Customer Ratings & Reviews

Have been using it for a couple of weeks. Not hard to learn, especially with the "Easy" button. The 32Gb of onboard memory will allow over 2.5 hours of recording at the highest resolution and over 20 hours at the lowest. I record in the middle with XP+ and have about 9.5 hours. I am quite pleased with the resulting video. Better than anything but a hard drive recorder. Editing is another story as I use Linux. Windows has many options for software. Linux does work, and you can convert the MTS files to other more usable formats using ffmpeg. The battery is probably the worst part about the camera with only 60 - 80 minutes of recording time, but larger batteries are available for a price. I have been recording most of my video with the recorder plugged in using the included AC adapter.

My wife bought the camera about a month ago, and the clarity of the movies is very good. One of the considerations we had was what cameras would work well with the Macintosh platform. We are able to easily download into iMovie and iPhoto, and do not even use the software that came from Canon. The camera does not automatically show up on the desktop, so you have to open the viewing window on the camcorder to select download to computer. One thing we really like about the camera is that there is no rewinding! You can view clips instantly, skip to other clips, etc. An hour of footage generally takes 45-50 minutes to download into the computer, and the still pictures, while certainly acceptable, do not compare to the pictures I get from my Digital Rebel.

I would not buy this camera again or recommend it to anyone strictly on the basis of the downloading software. If you are using third-party software check if it will allow you to download directly from the camera before you buy. The camera does take good video but it is awkward to hold and operate the controls.