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Narrative Clip review: Photographic memory, for better and worse

An always-on camera that takes photos every 30 seconds? The Narrative Clip is that, and it aims to be an extension of your memory, too.

Scott Stein Editor at Large
I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future.
Expertise VR and AR, gaming, metaverse technologies, wearable tech, tablets Credentials
  • Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps
Scott Stein
8 min read

"What's that on your hat?" someone next to me on the train asks. I tell him it's a fitness tracker. Somehow I don't have the heart to tell him the truth: it's a camera, snapping two pictures a minute, that I wear on me all the time. Google Glass? At least that looks invasive. This is Narrative Clip, the more stealth way to perpetually record your life.

5.0

Narrative Clip

The Good

The <b>Narrative Clip</b> has a small, simple design and works automatically; the app works with iOS and Android.

The Bad

Camera placement often yields poorly framed or otherwise useless photos; Narrative’s photo-uploading service costs extra; the Clip won’t sync directly with your phone; it only takes still images; Narrative phone app feels too pared-down to be helpful.

The Bottom Line

The Narrative Clip camera attempts to be your always-on wearable way to record photographic memories, but it lacks the flexibility, affordability, and camera quality to meet its promise.

Cameras that auto-record and sync the data back to servers or phones are starting to finally become real consumer products, and the Narrative Clip, which began life as a Kickstarter project called Memoto, is one of them. The little puck is little more than a 5-megapixel basic camera that takes two pictures a minute, automatically. Clip it anywhere. And...create a detailed photographic record of your every waking moment.

Sarah Tew/CNET

For better or worse, that's the pitch.

The $279 clip-on camera created by Narrative, a Swedish company that raised its initial funding via Kickstarter back in 2012, doesn't record video clips, or audio. It doesn't have a flash, either. And, considering you can see the lens, it's not really all that stealthy. But the Narrative Clip is part of a new little wave of "lifelogging cameras," devices that are meant as alternatives to collect time and location-stamped information than traditional full-control point-and-shoot alternatives.

But here's the problem: you may or may not be on board with the idea of "lifelogging," or wearable cameras, or photographic memory, but even if you are, the Narrative Clip has serious limitations. Its lack of video recording or more advanced controls, its reliance on a cloud-based storage and moment-analysis service that costs about $100 a year, and its inability to directly pair with your phone (yes, you read that right) make Narrative a novelty, at best.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Memory box
Back in 2003, Gordon Bell, a Microsoft researcher, was well underway with MyLifeBits, a project he started with Jim Gemmell to explore the recording and recall of "e-memories," bits of data collected and logged. The idea was one of the earliest attempts at lifelogging. And that year, a camera called the SenseCam, according to Bell's book Total Recall, was created to hang around one's neck and snap pictures automatically.

If you've read Dave Eggers' "The Circle," you're probably familiar with a similar idea. The Narrative Clip takes those sci-fi, utopian/dystopian fantasies and uses them to deliver a little minimalist clip-on, a rounded square bit of plastic with a tiny smartphone-style lens in one corner. It comes in three different colors -- orange, gray, or white -- and looks exactly like a slightly oversized square tie clip.

Sarah Tew/CNET

A simple metal clip on the back means you can slip it into a lapel or hat-band or your v-neck sweater. An inner accelerometer senses orientation and flips the image to stay upright. The Clip also has a GPS chip and a magnetometer.

It's easy to clip on, and even easier to forget you're wearing it. Keep that in mind in case you clip one on your jacket and absent-mindedly brush it off hours later.

Sample photo of one of my days with Narrative Clip. Scott Stein/CNET

Narrative Clip as camera
You aren't going to replace your regular camera with a Narrative Clip. You're not even going to replace your smartphone camera with one. A little lens offers 70 degree field of view and the Clip takes 5-megapixel photos.

The Narrative Clip is weather-resistant and made to be worn outdoors, but I wouldn't risk wearing one in a downpour. It's sturdy, and has survived a drop or two.

Narrative's reviewer's guide compares the quality to an iPhone 4; I'd say that's probably right, but still a little generous. There's no flash, and no ability to control focus. And, because of the Clip's design, you won't be able to frame or even see your shots until you get home and sync the Clip to your computer via Micro-USB (a port is hidden under a little rubber cover).

Sarah Tew/CNET

That's right; the Narrative Clip doesn't sync with your phone at all, and doesn't even have Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It's an island unto itself, an unconnected "dumb" camera -- without a viewfinder. When you're not near a computer, the Clip just automatically takes photos, twice a minute, and keeps doing so unless you turn the camera lens-down on a table or place it in your pocket. There's no adjusting the settings, but you can take a manual photo by double-tapping. You won't know anything happened unless you check a row of LED lights on the side and see if they blinked. Tap-to-snap has its problems: namely, by tapping, your finger might block the lens, or you might jostle or shift the camera's lens or placement.

Those four LED lights indicate battery level -- a full charge, which takes a few hours, lasts about a day and a half based on my week of use (30 hours according to Narrative), and 8GB of storage should hold enough photos, even if taken once every 30 seconds. I didn't run out of space between computer syncs, but I could see that happening if I used it on a long vacation away from a computer.

