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As a shopping editor, I review hundreds of products each year, and people always want to know which ones I stand behind. In 2024, I tested so many cool gadgets, beauty launches, hair tools, and holiday gifts. But there was one item that stole my whole heart—an impulse buy that didn’t solve any problems, that was cheap enough that my heart rate didn’t rise at checkout, and that brought me endless, evolving delight. This product was—drum roll, please—an itty, bitty, teeny, tiny camera.
Gsnagole Keychain Camera
My review of the Gsnagole Keychain Camera
Courtesy of Malia Griggs
Courtesy of Malia Griggs
First impression
It was the end of summer in Brooklyn, and I’d swung by my local coffee shop for an iced beverage. After fixing my drink, the barista said, “Smile!” then whipped out what I thought was a walnut. I squinted, slowly realizing that it was something that looked a hell of a lot like a camera for ants.
I then said the three words that everyone does when they first see the Gsnagole Keychain Camera, “Is that real?!” She turned its screen toward me, and sure enough, there was my face at about the size of a lentil. When a fire engine pulled up across the street outside, the barista moved to the window and began filming—incredibly—a video of the scene. I immediately had her pull up the product in her TikTok shop, found it on Amazon (as one does), and ordered it.
I’ve loved miniature things since childhood (real ones remember American Girl’s Tiny Treasures book, which I still have!). In my apartment you’ll find a Russian nesting doll I acquired when I was 9; the very last hand-painted doll could be a grain of rice. On bookshelves and tucked into drawers are tiny wooden furniture, a shopping cart that contains tiny Twizzlers and Reese’s Pieces, and a tiny Boggle and Magic 8 Ball. I’m certainly not alone in this fascination with the wee (see The Tiny Chef Show, tiny homes, and Japanese kawaii culture)—and even more so when these little products perform the same jobs that their normal-size versions do. There’s science behind how miniatures trigger dopamine in our brains, blah blah, but what it boils down to is that tiny stuff is so fucking cute, it makes my heart squeeze when I see it. (Call me Blink-182, because I must have all the small things, okay?) Mix that with my passion for photography, and it was a no brainer for me.
How it works
“Listen, lady, save the small talk for your therapist,” you’re probably thinking. You just want to know about the camera, right? Fine, fine. The camera—which is just 1.5 inches in length, width, and height—takes pictures and video (with sound). I bought the version that came with a 32G memory card (there are options for 16G, 64G, and 128G, as well), and I take maybe 20 pictures a week without running into a low-battery message.
On and off: You turn it on with a long push of the button on its top—the same button that you push to take pictures. It greets you with the word “WELCOME,” and when you turn it off (again with a long push), its screen adorably says, “BYE BYE.”
Photo and video: The device is easy to use—with the button on the side, you can toggle between photo and video modes and view your content. There’s also an option to shoot with different color filters (I ignore this).
Battery life: On the screen, you can view both the status of the battery and the date and time (the latter displays on every picture you take). The camera lasts 60 minutes on one charge, which is longer than you might think. I plug it in to charge via micro USB about once a month.
Storage: Files live on a micro USD memory card that you can remove from the bottom with a hard push. To view them, you connect the card with the included USB-connectable reader to your computer. It pops up as a folder on your desktop. It took me some fiddling to figure out that if I want to edit the date and time, I have to do this within a text file that’s also on the memory card. The date is often incorrect on my pictures, but I think this adds to the overall charm.
The pros and cons
Because it is so charming—enough so that people will stop me on the street when they spot it, as if I’m walking a Great Dane (or a Microscopic Dane). The camera is a conversation starter in itself. Strangers and friends pepper me with questions and reactions (“I’ve never seen anything like it,” one wide-eyed man told me while I recorded runners at the New York City Marathon).
Its existence seems to bring as much pleasure to everyone else as it does me. The pictures are minute enough that I snap them without looking closely, so that when I finally upload, it’s like developing them for the first time—much like a disposable camera. It curbs my compulsion to immediately edit memories as they happen, leaving me to focus on the moment and less on how “good” the pictures are. In fact, the grainier and more candid they are, the more reflective of reality that they feel.
And yet, as something of a gift, the photos and videos are beautiful in their own right.
They have a faded, sometimes pixelated look, but mostly the results are startlingly clear—and the depth of the audio crisp, without background noise. The camera is lightweight, long-lasting, and with pictures sharp enough that I wind up toting it with me everywhere, dangling from my keys, to capture the seemingly most mundane moments—a bike leaning against a tree, the rotting teeth of a jack-o’-lantern, the blinking neon light of a bar sign. Then there’s the small, sweet moments—video of my goddaughter tottering in her first pair of shoes; my cat caught mid-yawn; a selfie of me and my dad on a date to the symphony. For all those times, my camera is there, documenting without distraction.
So, have you added my $35 mini memory maker to cart yet (which, I should note, would be the perfect small gift idea, stocking stuffer, or White Elephant present)? Even if not, I hope you read this and felt a fraction of the joy that this precious product brings me.
