Japanese brand crams entire digital camera into $50 USB drive

Japanese company April has launched a crowd-funding campaign for its 3-in-1 USB memory stick that’s also an instant digital camera.

April has decided to turn a run-of-the-mill USB drive on its head, by adding a digital camera to create the ‘3-in-1 USB memory and art camera.’

The charmingly tiny 3-in-1 device was launched as part of a crowd-funding campaign on, Makuake, Japan’s answer to Kickstarter.

There, the company states that the USB memory stick combines “practicality and fun” by offering photography, portable storage, and video camera features in one small package.

April

The 3-in-1 device comes with an included 32GB microSD card, which can be used to store any photos and videos taken on the absurdly small camera.

Old-school digital photography

With something so small you’d expect the quality of the camera isn’t going to give your smartphone a run for its money, and you’d be right.

The camera has an image resolution of 1280 x 960, and photography examples on the crowd-funding page look reminiscent of some of the earliest phone camera photos.

It also produces AVI formatted videos at 30 FPS with a 1280 x 720 resolution.

However, April describes the device as allowing you to “experience the fun of going back to the basics of photography.” So for taking artistically retro-looking digital photography, it likely gets the job done.

The 3-in-1 device also includes four filters: monochrome, orange, green, and blue, in addition to the normal shooting mode.

There’s also a built-in 0.9-inch rounded display, so you can check your low-resolution photos, and videos, from the drive itself.

April

As a USB memory stick and digital camera combined, the device also has flash memory. That way you can store any photos, videos, and other files and files that weren’t taken on the tiny camera.

If you want the 3-in1 “practical masterpiece” for yourself, April has started the early-bird pricing on its crowd-funding page from $50.

The device is expected to be delivered by the end of November 2024. You’ll just have to familiarize yourself with the machine-translated version of Makuake to buy one of your own. Especially if your Japanese is a little rusty.

If charmingly small tech if you’re thing, check out the GBA-like Thumby Color which launched in early August on Kickstarter.