A person is truly blessed who can see the world through the eyes of a child, and one way to get a glimpse into your child's world comes simply by handing the child a digital camera and seeing what memories get captured. Preschoolers find wonder in almost everything and will not only take snapshots of the most mundane things, but they will also enjoy looking at photos of the carpeting and anything else their digital eye has captured. Older kids, though, show more discernment and tend to focus their lenses on those items they truly value, like friends, family, and other eye-catching wonders.

To that end, Polaroid has produced a collection of cameras intended for slightly older kids, age 8 and up, a digital camcorder and a digital camera. We'll have a review of the camcorder shortly, but let's take a look at the still camera first.

Image Quality

It should come as no surprise that Polaroid, being primarily a camera company, has taken their digital camera beyond the typical VGA (640x480) resolution of most kids' cameras and offers a full 3.0 megapixels, allowing your budding photographer the potential to print 8x10 images. Close-up shots, though, are sometimes a bit blurred, so we wouldn't recommend this for any kind of detail shot, but longer-range images look great. This is the best image quality we've seen so far in a kids' digital camera, which is no surprise coming from Polaroid.

Design

Lacking the rubber bumpers of its digital cousins, the pixie is lightweight and more mature-looking than other kids' cameras. It may not handle concrete steps as well as the VTech Kidizoom or Fisher-Price Kid-Tough, but it seems more resilient than most adult cameras.

The Pixie features the usual double viewfinder as well as a 2.4" LCD screen. It also includes a standard mini-USB port and 1/8" mini-jack-to-RCA outputs to export your images or view on a TV. Images can be stored on the 16 MB of built-in storage or on an SD card. (The SD slot is in the battery compartment behind two screws, so it won't easily be lost.)

The power and mode switch is a physical switch, so it won't turn itself off automatically. Since it uses 2 AAA batteries instead of the usual AA's, it eats batteries very quickly, and the lack of auto-shutoff doesn't help. (It restarts itself after 2 minutes like it's trying to turn itself off and can't. I'm not sure what's going on there.)

Available in either a blue and orange case design for boys or a pink and yellow design for girls, the camera is lightweight and about the size of a Nintendo DS.

Features

Unlike most digital cameras, the Pixie Digital Camera lacks video capture, as Polaroid also offers a Pixie Digital Camcorder and apparently didn't want to compete with itself. Since the video capture of most kids' digital cameras is of such low quality as to be only of interest to small children, this isn't a huge loss, but a loss nonetheless.

For actual picture taking, the camera also features a 2x digital zoom (although I'd rather teach kids to crop instead of using a digital zoom) and offers either automatic or manual flash options, testament to the older child focus of the camera.

The camera also features a collection of eight mini-games that can be played either on the preview screen or on a TV via the A/V-out port. The graphics of the game are about the same quality as a ColecoVision. The reset button is a bit too close to the D-pad and can lead to frequent accidental resets during game play. Most of the games are shallow, some more engaging than others:

• Basketball places a player in different locations on a half-court. Tap the button at the right time, based on a fast-moving power bar to make the shot. Think of it as playing digital "HORSE."
• Bounce is Pong variation where you must control paddles on both the sides and the top and bottom to keep the ball in play. This game is simple but very challenging due to having to control two sets of paddles at once.
• Fancy Match is a Memory card-matching game, but while you run from card to card, monsters are trying to catch you á la Pac-Man. I recommend this game to be played on a TV as the small screen makes it difficult to discern the difference between some of the images on the cards.
• Happy Diamond is a strategy game where you have to figure out which piece to move where to match all of them up. Again, you'll want to play this one on a TV in order to get a good look at the pieces.
• Jewel Master is a clone of Bejeweled and is probably the game with the broadest appeal.
• Motor Rally is a motorcycle version of games like Pole Position.
• In Super Surfing, you move a surfer around the water, picking up floating bags of money while avoiding swimmers and other obstacles.
• Track and Field is misnamed, as it only features a few running courses. In this game, you hold two buttons down to run, but if you hold too long, your runner will get winded, so you can't hold it the whole time.

If your child has any kind of handheld gaming system, even a GameBoy, you'll find these games to lose their allure fairly quickly.

Desktop Software

The Pixie includes a mini-CD with ArcSoft PhotoImpression 5 for Windows. PhotoImpression can do basic photo editing, as well as creating a calendar or photo book. It's nothing special, but it'll do the job. Note that the software is on a mini-CD, so if your computer has a slot-loading optical drive, you can't use this software and will need to use some other software or find another computer to help you load it on.

While PhotoImpression is only available for Windows, the Pixie uses the standard digital camera drivers, so it works just fine with iPhoto or the photo management software of your choice.

Snapshot

Among kids' digital cameras, the Pixie excels at one thing: image quality, but if your child is old enough to be part of the target market for this camera, you may want to consider getting a low-end adult camera with better close-up capabilities and an optical zoom for a lower price. That said, not every tween is ready for an adult digital camera. This will probably survive a fall on sidewalk or concrete, whereas most adult cameras would not.