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.

At 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.

You 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.

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.

Chuzhao Camera Image Samples

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.

Edited

Unedited