written by googlegroups on 06/07/2006
Good Points
Nothing useful. It was better than my oldest DVD-Cam
Bad Points
The battery. It doesn't let you use the camera in all circumstance if you don't have with you a sufficient number.
General Comments
I've decided to buy the camcorder according to technical specifications that every product expose. All seem fine. Small, MicroDrive, record also on a SD card, 3 CCD sensor, nice zoom. Ah, that's the point.
If you use the zoom, and I believe that everybody who buys a camcorder would like to use, the zoom to record scenes that isn't properly closed to the camera, the battery duration decrease its productivity switching from 1 hour to something near 20 minutes, according to how many times you use the zoom.
Unfortunately this "characteristic" isn't specified on the technical sheet, but just on page 15 of Italian manual (I don't know on which page is for
translated manual). So if you need to fit the Micro Drive shipped with your cam, you must to spend another 200 euros for two additional batteries.
That's not what I call a worth.
If anybody told me that when I asked, I wouldn't get that camera even if someone was trying to give me it for free.
It's impossible to use. I just used that one time during a trip with my family and I've spent 1 and a half hours to recharge battery just for use it another 20 minutes. And all after the night before the battery was completely charged up.
The most incredible thing about this trouble is that Italian technician, before you buy this product, is that they haven't informed you about this characteristic, and after they say that simply not use the zoom, and will get a full hour of recording. That's a shame. If I cannot use the zoom I guess that a Polaroid is more convenient.
So don't buy the product if you don't want to spend more money on buing a sufficient number of batteries to assure you get at least one hour of recording.