Best Camcorders Under $500 2
The Stylish Trendsetter: Everio GZ-MG330
What Is It
The Everio GZ-MG330 is the entry-level camcorder in JVC's colorful camcorder line. Small enough to fit into a large jacket pocket, the Everio uses a HDD (hard disk drive) for recording footage. This relatively new technology records video directly to a hard drive, similar to the drive you'll find in your computer. Note, HDD does not mean high-definition. Because the video is recorded directly to the internal hard-drive, you can drag movie files directly to your desktop once you hook up the camcorder to your computer, and because it's all digital, you no longer have to worry about keeping labeling and keeping track of physical tapes.
What We Like
The built-in 35X zoom might not be the largest zoom lens that we reviewed, but it's great to see that JVC was able to fit it into such a small camcorder. The camera, with a built-in 30-gigabyte (GB) hard disk, can record about 37 hours of video at the lowest definition (a bit better than TV quality), and about eight hours at standard definition (similar to DVD quality). Setup and video transfer on our computers was a breeze, and we were able to play and edit the files on our Windows XP machines.
What We Don't
Because the Everio is hard-drive based, we expected file transfer to our computers to be easy. Although transferring files to our Macs went smoothly, we couldn't get the video files (encoded in a proprietary format) to play on our Macs without downloading additional conversion software.
The flip-out screen itself isn't touch-sensitive, but JVC engineered a "laser touch" strip next to the screen. Moving a finger up and down the strip moves you along menu lists, but we found that it wasn't always accurate and the whole process felt far from intuitive.
Last Word
Recording and shooting with the Everio is extremely easy, and the compact form factor and shiny body will be attractive to the YouTube set. Despite the odd touch-based menu system, the Everio performs well in all shooting environments. If you're a PC user, transferring, playing and editing your movies on your computer is simple and pain-free, but the process is difficult enough on a Mac that you may want to look elsewhere. Ideal for anyone who wants to lose the extra clutter involved with carrying around a bunch of miniDV tapes.
Price
$400
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