Panasonic HC-V500K Black 1/5.8" MOS 3.0" 230K LCD 38X Optical Zoom Full HD Camcorder

Pros: Cheap! Great features that are normally found on much more expensive cameras. the Image stabilization is amazing! lightweight and easy to use. very versatile. built in sound recording is pretty good.

Cons: picture quality, while the resolution of the video is 1920 x 1080 the image is actually up-converted to meet that. this is especially noticeable when zoomed in near 50X. The battery life is pretty weak when recording. The manual controls are very cumbersome to use from a touch screen instead of having physical controls. No external mic input (though if you are tech savvy and have no want for a factory warranty you can always take it apart and hook one up. the Macro feature is weird (ill explain more below)

Other Thoughts: DO your research! i did days of research on cameras before i decided on this one. I knew of the cameras short comings before i bought it. However most of the video examples online were shot by joe somebody and dont really show off what the camera is able to do. The macro feature is weird however. it zooms the camera to a staggering 42X making it rather difficult to locate your object if you are anywhere near it, it needs to be well lit and cant be closer than a foot or it cant focus. if you zoom out it disables the macro and you have to go back through the awkward menus to re-enable it. the image stabilization can cause some weird ghosting if you are zoomed in really close and are close to the object being filmed. You can always complain and want more out of the camera, but in the end it is still an amazing buy for the money. a great entry level camcorder. just do your research so you aren't surprised.

Pros: I bought between december to jan, I use them my church, the are excellent, great picture, resolution. i might buy another one.

Cons: low light

Other Thoughts: it is a great small camcorder. take my words

Pros: Full HD 1920x1080 (60p)! Full featured for it's price range. Good video quality. The zoom is more powerful than most in it's class and keeps good resolution throughout. Compact and light making sustained hand held recording easy! LCD is a good size considering cam compactness. Touchscreen is very user friendly and works well! A lot of auto/manual options! Image stabilizer works great!

I get all NewEgg shipments overnight on standard ground service! :) If I don't order from NewEgg, it's because they don't have it! 5 stars for you too!

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: I got pretty much everything that I needed in this package! A deal that was better new, than it's competitors that were charging more for refurbished and open boxed! Add to that a nice carrying case that protects the camcorder and stores all my accessories bundled with it. Camcorder, carry bag, tripod and 64G class 10 SDXC card for 228.00 overnight! Beat that! :)

Pros: Great Quality

Cons: Huge files for uploading. need big sd card

Pros: Just what I wanted, big optical zoom. 1080p 60fps recording. Stabilization is the best I ever used. Small and light.

Cons: Don't install the junk software included, no need. Drag and drop video to computer through USB or SDCard reader. Format is proprietary, but can be view with VLC, I like to convert it to MP4 for PS3 viewing.

Pros: Works perfectly.I had no problems with it at all.

Cons: No Con's.

Pros: - Very high optical zoom
- Cheap (got this on holiday sale for $200), cheaper than my camera, lol
- The image quality is decent
- Seems to filter out wind noises relatively well.

Cons: -The battery has a firmware in it, and you cannot just use any spare battery.
-For those who care, this is not "TRUE HD" in that the true HD should have about 2.1 megapixels (1920x1080 pixels) in the image sensor. This one has only a half of that. Nevertheless, most of it is lost after AVCHD comprression that this is not a big deal. True HD models cost >$600 to be fair.
- 3 megapixel still pictures, which is perhaps lower than many of today's phone cameras, but don't forget that this one zooms a lot more, so it's still better than a 12 megapix pic shot at 8X zoom.
- It's a little difficult for me to zoom sloooownly like I would like to.
- No mic jack for recording from an external mic and so on, but what can I say at this price....

Other Thoughts: This camera is very easy to use for those who don't wanna bother, yet gives you a lot of manual control to those who like that.

The included battery films for about 2 hours if you don't zoom in and out too much or stop and restart recordings. It would last less with excessive use of zoom and frequent stops and restarts.

I got a 32GB Sandisk Extreme SD card with this, and the data rate is 28Mbps. Approximately, 3.5MB for every second or 210MB for every minute of recording.

Certainly not the top of the game camcorder but considering the price, this does its main job very well. I think you will be very happy if you are looking for high zoom camera. But if you are counting on pictures, there has got to be a better one than this.

I was looking for high zoom and decent picture quality, and easy to use. I am personally very happy with this camera. :-)

Pros: - Easy to use
- Good quality for the price
- Enough mode to adjust to most of the filming situation
- Very compact
- Touch screen work very nicely
- Screen on/off control is very nice for fast filming
- Zoom, ho the zoom! it;s very capable of, even the I.zoom is still very nice
- Image stabilization is awesome, panasonic have a winner with that.
- Charge via both AC and USB

Cons: - The light that is on the front of the camera could be more powerfull.
- Glossy finish get all firty very fast :(
- Could have bundled a more powerfull battery.
- No external battery charger bundled with

Other Thoughts: The camera does what it claim to do. Of course it's not a cine-camera but the image is still very nice for a 215$ cam, even a 450$ camera have a competitor here.
I really like the zoom, it's powerfull and don't cut to much image quality even with digital zoom. The image stabilizer is awesome. If you use the camera manual mode all the controll are on the screen in the same menu so pretty fast to set. As I said in cons the light is small but the camera is still capable of doing low light filming which is pretty good. Many more expensive camera will need a flash to do the same which will cost battery life and image color quality.

I would 100% recommend this unit and I already bought 2 more for my father in law and his sister.

Pros: This is a great camera. It is very easy to use, and the quality is amazing.

Cons: The only con I can think of would be the audio. It reminds me of the old family videos my dad would take with his giant RCA VHS camera. It really isn't bad just worth mentioning.

Other Thoughts: This was a Christmas gift for my girlfriend who makes a lot of videos (for youtube). She has always used her phone's camera and the quality has been pretty good considering.. I was a little worried that this wouldn't be noticeably different aside from the superior zoom. I was instantly impressed with the quality even via the camera's display. Once I played some videos through my htpc on my 1080p TV and on my 1080i projector I was blown away by how good it looked. I would definitely recommend this camera.

Pros: I don't have a lot of experience with video cameras but this seems like a good camera for a newbie like me. You can make good videos with the default settings but there are plenty of settings to tweak if your feeling adventurous.

Cons: Poor video when there was a light source like a window behind the subject but that may be, in part, do to my inexperience with filming. Doesn't have an external mike jack and that may be an issue in the future as i'm using it for youtube videos

Other Thoughts: To see a video shot with this camera search for Dalton Clock Repair on youtube, Title is "17 rank pipe organ"