Vivitar's AAA-powered budget compact — 5.1MP CMOS, fixed lens with 8x digital zoom, 2.4in screen, SD storage.
The Vivitar ViviCam 5024 was a late-2000s budget digital compact sold under the Vivitar name after the brand had passed to Sakar International, which used it on a large range of low-cost digitals. It sat in the entry ViviCam tier, sold in several bright colours through discount and catalogue retailers.
It records 5.1-megapixel stills from a CMOS sensor through a fixed 7.23mm lens, with 8x digital zoom and no optical zoom, composed on a 2.4-inch TFT screen. Features run to digital anti-shake, red-eye reduction, a basic movie mode and PictBridge printing. Storage is 8MB of internal memory plus an SD card slot supporting cards up to 8GB, and power comes from three AAA batteries.
It suits the Y2K-digicam and first-camera markets: AAA power and SD storage make it trivially easy to run today, and the fully automatic operation leaves nothing to learn. Image quality from the small CMOS sensor is basic, with soft detail and heavy noise indoors, so expectations should match its pocket-money price.
Condition checks are simple: confirm it powers on fresh AAAs, writes to an SD card, and that the screen is uncracked, since the screen dominates the back and takes knocks. These cameras were often children's gifts, so look for stickers, drops and corroded battery contacts. Working examples are plentiful and should cost very little.