Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this HD Camcorder so my kids had something to shoot videos with, so my expectations were not very high, especially when thinking about getting an HD Camcorder for under $100. Even still, it managed to fall well below my expectations. Here is why ...
First of all, DESIGN. The interface an location of buttons is not at all user-friendly. Some things (like the location of the power supply jack/SD Slot/etc. or the lack of needed buttons) are completely baffling. In the case of the former, the ports are located behind a protective swing door, but unfortunately, to open it you HAVE to open the LCD display, which ALWAYS turns on the camera. (BTW, there is no option to turn this "FEATURE" OFF.)
The QUALITY is also severely lacking. Not only does it just feel very cheap and the buttons are not the well made, but the unit malfunctioned immediately. After a little bit of use (I charged it and tried it out before my kids ever touched it) the screen went black and would not come on, nor could I get the unit to shut off. I had to remove the battery to due a forced shutdown to get it to work again.
FEATURES: This unit is nice and slim, but unfortunately it is also slim in features. It does offer different HD and non-HD recording resolutions as well as quality (assuming compression) settings, but that's about it. It does NOT have any kind of OPTICAL zoom, and the digital zoom that it employs is horrible -- it is jerk and minimal.
However, I could kind of look over a lot of that given the price and the target audience. However, the BIGGEST issue is, if you want to do ANY kind of video editing it is going to be a major pain in the neck. Unfortunately, in their "wisdom" they decided they would encode the video to H264 codec in a MOV (YUCK!! Don't get me started on Quicktime, but is has been and contiues to be the bane of serious editor's existence ... thankfully it is finally dying a none-too-fast death. But I digress ...). H264 is great for high quality with low memory requirements, but it is a TERRIBLE format in which to edit video. It's actually worse than trying to edit MPG2 streams, which isn't too bad these days. Why they didn't go with AVCHD or the like I don't know, but this was a horrible decision. I use multiple professional video editing NLE (non-linear editor's) including EDIUS, PREMIERE PRO, Vegas, AVID, etc. I also help my kids using the free and wonderful Microsoft Windows Movie Maker -- a hobbyist level NLE. It's free, easy to learn, and does a good job. They can not edit their movies with this (or any of my top end NLE's). I guess your supposed to use the lacklsuter software they ship with the product, but that is a huge waste of time IMHO.
Sooo ... if you want a very average camera that does happen to record HD video in a variety of sizes, but don't want to edit it, this COULD be your camera. If you're expecting anything else ... look elsewhere and expect to pay a good deal more.
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