Consumer Reviews

This Samsung camcorder is delightfully fun to use, and takes pretty good quality video considering its low cost. There is only one problem, and unfortunately, it is a fatal flaw. Because of this flaw, I cannot recommend this camcorder.

Before I discuss the flaw, let me talk about some of the good things. The first thing I noticed upon using this camcorder is its wide field of vision. I frequently like to take videos of myself — you know, fun little videos in which I’m holding the camera in front of me, pointing it at myself and narrating the scene. This usually works very well with most digicams, which have small lenses that have a very wide angle. However, most camcorders are nowhere near as wide angled, and so if you point the camera at yourself, you end up with a very close up shot of your face.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see that this camcorder exhibited the useful wide-angle lens of your standard digicam. I could comfortably hold the camera at arms length, pointed at me, and the shot would be well composed and not too close. It was doubly useful because the flip-out LCD screen is able to rotate 180 degrees to face the same direction as the lens, so I could see what I was recording.

However, the reason digicams are able to offer that useful wide angle is because they use fairly small lenses. Small lenses may give a wide field of view, but they are nowhere near as competent as the larger lenses found in many high-end camcorders. For casual video recording, this is not a big deal, but you should know if you buy this camcorder that its small lens will cause you to deal with trade-offs. The optical image stabilization is not very good, and at full telephoto you will be shaking a lot regardless of how steadily you are holding the camera. Also, at full telephoto the picture is not as sharp as it could be. Further, the contrast between the bright and dark colors is so great that you will often miss the lot of detail in the midrange.

That said, for casual purposes, this camcorder is fine. Unlike many low-end camcorders, the color here is not too oversaturated. And the ability to choose between a 4:3 ratio and a 16:9 ratio is useful. Or at least it would be useful if it worked. And this brings me to the fatal flaw.

The video will look beautiful when you play it on the built-in screen. But when you go to move the files to your computer, you will see that the camcorder fails to properly set the resolution on the final saved video. The end result is that widescreen videos shot in 16:9 look squished when played on the computer. And standard resolution videos shot in 4:3 looks stretched when played on the computer.

I don’t know if this is a Mac problem or a general problem. I only use a Mac computer, not a Windows computer, so I am not sure if this problem is reproducible on Windows. But I am fairly well versed in computers, and I spent a long time trying to fix this problem, to no avail. I ran the videos through iMovie, Final Cut Pro, QuickTime, and yet no matter what I tried, I was unable to fix the proportions of the videos. As it stands, I cannot use any of the video I took, for any purposes.

Now, it is possible that if you simply upload the video from your camcorder directly into YouTube, it might look fine. I don’t know, as I have not tried this, because I like to edit my videos before I upload them. But, as I said, any editing program I tried to use open up the video in a deformed manner. This is not a problem with my editing software. I have edited countless videos from countless different camcorders and digicams, and I have never had this problem. I searched the Internet to see if anyone else had this problem, and indeed, this problem was very common with Samsung’s low-end camcorders. Some people had figured out how to work around this problem, but the instructions for that seemed fairly involved and confusing, and frankly no one should have to jury rig the videos before they are usable!

For this reason, I am unable to recommend that any Mac users purchase this camcorder. If, however, Samsung’s engineers fix this problem, then I would give it 4 stars and recommend it for someone who wanted to take informal videos. As cheap cameras go, this would be a good one if not for the fatal resolution flaw.

I was looking for a good flash based camcorder to film things around the house, vacations, my dog, and random things for Youtube. While this camera produces ok image quality, it just wasn’t great. I got it at Costco (the 8gb verson, not on Amazon) for a really good price with a nice case, but it ended up going back. I will go into some of the details about it now.

I really wanted to like it, since the design of the camera itself is very nice and fairly well built. Having the 3 hour battery life and long record time is perfect for when you go on trips and may not be able to download to a computer or charge it often. The manual lens cover is also a pro to me, since you know it won’t stop working like the automatic ones can. The buttons are well placed and the menus are easy to navigate. The hand strap is ok, but could have been a bit better thought out. I do like the swivel grip, I could see that coming in handy once in a while. Now, on to what I didn’t like about it.

The video quality is my main complaint about this camera, but what can you expect from a lower end inexpensive camera. I went out and did a days worth of test filming, around the house, garden, pool, neighborhood, indoors, etc… It all looked really good on the camera’s screen, that is until I watched it on the computer. Everything was smashed down to 4:3 aspect ratio causing jagged lines throughout the video. From reading other reviews, I knew the camera wasn’t properly flagging the 16:9 videos. I installed the included “MediaShow” software that came with the camera, and downloaded the widescreen patch from their website. I opened the videos there, and re-saved them as 16:9, at that point, I could open them with any editing software(Sony Vegas in my case). The video quality was “ok” at best, but had that soft and cheap look to it. It’s fine for Youtubers, but I wanted just a little more out of a camcorder, which lead me to another camera.

When returning it to Costco, I found they had the Canon HF10 HD Camcorder for much less then it is selling anywhere else, plus it came with a memory card and nice carrying bag. I had read many good reviews about it on Amazon, so I decided to try it. It blows the Samsung away in everything from build quality (made in Japan, instead of China like the Samsung), better feel, better screen, better zoom (variable instead of fixed), the video quality is amazingly better, and the colors in the video are more vivid (CMOS instead of CCD).

