I Tested the Top Cheap Digicams on Amazon. Most of Them Were Garbage

The Chuzhao Vintage wins hands down in terms of design. Looking like a scaled-down classic Rolleiflex camera, it fits in the palm of your hand and takes square 12MP photos and 1080p video. Despite having a second lens that appears to be for an optical, top-down viewfinder, this feature is purely aesthetic. Instead, it has a 1.5-inch screen on top cleverly concealed by a folding cover. 

While toy-like in size and appearance, the Chuzhao Vintage works basically like any other digital camera. It has autofocus, the video is 16:9 and you can review what you've captured on the small screen. It’s quite slow to use, and achieving any angle beyond “shooting from the hip” requires multiple attempts, as the screen is only visible in one direction: up. Build quality is also extremely cheap. The joystick cosplaying as a film advance lever feels especially flimsy and is almost certainly not going to survive multiple trips in and out of a bag or pocket.

Image quality is quite poor, even considering the price. Colors look odd, highlights are blown out and there’s very little detail. This isn’t even early smartphone image quality; this is more like “flip phone with a camera” quality. Video quality is, somehow, even worse. It claims to be 1080p but looks more like what you'd have found online circa 2005. Calling it "standard definition" would be an insult to standards and definitions. The file says it’s 28 frames per second, a truly bizarre number that matches no standardized frame rate. Neither the images nor the videos are usable, even if you want a lo-fi, early digital camera aesthetic. There are better options, such as the Kodak mentioned below.

The Vintage is a toy and only barely. It’s a cute design with the barest minimum of hardware to function as a camera. I wanted to like the Vintage, but it’s sold as a camera, and while that’s technically true, in practice it’s not. A design like this could be a fun tchotchke at a wedding or other event, but the image quality is so poor that anyone using it is sure to be disappointed. Buy it to look cool on a shelf, but don’t expect it to function to take actual photographs.

The Kodak FZ55 would seem like it’s a ringer in this roundup. After all, it’s significantly more expensive and from a “real” camera company. That’s half true. It is more expensive compared to the others here, but Kodak no longer manufactures cameras; the name is now licensed to other companies. More than anything, the FZ55 feels like it’s from another age. If you’d told me this was new old stock from circa 2010, I’d have believed you. I’m not surprised how well it sells on Amazon. If someone wanted a 2000s-era “digicam,” this is definitely that.

While the overall feel of the FZ55 isn’t that different from the others here, right down to the cheap plastic and identical button layout, it has something they don’t: an optical zoom. It’s only 5x, but it’s better than the digital zooms of the others here. The menus are more elaborate as well, with a manual mode(!) that lets you adjust aperture, shutter speed, exposure and ISO. There are built-in filters, a panorama mode and even a pet mode that correctly identified dogs even in low(ish) light. In other words, it’s a real camera by any definition. 

Not a particularly good one, mind you. The image quality isn’t great, but it’s far better than the others here. It’s quite soft, exacerbated by excessive halation (a blooming/halo around bright objects). Low-light images are even softer and quite noisy. None of this is particularly surprising given the slow lens and tiny image sensor. The 1080p video is soft, and the highlights are blown out, but it’s the best of this bunch. It feels just as legit retro as the photos.

Any modern smartphone will take better pictures, though that’s typically not the point with a camera like this. If you’re after the 2000s digital camera vibe, this looks like that era both physically and with the images and videos it captures. As long as that’s your mindset going in, you should be fine.

The Gavonde S100 is the only ultrabudget camera I tested that, with some heavy caveats, I’d crown “not terrible.” That doesn’t mean good by any stretch, but it’s the only camera on this list aside from the Kodak that takes images and videos that are somewhat usable. I don’t know if that’s by accident or if there’s an engineer or two at whatever company designed and manufactured this camera (Gavonde doesn’t seem to be a real company) who’s actually a photographer. 