To put it lightly: the Narrative Clip has limitations, by design.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Narrative Clip as memory recorder
But let's get to what the Clip was really designed to do: be your memory assistant, recording moments that get uploaded, processed, and tagged for your future browsing and remembering. It's no accident that the Narrative's original name was Memoto -- a name I actually prefer.

Joseph Kaminski, you're in my memory. Scott Stein/CNET

What the heck do you do with all these photos -- some good, some OK, many horrible? Narrative has a cloud service that works in tandem with the Narrative Clip that a Mac/PC application called Narrative Uploader automatically sends your pictures to. It's a private account, and Narrative offers a year of free service with the $279 purchase price. But, after that, it's $9 a month.

Sarah Tew/CNET

That's somewhat crazy, especially since there are plenty of great cloud-based photo upload destinations you could use instead -- Flickr, Google+, Instagram, and even regular old Facebook. You could locally download the Narrative Clip's photos and store them on your hard drive, then add them wherever you'd like afterwards, but you lose out on Narrative's sorting-and-tagging services within their cloud service.

Sarah Tew/CNET

The Narrative app, which runs on both Android and iOS (I tested on an iPhone 5S), has a flat design and a clean layout. It pulls the photos you've already shot, downloaded to your PC/Mac, and uploaded to Narrative's cloud server. Photos are laid out in "moments," sorted based on time of day, and split based on how Narrative perceives there should be a split. Narrative sorts the photos by "GPS, time, lighting, motion, colorfulness, photo composition (symmetry) and face detection," according to my reviewer's guide. It was hard to tell that when browsing the app, basically because I had lots of shots of ceilings, walls, and office clutter.

I thought I was taking a picture of someone in front of me. Scott Stein/CNET

The Narrative Clip, depending on how it's resting on your jacket or hat or wherever else, could be shooting straight ahead, or up at the sky, or tilted to your shoulder. The only thing you know for sure is that the photos will be right-side up, but as to where that little camera is really looking, well, that's anyone's guess. I stood in front of store windows and looking at odd NYC characters thinking I was snapping a weird covert moment, and all I got was a semi-blurry snap of something else.

Browsing these pictures of my week, I didn't exactly capture the essence of what I was living. Maybe this is meant to be more of a mysterious box of memory chocolates, waiting to be unwrapped at the end of your day. Maybe it's a tool to inspire you to see more things. I got some good pictures of a decadent churrascaria dinner with old friends, but I missed some opportunities when playing with my little kids. Narrative Clip, you didn't act as my surrogate memory.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Creep factor
It bears mentioning: if Google Glass breeds Glassholes, what does a wearable clip-on camera make you? The Narrative Clip is more discreet/covert and less iconic than Glass, so it slides under the radar better. But the point is, this is a device that's meant to continually record things around you -- and add GPS stamps, too.

My wife was instantly turned off by the device when I got home, and insisted I turn it off, put it away. I tried to explain I was testing it, but I had to respect my family's wishes. Much like Google does with Glass, Narrative recommends some privacy/respect awareness: "You have extensive rights to photograph whatever you find interesting or beautiful or for other reason worth documenting. Secondly, you have significant responsibilities to respect other people's integrity." Sometimes this feels like the warning labels on cigarettes; after all, the more ever-present our cameras are, the more they'll be able to pry, and sneak shots, and be somewhat invasive. It's inevitable, especially with this type of tech.

Sarah Tew/CNET

It's easy to suddenly wear Narrative Clip into a locker room, or bathroom, or a private meeting, or some other compromising position. It's also easy to forget that it's still on -- for the person being photographed, and for the wearer. I kept forgetting I had it on. Kudos to the Narrative Clip's sense of invisible design, but this little bug's likely to be on you. At least it doesn't record audio.

Jeff Bakalar, unaware I was monitoring our elevator ride. Scott Stein/CNET

Some people stared at the camera, others didn't. I found I was able to walk around with it pretty easily. My own sense of integrity often pushed me to take it off. I didn't want to be a Narrative Cliphole, or whatever I'd end up being.

Conclusion
Someday, say the Acolytes of Wearable, we shall all be nodes on the great network of life. Maybe we're measuring our steps, or collecting sensory data, or...wearing cameras on our bodies, continually recording. If so, we're undoubtedly going to get better cameras than the Narrative Clip. This product's not advanced enough, or inexpensive enough, to make sense.

The Narrative Clip isn't a new idea. It's the one of the first attempts to take a classic tech dream and make it real. But really, if your experience wearing one is like mine, you won't make many friends with it on. And you won't be collecting very many good memories, either. If the Clip cost less, had a free cloud service, and synced with my phone, I'd be more positive about it. But those are a lot of ifs. What Narrative is doing is intriguing, but odds are this isn't the product you'd want no matter who you are.

5.0

Narrative Clip

Score Breakdown

Style 6Features 4Ease of use 6