The Polaroid iM1836 camera was the subject of numerous leaks and was then officially unveiled in January, during CES. At the time Polaroid had said the camera would be arriving during the first quarter of the year and with a price point of $399. Anyway, Polaroid has finally announced the availability. The iM1836 is available today and actually priced a bit lower than originally expected.
The camera has arrived at $299 and will be available by way of Amazon and Walmart. Polaroid is promising the iM1836 will deliver “D-SLR quality and flexibility but with the simplicity, affordability and convenience of a point-and-shoot camera.” That aside, what we can say is the Polaroid iM1836 is a micro 4/3 body with an interchangeable lens setup.
The camera is 18.1 megapixel and the feature set includes a 3.5-inch touchscreen along with WiFi, Bluetooth and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. As for the interchangeable lens bit, the iM1836 ships with a 10-30mm lens to get started with. Polaroid also mentioned that a 500mm telephoto lens will be available in November and a 50mm lens will be available in the early part of 2014.
So far Polaroid hasn’t offered anything in terms of pricing for those additional lenses. Users can also expect HDMI out for connecting to a television or other external display, a headphone out to monitor audio when filming and your basic SD card slot for memory.
The video will record at 1920 x 1080 and thanks to the camera running Android — there will be some software goodies included. Those include Face Auto Exposure and panoramic images. There will also be blink detection and a pop-up flash. Lastly, it looks like the camera will be available in one color — silver, and it will measure in at 4.2 x 1 x 2.5 inches.
It is NOT a µ4/3