Description

The Sanyo Xacti FH1 is truly the benchmark in high definition, offering 1920 x 1080 pixels, and 60 fields per second to record crystal clear and smooth motion for videos. This highly advanced dual camera not only offers the regular 1080i format, recording at 60 frames per second, but with the Sanyo proprietary CMOS engine, recording is possible in 1080p format - this means recording at a full 60 frames per second. With this higher frame rate capturing ability, videos look more professional, and offer smoother, higher quality images.

Customer Reviews

 taking still images - Aug 31, 2010

Sanyo VPC-FH1A Full HD Video and 8 MP Digital Photos (Black)

I bought this camera and it shoots pretty videos. But im unable to take still images. When i press the photo button, it seems it focuses and if i remain pressing it, the image in the LCD screen goes off and on. So i think that the photo is taken. but no images when i run the slideshow. In video mode, i keep clicking the photo button but no images.

I returned the first one thinking something is faulty. Iam not able to take pics using the second one too. Is it something iam doing wrong. Can somebody shed some light.

--------------------------
I figured out what was the issue. You need to press a bit harder after the camera focuses to take the photo.

Happy with the purchase and Amazon service
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 I love the camera. - Aug 31, 2010

This may sound like a commercial, but I love the camera. It has replaced my Sony DCR-DVD610, which is a few years old. It is really small, just under the size of a soda can. The battery life is pretty amazing for my needs. I recorded a high school football game over the weekend, and it made it through the entire game in full HD 30fps.
It can get 201 minutes of voice memos
196 mins on 640x480
174 mins on 720p
156 mins on 1080p (30fps)
119 mins on 1080p (60fps)
I like all the situations I use it in,
-Low light concert like places([...])
-Football games ([...])
-Around the yard ([...])
-Filming my pets ([...])
-Time-lapsing the sky ([...])
All i have for public view. Those are the [...] links.

 Little Sanyo delivers - Aug 24, 2010

For the price, this compact little Sanyo really delivered. Sure it's not the best at autofocus or metering difficult spotlit subjects. (I don't know if higher-priced camcorders actually are much better at it--but suspect they are.) But overall, the camera has a nice big lens. delivers excellent, sharp crisp images, and is simple and easy to operate. I bought it used, but it came looking brand new, with all the accessories and cords and manuals and literature still sealed. I believed I got a great bargain and am most happy with Amazon and the seller, Wharehouse Deals, Inc.

 Trade-offs and compromises: choose carefully - Aug 15, 2010

This camera is full of trade-offs: great features which are often crippled by poor implementation. I very nearly returned it, but ultimately it is getting the job done: taking pictures and videos of my 2 year-old and newborn for online viewing by friends and family. Consider very carefully how you plan to use this camera before buying.

The big plus is its low-light performance. It may be one of the only inexpensive HD camera's on the market which takes decent pictures under indoor lighting. If you plan to take videos indoors or at night, you'll find that you have very little choice even at twice the price.

Other pluses: acceptable performance as a still camera, a good flash, a remote control, a 37mm threaded lens for adapters and filters, and manual controls for just about everything.

The big minus is a complete lack of image stabilization. Electronic image stabilization is listed as a feature, and there is a setting to turn it on and off. But if it does anything at all, turning stabilization on just makes the picture more jittery. If you don't have a steady hand or plan to do a lot of zooming, this is NOT the camera for you. If you are thinking about using stabilization software, be warned: the CMOS sensor uses a "rolling-shutter" (google it) which is incompatible with software stabilization and makes fast pans look distorted.

