Sony Bloggie

So here it is, Sony’s much-hyped Bloggie — the brand’s new FullHD pocket camcorder with a 270° swivel lens and 360° panoramic video recording. It looks like loads of fun, but is it worth the investment?

Design & handling

The Bloggie, otherwise known as the MHS-PM5K, is Sony’s latest addition to the ever-growing selection of ultra-compact HD camcorders to have flooded onto the market over the last year. With so many pocket cams to choose from, manufacturers are vying to find the function that will place their bijou camcorder one step ahead of the rest. Over at Sony, everything’s riding on the 270° swivel lens. This lens has already featured in a previous version of the Bloggie, known as the Webbie (MHS-PM1), only released in the USA. So what’s so good about a swivel lens? Well, there are several advantages, and one of the main ones isn’t necessarily the most obvious: it helps protect the lens.

When you swivel the lens round to face downwards, the lens is effectively hidden inside the camcorder. When closed like this, the Bloggie could easily be mistaken for a mobile phone. As soon as you spin the lens round, the camcorder automatically switches on, then switches off again when you flip it back round to face downwards. The swivel design also means you can film scenes looking up or down at all kinds of angles while keeping the camcorder perfectly upright. I tested it out at a Chinese New Year parade (watch my video), and it was certainly practical for filming above a crowd while still keeping an eye on the camcorder's screen. The 2.4-inch screen is a bit on the slim side for filming, but the horizontal video playback mode turns the Bloggie into a PSP-style multimedia player. A nice touch!


The Bloggie is available in black, blue, white or pink and its satin-finish body is well designed. As the screen is not touch sensitive (coming in the next version perhaps?), a set of arrow keys are on hand for navigation and control. The camcorder is powered by a Lithium-ion battery which can be recharged via the Bloggie’s integrated USB connection — and I’m not talking about a mini-cable either, as a standard USB connector flips out directly from the camera body. Just lift up the cover and then press (quite hard) on a button and it comes shooting out, although it’s a little bit fiddlier than the Flip MinoHD's touch-release cable. The problem is that the USB connector is quite short. This means you could only really connect it to a laptop as, first of all, the Bloggie needs to be connected to a horizontal USB port to keep it upright, and second, when you try to plug the Bloggie into a desktop computer, the camera body and the flip-out cover obstruct connection. Sony has, however, thought of every eventuality, and will be supplying a mini-cable suitable for hooking the Bloggie up to computers of all shapes and sizes.

Left: the Bloggie offers four different recording formats (1080/30p, 720/60p/30p, VGA).
Right: playback on the LCD.

Picture quality

The Bloggie films in 1080p (1920x1080 pixels at 30 fps) in the Mpeg-4 format. Other resolutions are available too with 1280x720 pixels (in 60p and 30p) and in 640x480 pixels (VGA). In theory, 1080p should be better by a mile, but, strangely enough, the 720/60p mode offers a number of key advantages. First of all, it’s better for filming sports, for example, as the field frequency is higher and so the picture flows more smoothly. Second, the 4x digital zoom and digital image stabiliser only work in 720p mode. This is almost certainly because these functions require a large part of the sensor and 720p leaves a few pixels free for them to use. Finally, the angle of view is much wider in 720p, as the focal length easily drops from 61 mm in 24x36 in 1080p mode to 40 mm in 720p mode. All this makes it rather difficult to see the point of the FullHD mode. Footage filmed in 1080p is certainly more accurate, detailed and undoubtedly sharper, but the picture is plagued with noise in low light and you can see nothing but darkness as soon as night falls.


For transferring video, your best option is to copy footage straight from the Memory Stick Pro Duo to your PC, so long as it has a compatible slot. The video editing application is supplied on CD rather than integrated directly into the camcorder as with most competitors’ models. You can then upload your clips to YouTube automatically, without having to enter your account settings each and every time.

All in all, the Bloggie is a little disappointing. Given that it's made by the world’s leading camcorder manufacturer and a brand that’s well-versed in the field of FullHD TVs, we could have at least hoped for better 1080p picture quality. As a result, the Bloggie is easily outdone by the Kodak Zi8 with its microphone entry and HDMI output but not-so-impressive design.