Comments on: JVC Everio GZ-HD300 60GB High-Def Camcorder

By: Peter A. Greene

Peter A. Greene — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:55:36 +0000

JVC continues to build on and refine its handheld cams.

I thought I'd use this for a few months before reviewing, just to see how it held up. It has been completely dependable and willing to go the distance time and time again. Picture quality is great; sound quality is as good as one has a right to expect from a little cam-mounted mini-mike. It does fine, but nobody will be cutting a cd from the jvc audiotrack any time soon.

The non-hd picture quality continues to be good, and the hd pic is excellent as well. The controls are easy to use and reasonably intuitive, though some of the touch controls can be a little too responsive.

The drawback as always is the software. Almost anything in the world is more useful than the programs that come bundled with the camera. This is, of course, and easy issue to rectify, but it's worth knowing about up front.

By: Evan Jacobs

Evan Jacobs — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:00:40 +0000

This camcorder is dead simple to use. Open it up and you’re ready to go. Simplicity, however, means you give up control and that started to bug me pretty quickly. For those of you who want to shoot video without leaping technical hurdles, this could be a good camera for you. Recording direct to a hard drive is cool, however, that means you’ll need to have a lot of storage space on your computer to archive your movies. Or you can archive to DVDs, I suppose but that may be where the simplicity breaks down for some people. Digital acquisition is where things are headed, though. Tape is dead.

By: Pablo V. Gomez

Pablo V. Gomez — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:21:52 +0000

I bought this camera mostly to be used in sport events and so far it was a good decision, based only in this purpose.

When recording indoors the quality is very poor, being my old 35mm a lot better than this new camera. Lack of Mac interface is also an issue; iMovie detects the camera but there is not an easy way to select/load just a few clips. With my other cameras is just to connect and drag and drop.

By: RSRCHB4UBY

RSRCHB4UBY — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:42:50 +0000

JVC Everio GZ-HD300 is beautifully designed, lightweight and has good specifications. I liked the built in lens cover and that the startup is very quick. The camcorder has a built in LED for shooting in dark situations, and the light is quite bright. I did not like the Laser Touch control at all - I found it to be frustratingly imprecise. In fact, I found the menu layout and operation to be unintuitive and not user friendly, although it did not take too long to get used too it.

I tried the JVC Everio GZ-HD300 in outdoors daylight, lit indoors, and dark indoors conditions. The outdoors movie came out very clear but had bluish hue to it (all settings were on auto). Both indoor movies were very very grainy. The camcorder was slow to focus during indoor shots.

One minute of video results in a file size of ~130Mb. The software that came with the camcorder is average at best. It was not intuitive - I had to read instructions on how to do a backup - and even then all that the software did was copied .MTS files to my hard drive (something I could do without any software). I expected that the start of import would be controlled from my PC, but it is controlled from the camcorder.

I will keep playing with the settings and I hope that I can adjust the camcorder to record great outdoors pictures, but I do not expect much from it for indoors shots.

ADDED 7/8/09 Used over 4th of July weekend. On the 4th I took some video in the evening at the beach ~8:30 PM; it came out very grainy. On the 5th (a bright sunny day) I started taking video inside my car and then pointed the camcorder outside; aperture was slow to react resulting in a bright white picture for a few seconds until it finally adjusted to the sunlight.

I dislike the "laser touch" control very much. I brushed my finger against it and some icon popped up and then disappeared. It distracted me from shooting the video and I started looking for what it was that I accidentally activated.

By: Cheryl L. Carney

Cheryl L. Carney — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:31:53 +0000

The product was received in excellent condition and in a timely manner.

Thank you for the great service.