Other minuses: the record/pause and still-photo buttons are at the top of the camera-back requiring a long thumb to reach. If you have small hands, you will not be able to operate the camera one-handed. Given the lack of image stabilization, this is will be a deal-breaker for some. I will have to buy a second still camera for my wife. The still-photo quality is poor in all modes except the 8 megapixel 4:3 size, where it is surprisingly good. But in that mode the display is vertically cropped until you press the photo button, making it difficult to line up shots. The face-tracking feature does not work: it often chooses chairs over people. The multi-point auto-focus is easily confused. The automatic white-balance is easily confused and seems to switch abruptly between presets instead of performing true, continuous adjustments. The short-cut controls are limited to only few oddly-chosen features. Many of the short-cut controls require secondary input (like adjusting the exposure up and down) which then conflict with other short-cuts making it impossible to adjust the settings more than once.

If your main goal is to produce online video for friends and family, then the video quality is very good: better than what you can get on cameras that cost twice as much. For computer displays you do NOT want any interlacing and 60 fps is a waste, so the availability of a 30p settings is critical. Many cameras do not have that. The video quality at this camera's 1080/60p setting is not noticeably better than at its 720/30p setting. If you are planning to shoot sports or other fast motion, this is probably not the camera for you: the rolling-shutter CMOS chip causes severe distortion with fast-motion or pans.

The viewing angle is a bit narrow if you need to get close to your subjects, such as in a small room. But it is not nearly as bad as many consumer-grade camcorders. (The 37mm lens front is threaded, so you can attach a wide-angle adapter. Those can be purchased online for as little as $40, though the cheap ones produce a lot of lens-flares.)

On the whole, the camera has a huge list of features, many of which you won't find on other camera's at this price point. But many of those features are crippled by poor design, requiring work-arounds and compromises. I suspect that a great many of the camera's problems could be fixed with a firmware update, especially the lack of image stabilization. But as far as I know there hasn't been one yet and there may never be one.

I spent many hours trying to find a camera that could take decent indoor video suitable for online viewing and was really shocked at how few choices there were for under $500. This is pretty much it at the moment, so if that's what you need, and you don't have small hands, then this camera may work for you. But if you are looking at that huge list of features and thinking "how can they do all that for so cheap?", the answer is: they didn't. You can make it work, but you have to work at it.

 Amazing Quality! & Amazing price! - Aug 08, 2010

Okay so I bought this camera because I'm a youtube beauty guru on youtube so basically what I do is makeup tutorials,reviews,hauls, etc.

I needed an awesome camera that would show up every little detail of my makeup so my subscribers could really be able to see it. & it did just it's job.

Also, it has hd quality which i absolutely love!

I don't know if it will allow me to post links on here but heres my channel link..

[...]

If that doesn't work than you can search youtube for glamorfulkay23 and you will see my videos from there. Just to give you an idea of what the quality is like on my camera. & you can tell the difference between my old camera and this camera for sure!

 Sanyo VPC-FH1A Full HD Video and 8 MP Digital Photos (Black) - Aug 06, 2010

This camera is a great value for the price. It does many things and probably more than the average user will ever use. The more you use it the more you find that it does. The focus can be a little slow but still usable. Overall I'm glad I bought it and it will do everything I need it to do.

 Amazing picture but... - Aug 03, 2010

I went from a Panasonic GS320 to this camcorder. The Sanyo blew me away with its picture quality and it cost less than the GS320. I liked the Sanyo alot and it was very easy to use. However, the autofocus didn't work well and the lack of optical stabilization combined with the extremely small size made it too difficult to get consistently good video. I returned it and bought a Panasonic TM700, which I highly recommend.

 Cheap, But Overheats - Jul 29, 2010

In theory this camcorder seems like a dream come true. Unfortunately in practice, it has one major fatal flaw - it overheats often and automatically shuts off. If you're intending to use this camcorder to record your child's hour-long recital or some other lengthy and continuous event, chances are it won't work. I tried running it continuously for an hour-long event and every ten to fifteen minutes it would overheat and shut off, then reboot and start recording again, totally ruining the footage I shot. It may be fine for shooting short clips in high definition, but I would not recommend this camcorder and actually regret the purchase.

 Excellent camcorder - Jul 28, 2010

I have used this camcorder for several weeks and it has performed very well.
I am very satisfied with it. The only negative thing is the image stabilization
is not very good when zooming in very close to something that is far away. But that
is easy to fix, just don't zoom in so much.

