Ben 10 Alien Force Digital Camera Review
The children's cameras featured on this website were all tested by the reviewer and her two young sons (aged 5 years and 2 years). Please bear in mind the opinions expressed are solely that of the reviewer, and that product specifications and function may have been improved upon since this information was published.
My kids don’t actually own the Ben 10 Alien Force camera, I borrowed one from someone whose son got it for Christmas.
My eldest son is mostly into Marvel Heroes and playing Doctor Who these days, but the sight of this camera revived a soft spot in his heart that he used to have for Ben 10... briefly, until he realised how useless the camera was and he got bored. I’m starting to realise that if people don’t need much persuasion to let you borrow their child’s digital camera for reviewing purposes, it’s probably not a very good camera.
Good features of the Ben 10 Alien Force digital camera:
* It looks appealing to many little boys because it has Ben 10 on it. And that is honestly the only good point I can think of.
Bad features of the Ben 10 Alien Force digital camera:
* The Ben 10 digital camera suffers from the same problem that many children’s cameras do, in that sometimes the pictures come out very dark, especially if they were taken indoors. But unlike cameras like the Vtech Kidizoom and the Fisher-Price Kid Tough, it’s not an occasional problem you can overlook - it’s all the time. Of the few pictures my son took that did come out, they were really blurry. Terrible, terrible picture quality.
* The controls are actually a bit confusing for a kid. This surprised me as the functions on a kid’s camera are usually intuitive enough that they can pick it up and use it straight away.
* The camera could hold less than 20 pictures. With an internal memory of 8MB I wouldn’t expect it to hold too many pictures, but I would expect it to hold more than this. Perhaps there was just a fault with this particular camera or it had been damaged at some point. But as far as I’m concerned, it was just another point against a camera which totally failed to impress me - or more importantly my son.
* It didn’t feel as robust as any other of the cameras for children I tested. The camera I was using was about 6 months old and still functioning, but I don’t know for sure if that’s because it is better constructed than it feels, or if it hasn’t had a chance to break because it’s too rubbish for a child to want to play with it for more than 5 minutes.
Test Photo:
For some reason the Ben 10 camera wouldn't let me upload any photos to my computer. Another bad mark against the camera.
Verdict:
I cannot over emphasise how much I disliked this camera. My son was initially thrilled that he was able to play with a Ben 10 camera, but the novelty soon wore off when he realised the camera was frustratingly bad.
There are other Ben 10 Cameras available. Lets hope that they are better than the one I tested as I can’t imagine the Ben 10 Alien Force camera doing anything other than disappointing young Ben 10 fans.
Consider decent alternatives like a Vtech Kidizoom camera or a Lego digital camera.
|
