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Pros
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It
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Smaller than a roll of Kodachrome
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Excellent design/color choices
Cons
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Absolutely bad image quality
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Short battery life
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A temporary fun toy
The Kodak Charmera is a camera for your keychain. Smaller than a roll of film, the thumb-sized camera can take photos and videos. Given the low $35 price and small size, the performance is, by definition, mediocre.
The camera is attractive, though, and comes in several different designs with varying degrees of retro-ness. Not that you get to choose: Charmera is sold as a blind box, like a collectible toy. And as a gift or fun toy, Charmera has a great design and is a great conversation starter. When people see you using it, they will be curious. As a camera, though, it’s… something.
Specifications and hardware
- Photo resolution: 1.6 megapixels (1,449×1,080 pixels)
- Video resolution: 1,440×1,080, 30fps
- Sensor size: 1/4-inch
- Lens: 35mm, f2.4
- Image reinforcement: LOL, no
- Screen size: 0.96-inch
- Storage: microSD
- Weight: 30 grams (1.1 ounces)
Charmera is technically a camera. Not great, mind you, but it gets images. Surprisingly, for its size and price, it can even record video. It does both of these things as if I could run a half-marathon, which is to say, not well, and the result is not pretty.
With both microSD and USB-C storage, it’s more versatile than some budget cameras I have reviewed. No Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. To get images from Charmera, you need a card reader or a USB-C cable to connect directly to your phone. Sometimes it even works. Apparently, large capacity microSD cards confuse the phone, Charmera or both. Because of the size of the images and the capabilities of the camera, you don’t need a card with a lot of storage or fast performance.
Like almost all modern Kodak products, the Charmera was not actually made by Kodak; the manufacturer only licenses the name. The actual company is Hong Kong-based RETO Production, which makes a variety of retro-themed cameras. The most brilliant part of its design for the Charmera is a combination of blind boxes and what I think is a lack of workmanship. On the second point, maybe it actually sells more than it could. It’s always on sale, that people can’t buy it anywhere, despite, or because of, the growing hype (on my part, guilty, I think). This is definitely a way to increase demand. People want what they can’t have.
This scarce aspect is combined with blind boxes. There are seven different camera designs. All are good, but some are better than others. However, the box looks the same, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you open it. It adds a little excitement and potential frustration to the purchase, and for some people, I’m sure it also means they buy more than one. It’s good marketing, really, and it seems to work.
The Charmera’s tiny 1/4-inch image sensor may solve the mystery of where recycled electronics go because it appears to have been brought back in time, directly from leftover ’90s gear, but more on that in a moment. To give you an idea of how small that is, “small” camera sensors are something like cheap. Kodak FZ55 is the 1/2.3-inch type, which corresponds to a chip with a physical size of 7.7mm diagonal. The Charmera’s sensor is 4.5mm diagonal, or 1/8 of an inch. This will make your pinkie finger nail look very large in comparison.
That’s as small an image sensor as you can get, so it wouldn’t capture much light even if it had an amazing lens, which it doesn’t. The lens, also small and I think is plastic, has a stated focal length of 35mm (35mm equivalent), but in my testing, it seems to be closer to 50mm, which is a narrower field of view than the main camera on most phones.
Usability and photo quality
This and other images in this section are straight from the camera. No edits at all.
The Charmera has the worst image quality of any camera I have ever used in my life. This includes ’90s-era digital cameras. I don’t think it’s possible for any modern image sensor to take photos that bad. They look like 8 pixels drunk on Everclear trying to assemble a recognizable shape. They look like they were painted on the fingers of a child with no talent. These are digital images rendered by an impressionist painter who thought Monet was pronounced “Mon-ett.” (I’m going to continue, and you can’t stop me.)
You’ll have a better idea of what I’m photographing if I describe it to you in a language you don’t know. I think after Charmera was designed, all the marketing was done, the product was shipped in the morning, one of the designers got out of bed at 3 in the morning, wiped the cold, panicked sweat from their forehead, exclaiming, “Oh, crap! I really need to take a picture!” and then went back to sleep thinking they would deal with it in the morning.
So after all, how’s the game, Mrs. Lincoln? Actually, this thing is pretty cool. Don’t get me wrong, this is an awesome camera. Not sure how you can “get me wrong” after the previous paragraphs, but here’s the thing: As a conversation starter, as a fun toy, Charmera is great. I haven’t had one in a long time, but my friend has had one for a few months, and she keeps asking about it. it Good-looking terrible.
For such a small budget camera, there is a surprising number of buttons (maybe where did the budget go?). At the top is the shutter and a power button that also activates a menu. On the back, next to the small screen, there are navigation buttons, as well as one to enter playback mode.
There are no settings to speak of, other than including a date stamp on photos or videos. There are a bunch of different filters, from super warm and super cool styles, plus black and white and more. More interesting are the frames that will be placed on top of your image. One of them looks like something straight out of MS Paint from Windows 3.1, which tells me that the designers of this camera really know what they’re designing or at least have a sense of humor.
Probably what Kodak’s own photo editor looked like during Windows 3.1.
The small screen works well to line up your shots. If that is very useful for you, there is a smaller lensless viewfinder, literally a square hole in the body, if you want to attract more attention to yourself and / or look cool in the photo of others taken with a better camera. In the opposite corner of the Charmera, there is a small LED “flash” that at distances of more than a few feet is better than the suggestion of light.
They have a certain liminal aesthetic that is actually quite cool.
The video is also bad, not amazing there, but less like something wrong and more like a mediocre camera from the mid-2000s. Think early YouTube. It’s 1,440×1,080, technically HD, but like photos, it’s soft and undersaturated. It also saves in an .avi file format that phones cannot read. My guess is that the image sensor takes 640×480 photos and videos (probably less) and converts them to 1,440×1,080. It’s not that important. I think it looks worse than anything remotely close to 1080p.
drawn
The Charmera compared to GoPro Hero Black 13 and the Kodak FZ55.
Look, Charmera is fun, and it’s $35. I won’t talk to anyone about harmless fun for $35. As a camera, no, it is terrible, even by the standards of cheap digital camera. As a toy, a bauble, a charm (oooh, I bet that’s it where the name comes from), super cute.
Can you use images on social media? Yes, I guess, you can see the images above and decide if that fits your Insta aesthetic. They’re more than what I’d call “retro” unless, that is, you’re trying to emulate the image quality of the world’s worst webcam. If you are, Charmera nailed it.
The different designs you can get in one of the blind boxes.
