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  • Overall Rating
    4 stars 4 Star Review
    Reviewed by: poffers1200

    Updated:06-25-07

    Duration of ownership:8 Days

    Strengths: Image Quality, Image Quality, Image Quality!! HDMI out, external Mic. plug. Sensitive inbuilt microphone. Super Still shots for your 16x9 HDTV

    Weaknesses: Handling and holding. NO 1980x1080 video capture in Pinnacle.

    Overall Evaluation: HV20 is compact and feature rich! After recording and processing 3-4 hrs. of full HD video I found that HV20 is a good 'pro-sumer' camcorder. Video quality is great. No doubts. 24p mode is hard but useful if you want to give your video a movie effect. Still pictures are best plus with this camcorder. Use it to take snaps on the miniSDcard and you will feel really proud when you view those on your 16x9 HDTV!!

  • Overall Rating
    5 stars 5 Star Review
    Reviewed by: mercilessmin

    Updated:06-25-07

    Duration of ownership:20 Days

    Strengths: super sharp images, ease of use

    Weaknesses: n/a

    Overall Evaluation: I had a Canon mini DV (105). I always liked it until I play with this High definition Camcorder. This is awesome. Everything you shoot and play on TV just like watching HDTV. Never been happier.

  • Overall Rating
    2 stars 2 Star Review
    Reviewed by: TechnoGuru

    Updated:06-17-07

    Duration of ownership:2 Months

    Strengths: Excellent image quality, very fast focusing, good low light performance for a consumer camcorder, full manual control, optical image stabilization, and -real- 24p frame rate.

    Weaknesses: Horrible build quality, poor handling, --PATHETIC-- LCD screen, fast focus not always accurate.

    Overall Evaluation: I had high hopes for the Canon HV20. On paper, it was looking like a real winner. Unfortunately, in the real world, things are not so wonderful.Let?s start with the good news. Image quality is excellent, and low light performance is also excellent for a consumer level camera. The camcorder does have full manual control for those who like to tweak things a bit, and Canon?s external focus sensor really ?snaps? things into focus quickly ? but there is a bad side to that as well, which I?ll cover in a moment.The bad news is, well, rather extensive! This does not feel like a $1000 camcorder. It feels cheap and plasticy like a third world knock-off. Parts don?t fit well, and straight out of the box, the LCD screen on my copy didn?t sit flush with the camera body when closed. The zoom control is without a doubt the worst I?ve ever seen ? it is positioned poorly thus making it inconvenient to use, and it is very difficult to operate because of it?s tiny and cheap design. If the HV20 was a car, it would be a Lada, a Chevette, or a Yugo!The next piece of bad news (and it?s very bad) is the LCD screen. The LCD screen on the HV20 is a small 2.8?, has an incredibly narrow viewing angle both horizontally and vertically, pathetic color rendition, and a feeble backlight that leaves you looking at a black screen when outside in even moderately bright light. To put it another way, the LCD only gives you the vaguest of ideas of what your footage might look like on a TV or computer, and then only if you are indoors, or outside in shade. This is particularly disappointing considering that trans-reflective technology LCDs are commonly available (on competing products) that allow for near perfect viewing even under a tropical noonday sun, and from a wide range of viewing angles. Bottom line is that if you adjust your video based on what you see on the HV20?s screen, you are almost certainly headed for disappointment at best, and disaster at worst. Be SURE to make your adjustments from actual test footage viewed on a good HD TV or monitor before shooting an important event!As mentioned above, the Canon external focus sensor gives this camcorder exceptionally rapid focusing capabilities. You?ve never seen a consumer camcorder snap into focus like this one will. But there?s bad news here also. If you are shooting a scene with a rather low contrast subject, and a very high contrast background, the external focus sensor will tend to pull the focus off the subject and onto the background. Thanks to the pathetic LCD screen, you may not even realize this is happening, and you will thus end up with large amounts of back focused footage. A good example of this would be trying to film a solid color, low contrast object (a flower, for example) with grass or leafy trees behind it ? the lines of the leaves or grass stems create a very appealing, contrasty target for the external focus sensor, and you can easily find yourself with a great shot of a forest or lawn that includes an out of focus subject in the foreground, instead of what you really intended. So if you are buying this camcorder for a family camping vacation, make sure you get plaid shirts for the whole family ? LOL! (or understand when to turn off the external focus)Battery life ? the included battery is miserable, and even the big OEM and aftermarket batteries aren?t what they could be, so make sure you get a few extras, otherwise you?ll find yourself carrying around a dead camcorder for half the day. Once you install an extended battery, you can forget about using the electronic view finder, it?s almost impossible to get your eye to it. What a quandary ? a pocket full of small batteries so you can use the EVF, and actually see what you are shooting in bright sunlight ? OR ? a couple of big batteries, use the LCD screen, and hope for the best. Did the Canon engineers ever take the HV20 out of the lab to test it in the real world? Sure doesn?t look that way.The camera has good manual control for the tweakers, but of course given the LCD screen, it all going to be guess work. I?m personally not keen on the adjustment mechanism, a menu button and a 5 way joy stick. With this system is virtually impossible to make any adjustment without jiggling the camera if you are recording hand held. Overall, I found manual adjustment balky, with buttons sometimes working in reverse to expected directions, and menus being difficult to adjust quickly during action.My final rating for this camera is just 2 stars. It?s simply not enough to only provide good image quality; Canon needs to improve the overall quality of the whole camera. I would have happily paid a couple hundred dollars more for this camera with a good trans-reflective LCD, and a true, high quality fit and finish. As it is, it?s not really worth the asking price.

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Canon HV20 MiniDV Camcorder
$659.00 • •Specs
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