 Great value for true HD - Jul 25, 2010

My experience with this camera is in sync with Mr. Courtney's--"tends to have a lot of focus problems" is true, but so is "All things considered, this is a fine product." I have no problem with the zoom, and I love the 1080p 60fps. You can spend 3x on a camera with that resolution and perhaps the auto-focus will work better, but I'm not certain. I'll add that the USB interface is smooth and simple on Windows Vista, and I can highly recommend Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 Suite.

The camera is tiny and light. People have criticized the lack of an integral lens cap, but they give you a cap and a string to tie it to the camera. I love that the screen is not touch-sensitive (I hate that in a camcorder). The controls are very intuitive. From simple buttons on the back, you can RECORD video, take a PICTURE, PLAY back your clips, or see the MENU. The SET button is a joystick for navigating the menus and you push it to select--it works like the little red button mouse on IBM laptops.

One thing to mention, in case it isn't clear: It offers a manual focus option, but you need to set it, using the menu tree, before filming. You can't be filming, notice that the auto-focus isn't keeping up, and switch to manual focus and dial in the focus you want. I wish it had a mic in or at least a headphones out, too, but not at this price, I guess. I'm a big fan of this camera for the price, but it needs a few features to earn a 5-star rating.

 This Camcorder Rocks - Jul 17, 2010

WE purchased the Sanyo VPC-FH1A. We originally purchased it so we could connect the camera to our Apple computers at home. We had already purchased a more expensive JVC from our local Fry's retail store. However after getting it home we found out it would not work with the Mac.

Since we were leaving in a couple of days for a trip to Yosemite we needed something quick. The price was low and it seemed to have a long list of features. I can tell you that after using it for 2 weeks in all sorts of conditions including very low light, the camera is outstanding. The image quality is simply incredible and so is the ease of use. Just set it for auto everything and hit record.

I can not say enough good things about this product or the Amazon service. The camera arrived as promised and in perfect condition!

 Great camera/videocam - Jul 15, 2010

So far we have loved this video camera. My son is very into making videos and broke the sony minidv camera we had. This one is a great replacement and really speeds up the video import process. We are a Mac family and the native import feature to iMovie is great.

 Bad Amazon Customer Service. - Jul 14, 2010

I just want to say that I am unhappy with Amazon.com's service regarding this purchase.
It is better to buy from stores/vendors with 90-day return policies.

 Muy buena - Jul 05, 2010

La compre a través de Amazon y me llegó antes de lo previsto, la cámara es muy facil de usar y con muy buena claidad

 Probably Better as a Second Camera - Jul 05, 2010

If you need a second camera to capture another angle of the same scene, this should suffice. But as a primary camera, it's a little too unreliable. Not that it breaks, but the video quality is just too unpredictable.

As many have mentioned, the auto-focus issue is a big problem. Not only is it slow, it happens even when it shouldn't. I could have the camera on a tripod pointing it to a pot of plants for 15 minutes and the image would randomly come in and out of focus.

A few have mentioned to simply turn auto-focus lock on. But auto-focus lock does NOT work! Initially it appears to work but after a short time, focus begins to drift. When I tried pointing my camera to the aforementioned pot of plants and let it record for an hour with the auto-focus lock on, after about 20 minutes the video became inexplicably blurry. The same thing happened when focus was set to manual. Others have seen this phenomenon, not just me. Just search "FH1 blurry over time" on the internet.

Finally, this camera creates gaps in your video if it spans over 4GB long (or about 20 minutes of HD video at max settings). Others have talked about this as well. The gaps can be as long as 6-10 seconds. I'm not sure how people can brush this off as insignificant but this is a major flaw. Imagine you have your camera set on a tripod recording your son's baseball game or your daughter's school play. Wouldn't you like to have the comfort knowing that the homerun your son hit wasn't skipped or your daughter's monologue was safely recorded in its entirety?

