Panasonic HC-V550K Full HD Wi-Fi Enabled 90X Stable Zoom Camcorder with 3-Inch LCD (Black) (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

For the quality of the videos this little camcorder makes I would give it 5 stars. For ease of use I would give it 2.I can't say anything about the video except: it is all one could expect. ADHCD or MP4 are both as good as one could expect. They look great, full screen on a good 15 or 17 inch laptop, which is all I have to go on.This camcorder falls down several ways on usability. The touch screen is not well calibrated; on mine I have to touch slightly below and to the left of the target to get the desired results. Given that some of the targets are very small and close together, this is not good.The touch screen record controls go away - turn off, cease to display or function - when you turn the touch screen to be visible from the lens side of the camera. So you can't, for instance, sit at your guitar in front of your camcorder and reach out to the touch screen and poke "record". In my opinion this makes no sense. Yes, you can control it with your smartphone, which is part of what I felt I had to have when choosing this camcorder, but that too is less than totally satisfactory. More on that in a moment.Although some of the controls are on the touch screen, others are physical buttons on the camera body, all of which are covered up by the touch screen when it is in parked position. Again, not terrible, but unhandy. The record / play control and the wifi control are both difficult to access for this reason.The wifi remote app has its own weaknesses. First, as compared to, say, my GoPro and its remote app, it is very awkward to connect. It will allegedly connect with a minimum of fuss just by using NFC, and it might. Or, it might not. No telling for sure from use to use.By pressing the (difficult to access) wifi button behind the screen, and following the menu choices - not that intuitive, it took me a while to learn the right choices - and using the QR code system, you can reliably connect every time.Once you are connected it is still not a fully satisfactory experience. The image you see on screen is a few seconds delayed from the image the camera is seeing. If you're trying to set up to record a music performance, for instance, that isn't the end of the world; it's just one more little hassle among what is, by now, a large number of little hassles.And the audio... ah, yes, the audio... the audio from the camera is fed to your mobile device, delayed of course, which results in a wah - wah - wah feedback loop that gets louder and weirder until you turn the volume control on your mobile device down to nothing. I suppose if you're smarter than me you'll remember to turn it back up before the next time you watch a video and notice you're not hearing anything.And possibly most important of all... BE VERY CAREFUL of the start / stop "button" on the remote. If you bounce it - double tap it - it is *really* easy to get the camera locked up in what appears to be record mode - except it's really locked up. You can't stop the recording - and as far as I have found out there is no way to save what has been recorded during this time. The only way to unlock the camera, the only way to turn it off or to halt recording, is to take out the battery. This, of course, does not properly close the recorded file on the SD card, so your recording is gone. Hope it wasn't an important one to you.So I guess the punch line is, there's more to making a camcorder than just the camcorder part. This one falls down pretty hard where it interfaces with the human.Edit: After using the camera longer I found that the camcorder will lock up from time to time when using the remote, whether or not you "bounce" the control button. From time to time a recording simply refuses to shut off. It shuts halfway off. The red round dot that means "recording" turns into a red "pause" sign (railroad tracks, captain's bars, whatever you want to call it.) And that's it. Game over. You just lost that recording.The way it selects which recordings to eat is, it eats the best ones. Always. I don't use the remote anymore, I just edit out the walking back and forth from the camera. YouTube/JeffMcFaddenMusic

Previously, I had a Canon HV 30, which was (and still is) an excellent camcorder. However, it was (a) a big, heavy bugger and (b) used mini-DV tape, which in its high def form is very expensive & hard to find. In addition, capturing to a computer was tedious, since tape is linear & therefore a 60-minute tape takes 60 minutes to capture. I wanted something smaller, lighter and SD card-based. My research turned up the HC-V550, which was well-regarded by Consumer Reports & Amazon's users. And the price was certainly right at $205. So I partook. It did not disappoint; if anything, it was UNDER rated! It had several handy features the reviews didn't mention - a nice bonus - as was the unmentioned 32gb SD card & Panasonic camera bag that came with it. The picture quality is terrific (except for night time - I can't figure out the best mode), and it's amazingly compact & light; I can stick it in my jeans pocket. Its wifi ability, which I didn't care about when I bought it, has proved invaluable. I figured out how to transmit to my iphone, from which I can email to the world or upload to dropbox. The 90x zoom is jawdropping; it's feels like a telescope, not a camcorder (hint: try zooming at 90x on a full moon). And when I want to upload to my computer, I simply pop out the SD card, stick it into my computer's port & a minute later, the clips are uploaded. Easy as pie. (you can also transmit wirelessly, but I couldn't get that to work - no biggie). Other nice features: its touchscreen, full manual ability, still photos option, wide angle lens, built-in lens cover.In short, you get an amazing bang for your buck.Some minor complaints:(i) It's not intuitive. You really have to play to figure out some features; the manual is useless. If ever there was a time for Panasonic to emulate Apple's user-friendliness, this is it. They have this high quality device, but most users will never take full advantage, simply because they don't know how to use all its features (or know some of them even exist!).(ii) As mentioned above, it's night/indoor quality is disappointing. My old Canon was much better. It's possible I'm not using the right mode, or maybe I should be using manual mode, but who knows? The manual is horrible, terrible, useless, eggsucking.(iii) It could really use a light, or a hotshoe to add a light.(iv) The included HD Writer software is close to useless. I still haven't figured out how to burn a DVD or perform other common tasks. The how-to screens shown in the manual don't exist in the actual software! So aggravating. Thank goodness for my old standby, Pinnacle Studio 14.(v) It has some annoying quirks, like huh? icons, unexplained setup options (like I said, you have to do a lot of playing), and missing information, such as the amount of space left on your SD card (it shows only remaining battery life).So no, it's not perfect. Yet, despite this litany of complaints, I gave it 5 stars, since it offers so much for the price & is so compact & light. Now if Panasonic can address the shortcomings in future models (are you listening Panasonic??), especially the non user-friendliness and crappy manual, they'll have a real winner on their hands.

Notes from the Stone Age: If you have never used a camcorder before, very little about the screen displays and icons is intuitive, and the owner's manual is chaos. The only kind of video recorder I'd ever used until my HC-V550 came in the mail yesterday was an old Flip Video minicam, which could not be simpler. As for the V550, well. For one thing, the zoom function is managed with two separate LCD screen icons, a "T" and a "W". One zooms in, the other out. Who would have guessed? The full operator's manual is contained on the two discs that come with the camera; somewhere in its 200 pages you will discover that you must go into SETUP mode to keep those two zoom icons visible at all times. Otherwise they will disappear from the camera screen after a few seconds. Another thing: there is a record button -- an actual button -- as well as a record icon on the screen. I haven't yet worked out whether the icon functions differently from the button. And how about this: I work on an iMac, but the manual never explains that you must open iMovie to get a prompt to upload videos from the camera onto the computer. Further, the manual is unhelpful about selecting which of two recording modes to choose for different purposes, AVCHD or MP4/iFrames. I suggest Panasonic consider adding a section of hypothetical optimum recording options for different scenarios, such as capturing a soccer game, a wedding reception, a violin lesson (which is what I use the camera for), a class play, etc. I suggest Panasonic seek Apple's permission to at least include the information that uploading to an Apple computer must be done through iMovie. In short, I have a long learning curve ahead.

An excellent value

It is a very good Camcorder. Excellent features, very light weight and awesome appearance. The LCD screen is a tad slower in response, but it is ok. The video quality is very good and functions are easy to access.The best part is the integration with the cell phone and Wi-fi.Linking teh camcorder to the internet was the best thing about it.A very good buy