The S100 has something I’ve never seen on a camera before: a secondary image sensor. It’s where a viewfinder would normally go, and it’s there so you can take well-framed selfies. Other cameras, like the Duluvulu, have a fold-out screen so you can see yourself while taking a picture or video. Adding a whole other image sensor, especially in a camera that costs around $60, doesn’t say much about the quality of either sensor. It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever seen, though. At least there are no moving parts, something I can’t imagine lasting very long on the Duluvulu. Also, the images are reversed on the selfie camera, but that’s pretty common on social media and easy enough to fix.

While the build quality is fairly toy-like, much like all the cameras on this list, the Gavonde's plastic seems sturdier than most. It feels like you could sit on it and it wouldn’t crumble to dust, which makes it seem near indestructible compared to some of these cameras. Surprisingly, the S100 has a touchscreen, the only camera here with one. It certainly makes adjusting settings faster and less annoying. There are a few filters, and you can adjust exposure, ISO and white balance. 

Image quality is quite poor, but it’s bad in a way that’s almost fixable. The main issue is that it overexposes quite a bit, which is made worse by the touchscreen blowing out highlights. That touchscreen allows you to easily adjust the exposure down a step or two, and the resulting images were entirely not terrible. The colors were quite vibrant without looking cartoonish, and there was a reasonable amount of detail. Low-light images are soft and noisy, but that’s pretty standard for these cameras. Like the others here, the 75-megapixel claim in the marketing and on the front of the camera is nonsense. Yes, the images are 9,984x7,488 pixels, but the level of detail is far less. Refer to the "Misleading specs" section below for more information.

The video quality is acceptable. It records “4K” files, but the detail is not 4K. The focus hunts a fair amount, and if you pan, the motion looks very jerky, but it's better than the other cheap options here.

Perhaps most surprising, and even shocking, is that the Gavonde has Wi-Fi and an app that's available on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store (HDV CAM from “Vetek Technology Limited”, iOS/Android). Even more, it connects quickly via a QR code and has live view, settings, the ability to download what you've shot to your device and more. I wish my $2,500 Canon connected to its app this easily.  

Aside from the Kodak, this is the only camera I tested that was good enough, considering the price, to… OK, I can’t outright “recommend” it because it’s still not great. It is at least functional and “not terrible” enough that if this is your budget, you’re at least not getting ripped off. It might work great as a kid’s first camera. It’s cheap, fairly sturdy, and despite costing $60, still feels and works like a camera. A super-cheap camera with mediocre image quality, but a camera.

The Maxkerun W10 is the most capable of the budget cameras I tested, but also the most expensive by far. At the time of testing, it was $260, more than 50% higher than the next cheapest option, the Kodak. It's also far larger. However, it has the best zoom of this bunch, its 4K video actually looks like 4K (not a given in this group) and it even has a fold-out, rotating screen. Add to that some manual features, a mic input, and the fact that it comes with an extra battery and a 64GB SD card, and it becomes a bit of a standout. It can even zoom in and out while recording, a feature that some more expensive cameras I've reviewed can't do.

On the downside, it's fairly chunky. This isn't a camera you could easily slide into your pocket. Image quality is better than some of the cameras in this guide, but still very much of the smartphone variety from circa 2015. While the zoom works surprisingly well, the autofocus is abysmally slow. Not "slow judged by a camera reviewer," but "is this thing working right?" slow.

Also, like many of the others here, its Amazon listing was rife with falsehoods (see the "Misleading specs" section below). The claim of "72 megapixel" images is laughable. Is the file 9,856x7,292? Yes, but there are no additional details compared to lower resolutions. The same with the "5K" video. The output is only 4K30, ironically, even if you set it to record 1080p. There are significant chromatic aberrations, essentially a fake, sharply colored edge along bright parts of an image, that are especially bad and noticeable when zoomed in. Images are also fairly noisy and oversharpened.

For the price, all that is "OK," but to be honest, I'm not as enamored by the W10 as some of the other budget cameras here. It's a weird intermediate step where it's more capable than the cheaper cameras, but still vastly inferior to a used "real" camera from Canon, Sony or Nikon for the same money.

