Good, but bits missing

It is a great camera, but some features have been dropped that may bite you later.

Key things missing, no mic input.

If you every want to record a speech, wedding, or am dram play, then you
CANNOT DO IT WITH THIS Camera, as you can't get the sound in from the speaker or the stage. With older cameras, you merely needed a cheap (circa £20) remote mike, and you could record lectures, training am-dram etc.

The camera also misses a headphone jack, so makes listening to playback a pain, and not something you can easily do on the plane back from your holiday etc.

If you don't need those, then great camera.

Really excellent with some minor faults

Finally took the plunge and bought this having looked at similar models from Sony and Panasonic. This is an early review as I've only had the camera for a week. So far found it to be really excellent with a few minor areas that could be improved.

Pros

Great build quality as you'd expect from Canon.
Very small and light - easily fitted into my coat pocket and sits nicely in the hand
Great zoom lens, very quick autofocus, very quick start up, even from power off mode.
Quality of images are unbelievable, especially if camera is hooked up directly to HD screen
Easy to take still shots, has built in flash and v.quick autofocus.
I downloaded data from SD card directly into my MacBook Pro using USB lead. Download was very straightforward into IMovie '08. (see cons below). Best to leave it to download and do something else as downloads appear to be in real time - circa 50 mins for 5gb of data.

Cons

Not fantastic is low light
Would have prefered a wider angle lens
When downloading into IMovie 08 a warning message came up recommending that the data be converted to a lower resolution than full HD. It said that the file size would be significantly smaller without a noticeable loss of image quality. Seems pointless recording in HD in the first place! Further investigation required.
Image processor is CMOS which doesn't appear to handle moving images as well as CCD. As a consequence image gets slightly blurred with quick panning shots - I try to avoid these anyway so probably not a big issue.
Software discs are PC only so forget them if you are a Mac User - just use IMovie '08. Just out of interest loaded the bundled software onto Bootcamp partition (Winodws XP) and found it to be really clunky - glad to be using a Mac!

Generally really excellent and highly recommended.

flutter

great, but could use more info on what kind of memory card i can use

Superb Camcorder for the money

This is a wonderful piece of kit.

For less than £180 you get a true widescreen camcorder with digital image stabalising, excellent sound recording, pretty good image quality and all the features you could posibly hope for.

And, whilst it has manual white balance and manual focus and exposure etc. etc, all you really need to do is whack in a MiniDV tape ([..] each for a 60min tape), turn the rocker switch to"Record" mode and hit the white button that lies perfectly under your thumb. It does the rest. The optical zoom is excellent. It took 20 mins to get used to it and now I can zoom in and out really smoothly, varying the speed. You can even fix the speed of the zoom to ensure it stays nice and smooth.

Okay, other, more expensive, camcorders may give you stills photography (who cares, the resolution is always rubbish!) and various other features, but this one gives you the stuff you actually need. It even has an external mic socket, should you need it.

The only slight downside is that, in poor lighting, the image can get a bit orange. Then again, that is the case for the vast majority of camcorders, even those 2 or 3 times the price of this one.

If you do go for it, don't bother with the horribly expensive accessory pack [...]I got a decent case, 3 sony tapes and a 4 hour battery for about [..] by buying them separately here on Amazon.

Great budget camcorder

Good points are excellent, vivid, accurate outdoor colours, effective image stabilisation and totally intuitive usage. The night vision facility is a poor gimmick, but who wants this anyway? No external microphone input, but again, you can live without that. Handling, build quality, weight and range of optical zoom are all great. Bought Amazon's cheapest firewire card and lead for my PC at less than a tenner, so downloading for editing is a doddle. Make sure you have a big hard drive for the video files.
The guy who thought it worse than his mobile phone cannot be serious!

Not too bad at all

Like the other reviews, this is a good little DVD camcorder.

It's a great size, looks the part but you can see where Canon have cut costs with the cheap lens cap and charging jack. Picture is quite noisy in darker shoots (grainey).

I too was dissappointed by the lack of PC editing (the camera comes with no software) but have since discovered you can probably use Premiere Elements 5 as it recognises the file format the Canon uses. Perhaps someone can verify for me?

In summary 4 stars, I would have given 5 but for the small annoyances.

Great portable camera

When i got this camera i was very pleased with it and would sugest it to anyone after a good portable camera/camcorder for going on holiday etc... It's size and weight means that you can just slip it into a pocket and almost forget that your carrying it and hence you dont have to lug it around as you have to with most cameras. the LCD screen is great and its very good that you can play back your pictures and videos with sound aswell. The MP3 playback is OK but because of the memory size, i tend to use mine for taking pictures and videos and store only a few tracks on it. But i higly recommmend this to anyone looking for a useful portable camera/camcorder/MP3 for going on holiday/travelling etc....

Do not hesitate!

Pros: Many but chiefly ease of use, physical design, image quality, range of functionality

Cons: x.v.colour make no difference to my eyes and I waited on a screen that supported it before buying!

This was a very good purchase. I had a Hi8 and a MiniDV Sony camcorder and went for this because of the 1080i/16:9/x.v.colour support. The camcorder is very simple to use and if you are really dumb there is a"simple" mode button to push on the side then it could not get easier! The aesthetic design is great although online photos do not do it justice. It is compact. But the main thing is the image and sound quality is very
high. I run it into my Samsung 40" (LE40R87BD same as LE40R86) which is full HD and the image is great. Images caught outdoors on a sunny day (plenty light) are outstanding.

There is no chance I'd consider going back to SD! The HDV files can be transferred off the tape the same way as DV, but using the free HDVsplit software as opposed to WinDV which I used for DV. Each tape takes around 13 gig of space - talking of which reviews advised getting the HD tapes rather than standard DV tapes as they claimed the latter could have frame drops.

I bought a pack of 5 off Amazon.com for 50USD.

Everything except a viewfinder

I have recently recieved my silver Nikon coolpix S440 after scouring the internet for information regarding the best all round compact digital camera. I have previously been a Sony P10 Cybershot user but the New Sony reviews were not all good and the spec questionable below £220. After much deliberation I opted for the coolpix (knowing it did not have a viewfinder) I am so pleased I took my time to investigate the options, the camera has 10 useable megapixels with some realyy cool funtions such as panoramic with a X5 zoom lense (not digital zoom, there is X4 digital also) The pictures I have taken with the camera are crystal clear and with the 10 MP enlarge perfectly. Prices range from £163.95 ( with £5 postage)to £210 so shop around for the best deal, the blue and plum colours seem to be cheaper, If like me you are looking for a very small high definition camera which is easy to use but seems to do everything this could be the one for you.

good improvement

ive owned 2 everios and bought this one as i like the improvements to handling over the previous models.
5mp photos sounds great but reality is in good light they are v good but become noisy in low light unless you are in flash range.
The battery lasts 10mins longer than old model and the lens cover is handy too although manual.
No complaints on video quality but dont expect a professional camera as this is an excellent everyday camera with good 6x4 photos.
Manual control is excellent and also has a mic shoe and input with a small light too.
see reviews on usa gz555 version on camcorderinfo.net.
Im happy with this product.