Panasonic NV-MX500B Review

Overall Rating

Very good handling/ergonomics. Exceptionally good picture quality.

Time taken to write stills to SD card.

The Panasonic NV-MX500B is an extremely competent camera, and after 2 years of ownership I now feel justified in writing a real "user's" review...

There have been complaints about some aspects of this camera, so I'll tackle them first.

Firstly, white balance: this occasionally causes me some problems, but I think it is my own fault! Many people do not realise that the camera uses two different sources to calculate white balance - the picture entering the lens and a separate sensor hidden behind a window on the front of the camera. If you have your hands placed over the sensor then it (quite reasonably) fools the white balance system. Just the hold the camera the way it was designed to be held!

The second 'problem' is low light capability. For each person saying low light performance is bad, another (like me) says it has never caused them a problem. Admittedly, the MX500B's 1/6 inch CCDs are smaller than some other camcorder's CCDs, but it is ridiculous to expect to get grain-free pictures with any digital camera in extremely low light levels. As a point of interest, many of Panasonic's new (2005) models just announced use the same 1/6 inch CCDs, so it's clearly not a problem for most customers.

Now onto the positive aspects. The pictures that this camera produces are stunning! The resolution is truly exceptional and the colours very natural. Even now, after two year's use, I often freeze-frame my recordings just to look at the razor sharp detail. The optical image stabilizer is truly useful and works very well, without any loss of quality. And if you know a thing or two about photography and switch to manual mode the camera has all the control you need to create the image you want. For picture quality alone, this camera justifies its 3CCD's and price.

On top of that:

* It takes respectable 3MP stills, although they are not quite as good as a dedicated stills camera.
* It can act as a (very high quality!) webcam.
* It can "pass through" the signal entering its AV input, and output it on Firewire (IEEE1394) to a computer. This makes it an ideal upgrade for anyone with an old analogue camera and lots of tapes to capture to their PC.
* It can act as a voice recorder, giving many hours of recording on to the SD card, making it an ideal reporting tool.
* Unlike some notable rivals, it does *not* have the annoyance of a fiddly touch screen LCD menu system, where your lovely display gets clouded over in fingerprints!

In summary, the NV-MX500B is an extremely well designed tool, and easily justifies its position as a "prosumer" camcorder.