Google Clips is an AI-driven smart camera that is supposed to look for photo opportunities and capture them for you. Google Clips uses what they are calling Moment-IQ to capture photos are the perfect moment on your bahalf. We take a lot of photos with our smartphones but often miss opportunities to capture a photo or are not in the photos ourselves. Google Clips tries to solve that by being a camera you can just set up and let be your photographer.
The camera is small and reminiscent of the Narrative Clip that you could clip on and let it take the photos for you. The difference is that Google Clips takes photos when it recognizes opportunities rather than just shooting when you activate it with a tap. At first glance, I liked the idea and concept Google was going for. Other reviewers said it missed the mark but I don’t think many of them used the camera correctly.
Recommended Accessories
- Manfrotto MTPIXI-B PIXI Mini Tripod
- Incipio Protective Case for Google Clips
- Incipio Neoprene Sleeve Carry Case for Google Clips
For the Google Clips camera to work properly it needs to learn from your Google Photos library. This means that you need to have many different photos of the same people for it to learn from. I have three kids so that made it kind of easy for my Clips camera to learn as I have thousands of photos of my kids in Google Photos.
The image quality is ok. It reminds me of a phone camera from about three years ago. It is not what I expected. I expected Pixel 2 quality in this camera.
The camera is easy to activate should you want to force it to take a photo. You just press the button on the front of the camera.
The camera charges up fast and does work while connected to the charger. I like how you can set how aggressive you want the camera to be when looking for situations to capture. You can also choose what file type you want to export your clip in after it is captured.
Out of the box, I don’t think the camera is very usable. It needs a better way to mount it. I don’t really like the idea of clipping it on my shirt as I walk around. I like the idea of setting it down which required the need to position it better. In my video review, you can see my Google Clips set up.
Overall, I think it’s a much better version 1.0 product than what other companies have released. Being that this is Google, I did expect more out of the camera for the $249 price tag. To be honest, I planned on returning mine but forgot that Google’s return window is so short. Guess I’m keeping it. Maybe I will take it to the mountains this weekend for spring break with my kids. If I get any good shots I will upload them to my personal Instagram account.
Google Clips Specs
- 130-degree field of view
- Up to 3 hours of smart capture
- 16 GB of internal memory
- Gorilla Glass Lens
- Wi-Fi & Wi-Fi Direct
- Bluetooth LE
- 1.55 µm pixel size
- 15 FPS Video Recording
- Records Motion Photos, GIF, MP4, and JPEG
- USB-C
What do you think about Google Clips? Did Google get it right, or should they go back and try again?
