's not complete garbage. I actually have no idea where the camera is recording audio from, because there's no hole anywhere on the surface that looks like it would house a mic. it's pretty clicky too. The audio doesn't pop or anything, but there are components on the camera like the buttons that are a bit loose, so if you mess with them, you'll probably hear it when recording.
I expected the video quality to be low of course, but the things that this camera does makes the video not feel like it's 1080p at all. The camera records video in AVI. I'm not sure why the manufacturers chose this format. AVI isn't as universal as MP4. I can't record something on the Y4000, transfer the file to my computer, and share it across discord quickly because some users may not be able to view it on discord. I would have to convert it to a different format. It's a little inconvenient.
Even if I were to do that, this camera is terrible with filesize management. Here is a two minute side-by-side comparison of me going on a walk. The footage is being compared to my iPhone, which is set to 1080p at 30 frames per second (HEVC), just like the Y4000 (Except it's AVI).
Can you guess which one of these videos has a smaller file size? If you guessed the Y4000, you're wrong! The iPhone recording is a respectable 194 megabytes large, and especially so for its quality!. Want to know how large the recording on the camera was? 556 MEGABYTES!! I'm not even joking! Wow. With that said, I discourage recording for long periods of time. If you manage to overfill your storage on just one recording, your entire file could be corrupted.
That's another thing, too. This camera requires that your storage card be formatted in FAT32. It's not a problem, but it's yet another weird quirk that suggests it wants to be mainly compatible with Microsoft products. I got lucky and bought a 32 Gigabyte microSD card for this camera without much thought. If I bought a 64+ Gigabyte card instead, it would be a headache for me to format it to FAT32. There is an option to buy storage for it upon ordering online, so if you want more than 32 gigabytes to record with, my advice is to add it to your order so you don't have to set it up yourself.
Anyway, video quality is strange. It's like each frame is a colorless jpeg with a block of color plastered on top like an afterthought. It looks too digital to have that analogue feel that I was buying this for. Thanks a lot "the retro snap."
The Y4000's battery is not bad. The battery level doesn't fall so fast, and it comes with an optional battery pack so if you get low, you could plug it in and have a full battery again. It's a useful feature, and I think it deserves to be recognized for it. I haven't needed to charge it once yet since I got it in the mail about a week ago. The packaging's claim holds true.
The controls on the camera are strange at first, but they're explained in the miniature guide that comes with the camera. Eventually it becomes muscle memory and it really isn't that jarring. I just wish there was a way to switch back to photo mode from video mode, because it seems you need to go into playback mode and then switch back to photo mode. That requires holding down a button for a couple seconds.
I accidentally flinged it across the room earlier today (yes, I'm serious). It didn't break. It fell on carpet, so consider that. Either way, I was surprised. If you drop this camera, I guess it'll be okay. Don't quote me on that, though, because I paid 50 dollars and I'm not trying to find out how durable it really is.
There is a time stamp on my photos and videos. Most of them are not true to the actual time of taking them. You can edit the time stamp, but I think once you take out the memory card, it stops counting, so you have to tweak it often. I don't care for it, so I don't. I would like to remove it, but I don't know how to at this time. There probably isn't a way to remove it anyway.
The packaging was fine. I like the little magnetic door on the front that opens up to a plastic window that you can see the camera with. Most of the box has text written in broken English. I'm surprised it uses the correct form of "its" on the backside. Some of my favorite quotes include "we can record the dribs and drabs of campus life from a different perspective," and "The flagship big screen is more eye-catching." It made me skeptical to say the least. There's actually multiple mentions of college on the box. I wonder why.
I don't think I need to explain how I fell for this. None of the information I needed to conclude that this was a total scam was available to me until I bought the thing. The first thing that made me suspicious was how the flash component on some cameras says "Camera" in plain text and not Retro Snap like some others did. I shrugged it off because in the reviews for the product, other people had received the same camera with the text on the flash and not the logo. I explained to myself it was because they had "beta" units or something and that their newer ones would have the logo on it now that they're more set up. If I received one of those, I probably wouldn't be here calling bullshit on their whole operation. Knowing what I know now, I am willing to bet that the reviews with the logo on the flash component have doctored photos.
I just checked the store page for the Retro Snap again, and I forgot just how ridiculous their pricing was. I bought this for 50 dollars. Apparently, their full price is 72 bucks!!! Even though I dodged that bullet, I still got shot in the fucking arm. I STILL paid double the price I would have if I bought it from AliExpress. IMAGINE someone buying this hunk of garbage if it was 72 dollars. I pity them as much as I pity myself for falling for this.
How are they doing this? It's drop-shipping. That's what it is. They agreed to sell an amount of these from some manufacturer, and now they're trying to charge exorbitant prices for them to rip people off. It's a classic 2020s small online business. I wouldn't be surprised if their CEO is a lousy tech bro that likes NFTs.
Okay, so what gave it away once and for all? Well, the packaging did not mention anything about the "Retro Snap," and neither did the camera itself, like I just said. It was this. The manual.
They FORGOT to take the original manual out of the packaging. They just made a bigger print of the page and replaced the name of the original product with their logo! It is the only thing that directly mentions the brand name and it's just a fucking copy. Once I saw this, I looked up the Y4000 and sure enough, it proved everything I needed to know, and affirmed my suspicion.
Yeah, you really got them this time, Bloog! Their whole system is going to crumble!
Yeah well screw you I put more work into figuring this out than they did actually making the shit PRESENTABLE. Be glad I'm the one who made this mistake and not you.
I don't have a problem with the camera itself. It deserved its own review. I would be totally fine if I paid 20 bucks for this thing from some Chinese website. But instead, I had to deal with something even worse: reuploads. I wanted a good shitty camera, and I thought The Retro Snap would deliver. Instead, they gave me a shitty shitty camera, and a paper saying "Don't buy from us ever again." I consider it a 50 dollar mistake, and a free camera. Not only should they apologize to me, but to the person that had to deliver this shit overseas. I could elaborate on more, like how they pretend to just be selling the camera and claim the included components are "free gifts," which imlies that if they were to make these parts separate, they'd charge even more than 72 dollars, or like how their refund policy ensures nobody ever returns it, or how their refund policy page's first paragraph is most definitely AI generated, or how they don't show negative reviews on their website, or how they haven't linked their privacy policy to their terms of service, but I think two pictures serve well enough.
The Retro Snap? 0 out of 5. The Y4000? 3 out of 5. Buy the camera if you want, but don't buy it from those guys. If you want a camera that can record footage that looks like a camcorder, ask your older relatives. They probably have an old camcorder left in their attic that they could just give you. You're better off taking only photos on the camera. Just know that if you buy it, you ought to expect a camera that takes crappy pictures. Maybe you could convince yourself that it's a quirk and not just a limitation, like I'm doing to myself. Just don't let The Retro Snap do that for you, because you see what they're trying to do after it.