Panasonic NV-MX500B Review

Overall Rating

Excellent build quality, daylight outdoor performance very good.

Bad performance in low light and "available" artificial light, disastrously fluctuating White Balance, serious ergonomy errors, dead viewfinder pixels (in two cameras)

I wouldn't recommend the Panasonic MV-MX500.
Reviews of MV-MX500 (or its US version) barely mention any problems or weaknesses (a perfect camera????). They sound like a Panasonic sales pitch.

I found a number of problems with two MV-MX500 tested a few months apart (and most probably coming from different manufacturing batches).

In each case after a few days of testing I have returned my NV-MX500 and got my money back. Several reasons: disastrous low light performance - very dark and grainy (noisy) footage indoors, even in very brightly lit rooms. Essentially it is a fair weather outdoor, daylight camera only (forget evening occasions like parties, family gatherings in the evening, kids indoors or filming in a church).
Another very serious problem with both cameras was uncontrollably fluctuating White Balance. The MV-MX500 frequently tries to adjust WB on the fly which results in footage frequently changing from cool, unnatural, blue-biased colours to equally unnatural yellow-biased colours and back to blue. This happened several times indoors, in a bright room, in bright-overcast and also in bright-sunny conditions outside. Even short takes of 10 seconds (without panning) had up to two or three, very visible fluctuations of White Balance/colours without any possibility of preventing the camera from fiddling. Somehow the camera cannot make up its mind what source of light it is dealing with.

The ergonomy is also questionable. One of the main points here is: the frequently used menu wheel is placed on the right but it is impossible to reach it with the right hand fingers without breaking them. Operating the wheel with my left hand under my nose and looking in the viewfinder at the same time is impossible. The list of problems I discovered is much longer, the zoom lever is too sensitive, both brand new cameras had dead viewfinder pixels "on arrival", user manual is disastrous, the strap is very uncomfortable, etc.

It is a pity because the market begs for a good, light semi pro camera. Panasonic should learn from SONY and CANON (MV3i!) designers a few things and create a new, winning reincarnation of 3CCD MX500. I would be the first one to buy it. Subject to all above problems fixed.

As it stands now I wouldn't use PANASONIC NV-MX500 even if it came free. It is because it ruins most of my footage!