Aiptek - 5.0MP High-Definition Digital Camcorder with 2.4" Color LCD Monitor - Silver

I bought mine on sale for $140 and was surprised by the quality of image. I am amazed on the video quality. It works great in daylight and fixed zoom conditions. Go to Vimeo and check out this video taken with the camera. http://vimeo.com/1003163. It illustrates the quality of the image you can get with this little camcorder. Also, search the videos for that same member and see his review for this and other hybrid camcorders. It explains the features and function of the camera. The weight is only 6.2 oz and fits in a shirt pocket or pants pocket. Macro / Infinity switch is nice to have but you have to be careful you don't bump it when you put it in your pocket. If it gets set to macro it will ruin your day if you are capturing anything beyond 20 inches. It can take up 32 GB SD disk. At $700 a pop you'll probably opt for something smaller. With an 8 gb card you get a couple of hours of video which is more than you want to subject any human to watching. The camcorder comes with easy to charge Li Ion battery. While it has a separate charge it charges from a USB port as well. Remember, this is a all digital camera and the zoom is digital so it expanding the digital image. Don't try zooming as you are recording, it is NOT a smooth transition from wide angle to full zoom. Low light is OK, but nothing to get too excited about. It also records audio. The digital camera is quite good for what it is. It can hold and play MP3s if you are so inclined. It is also a simple storage device you can use to read your SD card. Buttons are easy to use and fit "adult hands". The on screen display if full of little icons that will take time to learn. Be wary, however, because you can move the joystick and change settings unwittingly because movements of the joy stick have multiple functions based on the mode you are in. For the money it is one heck of a bargain, but don't expect the same broad range of capability of a $400 to $500 camcorder by Panasonic or Sony. I have attached one low light level image for your review at medium resolution setting

If your looking for professional quality then your not looking at this unit. Understand this is a $150 camcorder. With that said, this is an amazing camcorder for the price. Picture quality is better than I would have thought and video is much better as well. If you want true HD quality, go spend the $1000. I have taken about 50 pictures and around 1 hour of video in various forms. The best video quality I have found is in 720p at 60fps. Night mode is marginally effective. Bottom line for me is, this unit does everything I need it to do.

I got this when it 1st came out and to be honest I love it. 1St the good news: It does take amazing pictures and video in good lighting AND it does have composite and stereo INPUTS (not mentioned in this ad) so you can record TV,Vcr,DVD etc.. into the camera as well. Battery Life is actualy pretty good and the Camera and menu system is easy to understand and use. Movies are in quicktime format and if you have a Vista PC make sure to download latest version from apple. MY PC is a 3.4Ghz Pentium4 ,2GB memory,512mb AGP Video running Vista Prem. All installed and works perfect. I had no problems at all. Now the Bad: The battery is a little loose when installed so it may turn off and on when moved at times. HOWEVER adding a small thin peice of velcro solved this problem. The speaker is tiny and audio quailty coming out is so so at best although playback on a PC sounds much better. Using in low to slightly low lighting prouces a dark picture However it does have a night shot mode which helps in these situations but when activated you will notice a slight drop in frame rate. The unit feels fragile so just try not to drop in on concrete and you will be fine. The included software is very basic but does the trick. All in all for the Price you cant go wrong, as it does do a amazing job in the right lighting conditions. I would recommend picking up a 2GB or bigger Memory stick if you plan on recording more then 10 minutes of video and a Cheap tripod for $25 or less if your doing professional videos. Rememberto set the focus switch to close up or infinity depending on the distance of your subject for the clearest picture.

