It’s been a little over a week since we broke the story about a new Flip Ultra on its way, and then just this past Tuesday, we received reports that Best Buy started selling a Flip Ultra HD for $199. Despite the fact that these products had been hitting the shelves, they had remained unannounced, that was until Thursday, when Flip introduced the new Flip Ultra, Flip Ultra HD, and discontinued their original Flip.

The new Ultras seem to close a lot of the gap between their two main product lines (the mino and the ultra). We’ve laid out some of the basic specs below:

This isn’t to say that the Mino has lost its appeal, it’s still a lot thinner and more portable, and it features a great internal battery - so that you don’t have to worry about batteries as much. They’ve just slimmed down their differences so that consumers don’t feel like they’re getting less of a product, because they’ve purchased a cheaper model. Not to mention, for some people, the Ultra’s price, might not be what interests them, it may very well be it’s ability to take AA-batteries, for long trips.

The Ultra does have a different video encoding (H.264), that I feel is superior to the SD Mino’s (AVI), but I’m sure Flip will update their Mino’s soon enough to bring them even more in balance with the Ultra’s.

image credit to gizmodo.com

To put it simply, these new updates just make the Flip cameras even more of an attractive option; between their price, quality, size, and more, the competition truely doesn’t stand a chance.