JVC Everio GZ-MG21 camcorder

JVC takes a hard line with its long-lens 'corder.

This latest hard drive camcorder from market leaders JVC is as small and user-friendly as we've come to expect, and it also packs a mighty 32x optical zoom. However, be warned that it also packs a number of disappointments.

Despite the camcorder weighing just 400g, its zoom is bigger than any other consumer model. It isn't that useful however, due to the ineffectual digital image stabiliser. A tripod is a must for anything over 10x if you don't want your films to induce motion sickness.

The lens is fast, silent, and comes with a "tele macro" setting for close-ups. There are shutter speed and exposure tweaks, scene programs and, naturally, digital effects. Just about everything creative is controlled by an easy-to-use joystick mounted on the fold-out screen.

The screen is nothing special, buzzing with noise in the dark and suffering passing colour changes when light shifts. While the 680,000-pixel CCD renders acceptable colours, detail is either blurred or over-sharpened.

Low-light performance is better, but it still lags behind most tape 'corders. The video light works well close up, but the colour night mode is only just better than nothing. Lo-res stills are fine for emailing but far too small to print out. Battery life, at just 65 minutes, isn't great.

You get a large amount of storage on the shock-protected hard drive - four-and-a-half hours at the highest detail setting, and it's much easier to edit your video files than with a tape camcorder. Ten minutes of footage (about 700MB) can be sent to your PC in about a minute.

However, the inferior image quality ultimately makes this big-zoomer less alluring than it looks at first glance.

Posted by T3 Online on 2007-11-01