The biggest problem with the W10 is its availability. Currently, it's out of stock. Like many of the cameras I researched for this guide, there appear to be several "sister" cameras that look identical and are almost certainly all manufactured by a single company, simply sold under different brand names. "Brands," it's worth noting, are nothing more than random jumbles of letters and usually lack even a website. If you're willing to take a chance, this Camcordy W6 appears to be the same camera for less money, though without the fold-out screen. This ORDRO G730 is nearly identical to the W10 but with a different, and possibly better (the numbers could be meaningless) lens.

Like most of the cameras on this list, the Camkory US-DC403L-S includes some… let’s say "gifts for fiction" in its specs. This includes a claim of 44-megapixel images, 16x zoom and a “Micro 4/3” lens mount. As far as I can tell, none of these things is true. Shocking, I know, given the camera’s price of $40. What might be true is the 1/1.8-inch sensor size, though if this sensor was designed any later than 2010 I’d be shocked.

Even for a $40 product, the Camkory feels exceptionally flimsy, almost like you could crush it with your hand. Don’t put it in your back pocket. If you sit on it, I think it would disintegrate. The zoom is entirely digital. You can adjust the exposure and ISO settings in the menus, and a variety of filters are also available. There’s also Face Detect, Smile Detect and Anti-Shake, but none of these seemed to work.

Image quality is pretty bad. “Better than the Chuzhao” is all the praise I can muster. Highlights are blown out, with odd color shifts -- sometimes pink, sometimes green -- and despite the claimed resolution, the images lack detail (see the "Misleading specs" section below). Video quality is arguably even worse than that of the Chuzhao. It looks like bad 480p video upconverted to 1080p. It’s soft, noisy and does an excellent job conjuring nostalgia for VHS. Not that you’ll be able to see it: Videos are saved as AVI files, which are readable by most computers, but probably not your phone.

The Camkory is available in four colors, including pink and purple. I miss the days when cameras came in fun colors. But I won’t miss this camera.

“Duluvulu” is an objectively fun word to say. The DC101 is a little larger than most of the other cameras on this list, but comes with a fold-out screen and a lens with a focus ring. The ring is fake, as is the lens, but it looks the part. Also looking the part are two scroll wheels on the top, which do nothing and are, in fact, glued into place. The shutter button and the power button are the same size and basically next to each other, so you’ll never know if you’re about to capture an unforgettable moment or turn the camera off. Fun!

Build quality, graded on the curve of sub-$100 cameras, is actually pretty good. It has a far more solid feel and a bit of heft, making it seem more like a real product and not a toy. The fold-out screen rotates a full 180 degrees, making it easier to take selfies. However, the orientation sensor was mounted incorrectly, so if you try to take a vertical photo, the on-screen image always flips upside down. You can adjust the exposure, white balance, ISO and, like most of the others on this list, there are a variety of built-in filters. There’s even a mic input and a cold shoe.

Image quality is pretty bad in some interestingly unique ways. There’s more detail than some of the others here, but the color temperature is far too warm, and there’s a pinkish tint. The video also has a color temperature that's too warm, and while the detail is decent -- it does sort of look like 4K -- it’s only 15 frames per second, so it’s very choppy. Also, like the Camkory, the AVI video files it saves are likely not viewable by your phone.

By far my favorite feature of the Voodoothatyoudo camera is how it randomly decides not to save images. It will seem like it has, but when you go to check (ideally right after, or less ideally, much later), you’ll see it only saved some of your images. I’m not sure what was going on, and to be honest, given how powerfully mediocre this camera is, even considering the price, I didn’t put any further effort into figuring it out.

I’ll give the Duluvuluturaluralura credit for feeling adjacent to a real camera. A legally distinct approximation of a photocopy of a used Canon PowerShot G-series. For $60, you could do worse, but for slightly more, you could do a lot better.