One thing I learned from this experience is that many factors must be considered in order to determine the performance of a video camera. I used to think it was just the size of the CMOS sensor. And this camera has a very large one at 1/2.5". It seemed the pricing of these cameras just confirmed my thinking. The larger the sensor, the higher the price, and thus the better the camera. So for such a large sensor at such a low price, I thought, "How could I lose?" Boy, was I wrong. Sure it does have a large sensor, allowing it to handle low light situations well, but its focusing problems seriously hurt the video quality, making me wonder, "What good is the ability to handle low light situations when its problem with focusing will ruin the footage anyway?"

Anyway, shortcomings aside, when conditions are right, this camera does take amazingly high quality videos and does very well in low light as expected. It picks up things I have trouble seeing with the naked eye. Plus the camera is small and light and comes with lots of cables. It even comes with a remote. I'd recommend buying it, especially now when it's 280 bucks (I paid 50 bucks more). For the price of many digital still cameras, you get a very capable HD 1080P video camera. Just be aware of it's quirks.

 I have done great things with this cam - Jun 30, 2010

Here is the real deal about this camera. It has a few quirks that may require some manual work arounds by you to get a perfect video. That is if you think you are going to be using the auto function for the most part. For example sunny spots with a mix of shadows (like sun shinning threw window blinds) may cause the camera's auto white balance to flicker between the choice it would use for the sunshine and the one it would use for the shadow(Fix, set manual white balance to your taste or use the option for one push white balance...these both are stable and will not change unless reset...however if you move to a totally different scene all together you could forget to reset). The next issue is the auto focus, it seems to always be hunting when you aren't in the best light and subject is moving. For example I was filming my daughter dance and while looking in the LCD the focus was bouncing from sharp to blurred (not a major blur, but not as sharp as the perfect focus). When I played the video I could hardly tell that it was happening unless I reference something with more detail like her finger nails or fibers of her shirt. However, I discovered a workaround
(fix) for this as well. You would set the focus lock as a short cut on the joystick (really easy to do). What this does is allow you to lock it when you feel the autofocus has found the best focus...the subject can spin jump or what ever it wants and you would have them in perfect focus(caveat is if the subject changes depth then you could possibly lose focus, so you would have to be ready to unlock the focus so it can refocus and lock again when subject is in focus: it's very much like driving a car with a manual transmission). I would have to say as far as video recording those are the only things that pop out to me. In great sun light everything seems to work as intended. Those things disappointed me a little when they would happen, because they had the potential to flaw the video a little. However, since I found the work arounds i produces awesome videos.



The auto stabilization everyone hates, well it is what it is.... If you zoom 10x or 16x you have magnified you movements as well...the millimeter movements become 7 inches when zoomed out and if you are shaky the video look like an earth quake, that is really most camera though( binoculars too if you think about it). Now for low light situation, the camera can see, but of course it's not the best video, but you can identify objects and people rather well. I would say it can see pretty much what the human eye can see, however, it does lose it's sharpness( reduced to a standard def look)....but you can still capture the moment and that's what it's about when it comes down to it... The camera as a still shot shooter; like it has been said it's hit or miss and needs lots of light to take a great still shot... but it's no camera phone either. The pictures are usable in most cases, with the occasional great shot. If your intent was to film HD video then you will be happy with the still shot function. If you intent was the other way around then a point and shoot that films in 720p would be the way to go.


I rated the camera a four and that is because of its value, I have seen an 800 buck Canon at work and this can compete with it, minus the minor flaws. I truly believe if I filmed something and edited the way I do you would love my videos just as you loved someone's using an 800 to 1200 cam. The only difference is I may have had to understand my cams little quirks to get the best out of it. If this camera was 500 dollars as originally listed. I would say it's a 3 or 3 ½ and that is because for that much money I would want the auto functions to perform very well. This camera is fine on auto except for those situations mentioned.


