Chuzhao Camera Review: The Most Charming Camera of 2025

“Shut up, that’s adorable,” said a woman from Gen Z who held the Chuzhao camera after I put it in their hands. It’s the beautiful little TLR camera that’s currently trending around the web. I haven’t reviewed anything like this since 2011, and I’m very thankful that the spring in NYC is bringing with it the buds of a charming future past. With every single button manipulation and every single intentional movement I made with the camera, I heard my inner chaos gremlin cackle with laughter. I say what I’m about to say with the full transparency of the native New Yorker that I am: I hope this is the camera that finally gets the Japanese camera manufacturers to snap out of it.The Chuzhao camera is a fantastic impluse buy. I mean, how do you go wrong for $50? For real, I spent almost half that on a few groceries last night and I regularly will spend nearly that on a few cocktails. But in the current state of the economy, I realize that we are in a world not too far from a great quote in Borderlands 3. It goes something like, “Pandora may not have water, or vegetables, or infrastructure, but as long as we have dank memes, we are free.” The meme that this camera is surely much more affordable than vegetables at the moment.So what’s the deal with the Chuzhao camera? It’s pretty simple. Take the innards of the camera from the days before the 12MP iPhone camera became good, remove the crazier processor, use the lens you’d find on a disposable camera, and put it into a small TLR style camera body with minimal controls that you have to memorize. Truth be told, you’ll be having too much fun messing around with this thing to really care about the odd controls.CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product imageAt the front of the Chuzhao camera are a few controls. One near the bottom of the front lens is the power switch. The other controls the shutter. And in the middle, one of the buttons offers playback. To get out of playback, you essentially need to press the shutter button again. Then there’s the crank on the side — that activates video shooting, which the camera does in HD format. While the still images are square format, the video isn’t.Then there’s the really charming part: the 1-inch LCD screen that’s given extra contrast with the viewer that pops up. When I handed the camera to one woman, she was too content just staring into the thing and the experience instead of actually shooting with it.CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product image CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product image CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product image CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product image CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product image CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital camera product imageYou see, this is the style of camera that I’ve been asking for for years. I mean, Hasselblad came so close with the CFV-100C but fell short in the end. It constantly makes me wonder: why the heck can’t the Japanese and European camera brands do this? They all know fully well by now that retro is in, and many of these companies have a very rich history to their brands. To use the Chuzhao camera, you first open up the viewer at the top. Then you turn it on with one of the buttons by holding it down. After that, the Chuzhao camera logo pops up and the camera boots up akin to the time that you’d expect from a Pentium computer to start up Windows XP. Once it’s activated, the camera will show you the view of what it sees. To shoot, you press a button near the bottom lens just like you would with a normal TLR camera. To shoot video, you use the crank on the side. You also use the crank on the side to navigate through images. The cmaera comes with a Micro SD card and both charges and shares images via USB-C connections. It’s incredibly simple once you memorize the buttons. But I’m not going to lie, it’s going to take a while to rewire your brain to understand the camera. I recently found out that because I test cameras and lenses from every brand, I’ve got much better neuroplasticity in my brain than most photographers. This was a challenge even for me — I can only imagine how it would be if I were kind of drunk.Of course, I’m leaving out the most important part of this review. The Chuzhao camera is one that when you pop out, everyone around you will get curious. You will quite literally suck the air and attention out of the room in a way comparable to how capitalism likes to suck money out of our wallets and how the simple act of going outside seems expensive. If that resonates with you, then you’ll get where I’m coming from. Throughout my 38 years in life, I’ve had times where I’ve been both not so well off and well off financially. And thankfully, this camera resonates with both sides of Chris. On the standard strap that comes with the camera, the Chuzhao camera touts itself to be the first camera for young people. But I like to say that it makes me feel young again because I’m transported to a place and time before we started taking the fun out of photography.Japan: Please listen to me. Photography doesn’t need to be that serious. Deep down, I know that you’re deeply jealous of how Lomography can appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha. We all know that one of the Japanese brands is probably going to try to make something appealing like this, and then all the other Japanese brands will immediately copy it. But seriously: hurry up.The Phoblographer’s Editor Choice award⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 5 out of 5.We’re giving the Chuzhao camera our Editor’s Choice award for the most charming and fun camera of 2025. And I’m compelled to give it 5 out of 5 stars because of how unique the interface is.The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.EditedSample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital CameraUneditedSample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital Camera Sample image from the CHUZHAO Vintage Mini Digital CameraChuzhao Camera Review: The Most Charming Camera of 2025We're giving the Chuzhao camera our Editor's Choice award for the most charming and fun camera of 2025. And I'm compelled to give it 5 out of 5 stars because of how unique the interface is. Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.

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