Have you ever wanted to be able to passively capture all the memories in your life without the bulk and distraction of a camera?
The Narrative Clip is a tiny, 5 megapixel camera you clip to somewhere on your body. It captures a photo every 30 seconds, or when you double tap the clip. It goes to sleep face down on a table or in a dark pocket and wakes up when you shake it or expose it to light.
You upload photos by plugging it into your computer via USB and can save it to the cloud and/or desktop. By downloading the app on your phone, you can also have access to your photos in the cloud on the go, and you can share via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or email.
Though the idea is super neat, the Narrative Clip, app and software definitely have room for improvement.
I discovered that the Clip requires some forceful tapping to take the photo. Tapping as if you were on your smartphone will not register, leading me to think that the camera was defective for a good few hours. I think that an on/off button would be pretty useful since I couldn’t actually tell when the Clip was off. I had some photos of my pack pockets when I checked. I found that the battery lights on the side of the camera weren’t indicative of actual battery life. At the end of my trip, I had one light blinking at me, but plugging the Clip into my computer said I was still at 67%. Using the Clip also requires a test run before you actually begin capturing. I thought the spot that I had clipped the camera to would suffice, but I captured a lot of footage of my hand and trekking pole.
The Narrative app is not very user friendly. With any camera constantly taking photos, you will have more garbage shots than non-garbage photos. There’s currently not a way to batch select photos you’d like to delete; instead, you have to sift through each one by one. The app itself is pretty buggy. Photos aren’t actually deleted; it crashes while deleting photos; stock, placeholder photos are displayed; “moments” appear to be duplicated. Sharing to Instagram doesn’t allow you to position the photo. I’m annoyed that there isn’t a way to share images via text message, as that’s the most common way to share individual photos privately. It all makes for a very frustrating user experience.
In short, the idea of the Narrative Clip is pretty cool, but delivery fell a little short. I may consider purchasing future iterations once features are more robust, but right now, I’d say it’s a pass.
Buy the Narrative Clip with a 3 month subscription ($229) or 12 month subscription ($279) to the Narrative cloud.
The Narrative Clip was sent to me for three days as a part of the #outdoorsio experience challenge. From here, it is heading off to The Weekend Warrior who I challenge to reach a climbing/hiking high point. Sign up to be a part of the adventure here.