I bought this not expecting much and not having seen any reviews on the Web or in print. The product is a couple of months old to market. There's some misinformation floating around out there -- here are a few clarifications and highlights of the product from my week's worth of testing. First, it does indeed shoot at a 16:9 aspect ratio even as the video resolution is 1440x1080p -- you just need to be sure and apply an "anamorphic" pixel ratio (i.e., not square/1:1). Also, it is a fixed focus camera: The benefit is that there's no noisy/slow auto-focusing mechanism, but the con (as with all fixed focus camcorders) is that low light performance suffers somewhat, while close-in subjects go out of focus (though there is a manual macro switch on this product). Big pluses include the fact that it's charged via a super-standard mini-USB connector, and accepts up to a 32gb SDHC card. There is a tripod mounting hole but no electronic or mechanical image stabilization, no optical zoom, and no external microphone/audio in port. In short, this makes for a great "second-unit" camcorder in cases where you don't want to rough around with your primary HD camcorder, or where you want to strap this onto a skateboard and the like without worrying about lost investment. It's wise to take the native H.264 files that are wrapped in .mov format and convert them to .avi or MPEG-2 .mpg files for further processing/editing/burning, as most systems will stutter trying to decode the native video files at 1080p/30 fps on-the-fly (i.e., even high-end video cards do not necessarily include hardware acceleration for files in this specific format). Although users appear to be especially enamored of the product's 1440x720p/60 fps non-interlaced mode, I'm not convinced that their bias is based on the benefit of double the frames-per-second, instead of the mere shortcomings of their system's hardware playback at 1080p/30 fps.

I purchased this camera to record my son's preschool spring concert. Somehow I'd been volunteered to purchase the hardware, shoot and edit the video and then burn and distribute a DVD - even though I'd never done any of it before. This product was chosen based on the budget I had to work with. - Overall, I am pleased with the camera. It did well in the bright areas and the sound quality was good. I got a tripod along with it, so the video was rather steady. For a first time DVD creator, the included software worked fine after I did a few web searched on where some of the features were hidden. - The problems I had was that the church narthex was a bit too dim for the camera. The video is a bit pixelated where as other video I shot of the reception (which was brightly lit) was very clear. Also, the camera feature on the 8M mode could not handle action shots (or I had it set up wrong...) - To sum it up, a good camera for a first time user if you stay in the light! :)

This camera serves its purpose, we are capturing tons of footage that otherwise would have gone unrecorded altogether. However, the sound quality really is pretty bad. Imagine taking an audio recording of yourself on an oldschool casette tape. Then take that tape and put it in an oldschool sony walkman from 1981, with $4 Radio Shack external speakers attached. Then turn the volume up to 11, and that's kind of what the distortion sounds like. I am a father of two little girls and wanted something to carry around to capture life's moments, because you can't always have a $1K camera hanging around your neck... If I speak while recording something, my voice is usually distorted a little bit. If I concentrate on speaking with a soft, quiet voice, then it sounds just great. But it has a very low volume threshold, after which point the sound gets very distorted. I recorded my girls holding hands and dancing circles around eachother, laughing and shrieking as kids do, and a lot of it was completely distorted because it was too loud for the camera's native microphone.

Like some have pointed out this is not a "full camcorder" so if you are expecting to get $400+ dollar quality video out of a sub $200 dollar camcorder then you need to look else where. If you are looking for a quick point and shoot outdoor camera (in good quality light) then this is the perfect camera. The "night shoot" is useless but does help with the quality during the day time and I just leave it on. The stills are actually not too bad either, so if you have a moment and you don't want to switch cameras I would take a pic with this with confidence knowing it takes decent point and shoot pictures. This camera is ideal for shooting video for the web. You can adjust the quality and file size for video recording. The "HD" quality shooting really isn't all that HD but does take good video. Zooming is not so good but does work, it's just alittle jumpy and I really don't use it. Don't get anything less than an 8gig SDHC card for this camera, and all in all this is a great camera and I love it.

I bought this to test it out and see what I could get for $125 (it was on sale). I knew going in this wasn't the top of the line unit but I wanted something I could carry in my pocket and not worry about breaking or lossing like I would my $1500 camera. For size its great! Video was quality is just okay then coverted the files to AVI files and it cleaned then up a ton. I have been useing this on outing with my 4 year old to the zoo, Disneyland, and camping. Its been working great for these trips. I even let my son use it at times (makes great fun to watch his stuff). Now for the bad notes. This unit is not a camera so dont buy it thinking you'll take pictures. Stills tend to be blurry. The night shot function doesn't work very well, however I did find marked improvment on even those after converting the files to a new format.