Overall I have had this camera for a month and I have gotten great results, It has been an upgrade from a standard def 30gb JVC, which 3 years ago I paid more then I did for this.... So if this is in your budget I would say get it; if you can pay double maybe you should so you wouldn't have to learn how to work your camera manually. Since I have learned the manual side of this camera I wouldn't pay the extra money for better auto functions...

 Great HD cam for $300 - Jun 27, 2010

I shoot daily on a Panasonic P2 HD cam. I know how to use a camera...
Ive had this Sanyo for about 10 days now. Here is the breakdown.

Before i start.. for those of you complaining about the true 1080p..... come on.. what did you really expect for $300? Video quality of a $3000 camera?
Trust me, your videos will look great. I use 1080 30fps. Looks about right for a $300 travel anywhere HD camcorder.

Pros-

Cheap
HD picture is really impressive..
compact and lightweight
Shoots on sdhc cards
Looks great when transferred to DVD
battery runs a long time.(slow to charge)
240 fps feature(SD 4:3)
quite a few manual features
sleep/wake mode
can set shortcuts through the joystick(flash,focus,exposure)
*would like to see white balance shortcut*
lots of accessories and outputs


Cons- (Sanyo...are we paying attention?)

auto focus is slow and really bad indoors. Needs lots of lighting.
stabilizer is worthless!! Only steady hands need apply.
Digital zoom is bad. In a pinch it would be ok.. steady hands!!!
600 fps feature is really really really bad quality... cool,but 240fps much better.
No led light...has flash, but no camera light.
No HDMI cable.

Overall a great bargain for $300

 A great camcorder for the price - Jun 22, 2010

We bought the camera for a Historical Society. It is being used primarily in relatively low light conditions. The results have been great. It is very easy to use. The still photos are good. I like the SD card for holding content. We bought a 16GB card that holds more movies and photos than we need. Take the card out and download directly to the computer. That way we don't have to use cables etc and can use our own software.

Its on my wish list for one of my own.

 Works great with iMac - Jun 18, 2010

Tried several different HD camcorders and this was the only one works great with iMac (OS 10.5). I had three goals to choose my new camcorder.
(1) Works easily with iMac. I didn't like AVCHD format which is supposedly works good with iMac but wasn't the case for me. I had enough trouble with Sony one with AVCHD. No built-in memory is actually better for me because I can just use SDHC ($40 class 6 16GB works great for me) without choosing between internal and external memory to store video files. I can just plug in SDHC card into iMAC without connecting USB cable. This was nice. I hated to mess with USB cables.
(2) Price. This was the cheapest one I have considered. I didn't want to spend more than $700. I paid about $320 which well below my budget.
(3) Size. I didn't want a bulky one. Canon and Sony high-end HD camcorders are much bigger than this one. Some people don't care about size and weight but I do. I want to have my camcorder fit in my pocket and I want to hold it for some time without much pain in my hand.

Some people complains about image stabilization, but there are many video editing tools can support additional image stabilization as part of post-processing. Optical image stabilization is still quite expensive and only for high-end around $800 camcorders.

Only thing I didn't like was lens cap. Other than that, I am quite happy with this and good enough for taking playing shots of kids.

 Best Performance for Price - Very Impressed - Jun 14, 2010

For the price of this camera, you will not find a comparable camera that has all of these features:

Large LCD (3")
-60 frames per second, High Definition
-240 frames per second, Standard Definition (basically)
-16x Optical Zoom (basically an operator limit for typical hand-held camcorder use); higher zoom would require a tripod, which I usually don't have the luxury of using
-can take 2Mpixel still images (at least) WHILE recording video
-8Mpixel Photos with Flash, Exposure Adjustment, Macro and Manual Focus

If all of these features aren't enough for a low $300 camera, your perception of reality is severely distorted. If you are a professional photographer/video guy, you probably won't be happy with this. If you are someone who wants to be able to view reasonably high speed action like shooting archery, martial arts, golf, baseball, etc. in addition to normal home video this is the perfect compromise between price, utility and ranges of functions and control. It also has a 'dumbed down' set of menus to prevent the unit from giving computer-challenged people a coronary.