Overall, this is a good beginner camera, as long as you know how to get the correct aspect ratio and aren’t expecting movie quality video. If you are looking for quality, look more into a bit more expensive HD camcorder, it’s well worth it.

My recent experience with theCobra 3.1 Mp Digital Video Camera with 1.5 TFT Color Display led me to understand that,in most cases heavy budgeting will do you every little good when it comes to purchasing a digital camcorder. The only decent camcorder I had before this was a used VHS model from the early 90’s.It was huge,very heavy and had an eyepiece that was very unfriendly to my eyeglasses.I managed to get a lot of good use out of it until someone I lived with “neglected” to return it.But I am no longer too sorry about that;it was very antiquated when I got it and I needed something better. The fairly recent advent of memory cams like this one made it a lot easier for me to want to look into a new one.

HD cams have no come along now too but,with today’s economy it’s kind of hard to plunk down $500-$600 for a camcorder,especially if there’s a need to buy extra memory cards which can run close to $100 for some of the larger capacity ones. I almost went with the Sony Webbie MHS-CM1 HD Camcorder (Orange) because it was HD and fairly portable.But after doing a bit of research it was clear it was lacking in some important features I needed.So in the end it came between this and the Webbie and…this one won out.Even though many consider this among the higher end of “budget camcorders” it was,frankly at the highest possible end of my price range so despite the financial sacrifice I decided to give this a go. Like many cameras it has it’s pros and cons.

I’ll start by telling you about the pros and there are a whole lot of them. The camera is just perfect for hand held use,is lightweight and has an excellent,clear viewing screen. It gives you three zoom options:digital,optical and intelli-zoom function.I haven’t figured out what they all mean yet but the digital zoom anyway offers excellent,seamless zoom control.Their are a lot of menu opitions but once you understand them you can do an awful lot with this camcorder such as fade in and out of video,make films in B&B and sepia tone as well as color and there’s even a feature to upload directly to YouTube.For an SD camera the image quality is superb,easily DVD quality and if you have a newer HD TV you have the option of recording in a 16 by 9 HD screen format.

Another major advantage here is in addition to an SD/MMC memory card slot the camera features 16GB’s of built in memory.That means at it’s highest setting this camcorder can easily hold three hours worth of recording video. There are some people here who’ve complained about that not being enough internal memory.I don’t personally see how that is seeing that I have yet to record any videos that ammount up to that long a time and I usually upload them to computer very quickly before could happen.If your travelling access memory cards might be good depending on how much footage you intend to shoot but to be honest,the internal memory should be more then enough.

The batter time is great too:I was told that the charging time is 12 hrs but to be honest,the true charge time is not quite 5 hrs so that’s a HUGE advantage right there. There is of course another side to the coin regarding the cons,even if they’re subjective I suppose.As with most digital memory camcorders this records video in the MP4 format,meaning that it requires difficult to understand codecs to play in your average WMP or other media player. The accompanying Cyberlink mediashow software allows you to view videos without these complications. It also allows you to convert the MP4 files for play in other media devices such as WMP,but depending on the lengh the conversion process can take up to…say 2 hrs for half an hour worth of video.

Also with the software to record to DVD with it takes at least that long,if not more to burn to DVD so…using the mediashow softwhere might require several days of personel time for editing,converting and recording videos. This is an issue I am sure you can work around easily if you read the informative and lenghy PDF instruction manual this comes with-just plug in the CD,save it in your documents and you can consult it whenever you need it.In terms of practicality and ease of use,the pros of this camera easily outweigh any cons so I highly recommend this camcorder to anyone with serious budget issues who want a high quality digital camcorder that’s DVD quality and delivers reasonable images on an HD-TV.

The lenscap on this camera is built-in, but not automatic. The switch to open it is on the side of the lens, and while it opens all the way with no trouble, it does not close completely and the lower flap must be pushed into place with a finger. I suspect it is only a matter of time before this flap becomes inoperable and I have a camera lens that I cannot protect. Maybe I just got a bad one, though, because I haven’t seen anyone else complaining about the lens cover on this cam.

The video is surprisingly stable and I had a much easier time getting clear shots with a minimum of shakiness. HD camcorders I’ve tried seem to require either a tripod or a surgeon’s precise and steady hand to get video that won’t give you motion sickness. I liked the overall video quality I got with this camera better as well. The advertized zoom features did not work well for me. In my experience with any camera the more you try to zoom the shakier it gets and this was really no different.

However I think image stability, video quality and ease of use outweigh the zoom issue. Low light conditions were not perfect, but I’ve seen higher end cameras with worse low-light results. It’s much easier to find features such as switching aspect ratios and lighting settings on the camera. It focuses on both still and moving objects quickly– again, much better than higher-end HD cameras I’ve tried.

As advertised, I think it’s perfect for You Tube videographers. Even though it does not shoot in HD, I think this is a great entry-level camera for beginners and experienced You Tubers alike. It feels sturdy and I’m not afraid to throw it in a bag and take it along with me wherever I go. I wish I could count on the lenscap closing, but overall this camera is a great value for what it does. If HD is not an issue or you just want to upload stuff to the internet this camera is fantastic.