JVC Everio GZ-MS130- A Good Mini Camcorder For Stiff Budgets

Camcorders — on December 4, 2009 at 4:57 am | Comment Now

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Good video quality, remote control included.

Thumbs Down:

Poor strap grip, nothing else.

Inside the Trunk:

Battery pack, A/V Cable, USB cable, Power adapter, Software – drivers & utilities.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Display of the JVC Everio GZ-MS130 is 2.7 inch TFT LCD active matrix – 2.7 in – Color. It supports digital zoom of 800X and optical zoom of 35X. Special Effects are Black & White, Film, Sepia and Strobe. There are various shooting programs such as night mode, spot light, snow, twilight mode, sports mode, portrait mode. Photographs clicked on this camera are stored in JPEG mode. You also get an infrared remote control.

The JVC Everio GZ-MS130 comes with a 16 GB integrated flash memory. SD memory cards are supported. Konica Minolta 2.2 mm Zoom lens – 2.2 mm – 77 mm – F/1.8 2.2 mm – 77 mm.

Razzle Dazzle:

JVC Everio GZ-MS130 (blue) is big for its size and it won’t fit comfortably in your pockets. But a easy fit video recorder means buying a hand video cams and they are a bit low on features. The MS130 is good ergonomics while holding even with the cheap plasticy exteriors.

Inside Dope:

There are cheaper hand video cams coming in the market and they are catching on fast on the sales of the minicamcorders, so the latter are thinking of new ways to keep a hold over the market. Optical zoom and storage are the two features where hand video cams cannot improve and hence these two remain the main selling points when it comes to mini camcorders. JVC Everio GZ-MS130 is all glory in both of these features, the camcorder has 16 GB of internal storage space which should do for storing video applications and there is 35X optical zoom and these two are hard to achieve for a hand video cam.

JVC everio gz-ms130 review The resolution of photos are 640×480 pixels very much typical of entry level mini camcorders.

The camera automatically powers itself when you open the LCD and it shuts down when you close it. You can upload photos and videos to YouTube through camera and when you activate the option on the video recorder the site automatically makes clip maximum recordable at ten minutes because the website doesn’t take bigger videos. For putting memory cards there is a SD/SDHC slot on the camera at the top.

The bundled strap is a disappointment on the video camera. The strap can be used both on the wrists and has a handgrip but it feels quite weak and you will struggle for control of the camera when you are using it. A better strap would have been better since jerks during shooting result in bad video and photos are totally ruined.

JVS has revamped the control system on MS130 and it is more user friendly than the previous versions. It also has more features than before. There is also a feature that lets you use the strip on the left side of screen to control the zoom and button for record which is below the screen. The result is that holding the camcorder is more comfortable when shooting at children or pet animals.

The shooting options on the camcorder were better than what we expected from an entry level product. Performance in full Auto mode is good and to switch to the controls like brightness, while balance, shutter speed and focus you have to push a button which is touch sensitive. There are a few effects for recording like ‘Classic Film’ which gives a really old look to the video that you have shot by skipping the frames. But we liked the classic look. There is also a feature called Strobe where recordings are made to look like consecutive snapshot series. There are also lot of backlight compensation and couple of scene modes. Again we must say that this set of features is good for an entry level video recorder.

The format for storing video is MPEG-2 and will record at about eight mega bytes per second. That means one giga byte storage will go as long as fifteen minutes. But this is the best quality that you will be able to record at. There are economical options but they come at a price of lower quality.

We were happy with what the JVC Everio GZ-MS130 captured in bright conditions but the quality will drop when you shoot in low light conditions. Other than that the quality of the photos and videos was quite good for a entry level recorder like this.

Lithium ion rechargeable battery on the JVC Everio GZ-MS130 gives life of about 2 hours and 45 minutes.