Now that I have had a few days to work with it I have already had a number of requests for using it to take video of many different things, as well as pictures (the macro capability is impressive). For anyone with autofocus troubles, it has a focus lock that you can easily program into the quick-key control. You can also review video and take specific frames as pictures, so you have on-board editing which takes much more effort on a PC. It also has full resolution 12 frame per second images for high resolution, large field of view images under somewhat high speed events you might be capturing. You can adjust the exposure, aperture, and many other controls that advanced users usually complain about with automatic cameras. Nobody believes me when I tell them how much I paid for it ($316); even at full retail it is a great deal.

I would recommend a 32Gb SDHC card, also on Amazon that are $79. It will cover plenty of time for recording in High Definition. It also interfaces with a USB, where you can access the card like a card reader and dump the files to any computer, not just computers that have the camera software installed. The 240fps has been badgered by many reviewers that don't use it properly. You need to have light, you need a tripod or steady surface and you should lock the focus (not required, but a good idea). High speed cameras require lots of light. A $60,000 camera takes very poor pictures when using its higher frame rates if lighting is inadequate.

I've never owned a Sanyo, but I am beyond impressed for the functionality and performance at this pricepoint. It has far outperformed any of our work camcorders, is easier to operate, control and communicate with, interfaces as an external drive so you don't have to carry software around to a computer you want to download to, and takes better pictures than higher MegaPixel cameras we have just purchased a few months ago at work. You need to read the manual (not because it is difficult to use) to get all of the use out of it you may want. It will work for many advanced users, as well as simpletons. Most of what I know it can do now came from just playing with it (not reading the manual). It also fits in my pocket.

 Flaws for average home users - Jun 13, 2010

Let me preface this by saying that I have had a Betacam on my shoulder for over 20 years, shooting news and commercial production. Those big pro camcorders are fully manual, so I'm used to working that way. I had this little Sanyo camera for about a week before returning it. This little guy can produce some stunning images. Not too many years ago, you had to fork out tens of thousands to get video that looks like this. But with this camera, it usually takes some work. The professional cameras have the most used right out in the open, making adjustments fairly quick & easy. With this little Sanyo, you have step through menus to get to the manual settings- not fun while you are trying to shoot.

For the average home user, you just want to capture those family moments with as little messing about as possible. If that describes you, then this camcorder is not what you want. As others have pointed out, the stabilization doesn't work nearly as well as the big 3 - Panasonic, Canon, or Sony. I don't want to jockey around a tripod when one of the kids is about to blow out the birthday candles. You can get decent footage with this camcorder as long as you stay zoomed out all the way. But do you really think you'll never want to zoom in on anything? Others have also noted that the auto-focus can be slow, especially indoors. This was the deal breaker for me. Those family moments only happen once. Most of them happen in the living room or around the dining room table. Do you really want to risk being out of focus? Most of the models from the big 3 that I played with at the big box stores focused much quicker. This Sanyo is very good in low light. It's probably as good in low light as the 3 year old big money professional HD camcorders at work. But...so are nearly all of the big 3, thanks to these new ¼" CMOS chips. Thankfully, Amazon has a great return policy and I now have a mid-priced Canon on the way!

 Expected disappointment.. - Jun 08, 2010

Sometimes you get what you pay for, other times you really don't get what you pay for. In this case you really get what you really pay for!!! That is +300USD for a 1080p camcorder in the year 2010. I mean c'mon how realistic you think this offer really is? 300USD can get you an xbox3600 or a PS3, but not a piece of equipement that will recored your precious moments in 1080p.

The camcorder really underperforms in all aspects, except maybe for image stabilization, which is why i'm giving it 1 star. The picture quality of the video is extremely poor, I really recommend anyone who is intending to record and watch his clips on a 1080p TV to not buy this product.

