It’s been a while but hey, I’m back! Back with a charm… Kodak Charmera that is. Ugh, that long hiatus makes my writing rusty, well it has always been rusty. Back to the Kodak Charmera, this keychain camera is awesomeful! Yup, that is a new word. Awesomeful /aw-suhm-ful/ adjective – it means awesome and awful at the same time.
The Kodak Charmera is a palm size, 1.6 megapixel point-and-shoot digital camera. It is made out of plastic and is very fragile – i mean very lightweight. Marketed as a key chain camera, it comes in 7 unique vintage designs including a secret edition. All sold as surprise blind boxes. It is inspired by Kodak’s 1987 disposable film camera, the Kodak Fling. What’s in the box is the camera, a photo card of the model, a leaflet, USB cable and key chain.
By the way, selling the Charmera as blind boxes is such a marketing win for Kodak. Let’s be honest, 90% of us are looking for the yellow design and the secret edition. And for just $35 for a single box and $210 a set (SRP), it’s easy to see why one would splurge. It’s either you keep on chasing, or once you have one, you just want to have it all. Basically, the Pokemon of cameras. Wait… is Charmera named after Charmander?
In front of the Charmera is a fixed, 35mm equivalent f/2.4 lens. A tiny flash that is of no use and a tiny optical viewfinder. At the back is a 0.8 LCD screen, playback and navigation buttons to access basic menu for settings like time, date, and deleting photos. The navigation buttons are also used to access photo filters and photo frames.
Located at top are the shutter button, the On/Off/Menu button and a tiny light to show power. While the Micro SD card and a USB-C socket for charging and file transfer is found in the bottom. A speaker is also located at the side of the camera. Unfortunately, you can’t turn off the camera’s feature sounds.
Now that we have the specs out of the way I think it is quite clear. This is a toy camera and it’ it’s meant to be a toy, or to be precise it’s a collectible. The image quality you get out of this camera is crap, 200kb max in files size. It reminds me of photos taken with a VGA camera from old cellphones. But being able to shoot crap and see those photos all over the internet in the 2025/2026 is awesome! Betting on this nostalgic trend going around everywhere is genius.
What I enjoyed most using in this camera are the frames. There are 4 frames you can choose and I wishes it could be have more. I say scrap the color filters and add more frames.
Well the black and white color filter is fine. 🙂
Oh also, this camera does shoot video. To be honest, I think I prefer using the video feature on this camera. With a little bit of intent and proper editing, you can create awesome retro videos without plugins. I just wish you can also use the frames when shooting videos.
And that’s it! The tiny Kodak Charmera keychain digital camera. Like I mentioned, this is meant more of a collectible rather than your main everyday camera (EDC). Although nothing is stopping you from using this as your main EDC. I just won’t shoot entirely with the charmera special events or trips that you want precious memories saved. 🙂
Well, it’s good to be back and hopefully I’ll write more this 2026. For the meantime, enjoy more sample photos from the Kodak Charmera below.
King 