Auto focus is terribly slow, it is so slow that sometimes the camcorder will stop forcusing when you're zooming in for an indefinite amount of time ( or maybe for 1 hour which is the life of the included battery) you need to zoom out and zoom in again to get the camcorder to remember that it's time to autofocus!!

In a desperate attempt to make me change my opinion about the value of this product, I tried lowering the video capture resolution to 1280x720@30 (can you believe 1280x70@60 is not available!!!), the picture quality remained poor and I thought that I needed to lower the resolution of the camcorder even further to get a decent sharp image.

Saving the best for last, get ready for this because it's important...... This camera can't do 1080p@60p,, it's either 1080i@60p or 1080p@60i, I really can't tell which is which, but defiantly this camcorder can't do full HD @ 60 fps progressive!!!! horizontal lines were clearly visible in that mode. I really dispite this camcorder and I'm thinking about giving it to someone who's clueless about the difference between SD and HD, because i think those are the audience who will give this product a 4 or 5 stars.

 Overrated camera - Jun 08, 2010

Digital image stabilization was basically useless. Video is VERY shaky when zoomed in. The digital "stabilizer" caused screen tearing trying to stabilize the video. Attempting to process the shaky video in 1920x1080 is tedious and very time consuming even with a Core i7
The auto-focus on the camera does not focus quickly enough. Zooming in too quickly (with the camera's own zoom control!) causes blurry video. If you change the object of focus it doesn't focus quickly enough. What's the auto focus for again?
Menu design is very bare bones
Very noisy low light, not sure why it is so highly reviewed. Low light video so noisy it was comparable to my standard-def miniDV cam videos
Amazon took a restocking fee for returning it. If it was <$200 I probably would have kept it.

 Not bad for $300, but not great - Jun 02, 2010

Pros:
* Small, fits well in hand
* Controls easy to reach and use
* Good battery life
* Close viewfinder to "sleep," wakes quickly upon reopening
* Uses standard (and cheap!) SD cards for recording
* Decent zoom range; gentle use of the zoom toggle allows for very gradual zooming if desired. Also, the digital zoom can be disabled, and even if on, zooming in stops at the limit of optical zoom, so you have to make a manual decision to let go of the zoom slider and depress it again to choose (foolishly) to engage the digital zoom.

Cons:
* Autofocus is fairly poor, especially when zooming indoors (say, a recital performance)
* Manual focus has too few discrete steps to be useful, especially with the fairly narrow depth of field
* Low-light performance, on any setting, is only okay. Blacks will clearly have speckled noise.
* Super-slo-mo is ludicriously low-res, making it worthless. Not even "gimmick"-worthy.
* Electronic Image Stabilization isn't up to snuff at extreme zoom.
* "1080p" performance is laughable. Technically, it produces 1920x1080 pixel frames, but the compression is so high that artifacts are clearly visible and/or the image seems blurry. 1080i performance is even worse; don't move the camera, or the interlacing artifacts will ruin your scene. Both modes might be suitable for tripod-mounted shots of slowly moving imagery, like recording a speech.

I bought this for $330, and wish I had gotten the $300 price. It's a good performance for the price, and compact with an impressive optical zoom, and about as good low-light performance as you're going to get in a compact camcorder. It's weakest feature by far is in the autofocus algorithms, which are terrible, losing a perfectly good focus at times, and taking a frustratingly long time to obtain focus, even moreso after a rapid zoom.

 Paid $329 Its an excellent camcorder for this price - May 31, 2010

Pros:
1. Excellent photos(useful as a digital camera)
2. Good value for the money( $329 - dollar three two nine)

Cons:
1. Poor auto-focus.

2. Very poor image stabilization.
If I zoom an object or a person > 25ft, the image shakes and anything over 50ft, it shakes and jerks really hard.
Optical zoom works alright but the digital zoom is worthless.

3. Does not work well with low-level lights - videos taken under florescent lights come out to be grainy and they are not very clear(its not crispy). This may have to do more with my settings than with the camera

4. Not compatible with SDXC cards(this is not a deal-breaker though)