Review Of JVC Picsio GC-FM1 (Purple)

Camcorders — By Ricky on November 25, 2009 at 12:54 am

The competition for camcorder is stiff in an already crowded camcorder market so where does this product stand?

Sum and Substance

Thumbs Up

Nice video, photo quality, support for SDHC cards, sleek

Thumbs Down

Poor design, buttons are too hard, poor bundled software.

Inside the Trunk

Hand strap, Drivers & Utilities

The Whiz Kid Speaks

LCD display
TFT active matrix – 2 inch, 8 mega pixels, CMOS sensor, Digital Video Format – H.264, Camera flash, Still Image

Format JPEG, Supported Resolution 720p, 1080p, Built-in microphone

Resolution for photographs
JPEG 3264 x 2448, JPEG 1600 x 1200, JPEG 2592 x 1944, JPEG 640 x 480

Connector Type 1 x HDMI output, 1 x Composite video/audio output, 1 x USB

Expansion Slot(s) 1 x SD Memory Card

Battery
1 x Li-ion rechargeable battery ( Included )

Additional Features
Built-in speaker, USB 2.0 compatibility, YouTube capture mode

Width 2.1 inch, depth 0.7 inch, height 3.8 inch, weight 3.4 Oz

Razzle Dazzle

JVC Picsio is a mini-camcorder which looks just like a mobile phone. But it is a lot sleeker. The outer body is shiny plastic and you have a choice of three colors – deep purple, royal blue, and black. But you won’t fall in love with this gadget in first sight. It isn’t that attractive looking.

The sides of the camcorder have USB, miniHDMI, composite video jacks and macro switch. It doesn’t have a HDMI cable and nor does it have a built in USB connector. The bottom of the camcorder has a tripod socket, hand strap connector and a compartment for SD card and battery.

Inside Dope

jvc picsio gc-fm1 pocket camcorder

Camcorders are not as popular as mobile phones or even laptops, you wont purchase a camcorder more than once or twice in your life, unless you are some crazy shutter bug freak who buys a camcorder as soon as something with better hard ware is announced. That said, camcorders aren’t as popular as other electronic gadgets and JVC Picsio won’t change this reality.

The face of the camcorder has a LCD which is tiny yet good looking and below them are the controls. The controls are very difficult to use, starting with the power button, it is impossible to use it with you finger. It is too tiny and dug inside, so you will have to use finger nails. When the button is pressed, the device takes a moment to start and you won’t know whether the device is switched on or not. You will press a number of times and when the device finally boots you will be wondering which press did the trick.

Other buttons too have the same problem, you press them once and you will have to press them again because nothing seems to happen sometimes. You don’t know whether there is something wrong with the device or it is built that way. There is a four way navigation button that is used to navigate across the available resolutions and it is quite frustrating, there is no menu system for the function and all you do is press the button and then hope that the resolution has changed.

The LCD is just like the one used in mobile phone because it is very difficult to see when in bright sunlight.

JVC has bundled the Pixela MediaBrowser LE software with which you can browse and preview your clips and stills. You can download them, edit them and upload them to iTunes and YouTube. We were happy with the functions that the software provided but we could have done with better software. You can’t change the volume, brightness or contrast. There is a soft ware with which you can compile multiple clips and glue them together. The supported formats for these functions are WMA and AVI. You can then upload the content to websites like MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook. The software is not user friendly and you will need time to get used to it. The soft ware runs only on Windows, but you can use iMovie if you are a Mac fan.

The highest resolution that this eight mega pixel camera can give is 1,440×1,080 pixels at 30fps. Other modes include 720p, VGA, and QVGA. We were disappointed to find that there was no HD support. Other features include image stabilization and a macro focus mode.

The video quality of the camera is not that bad though, once you have struggled with the control, you will find light at the end of the tunnel with good video quality. It is relatively sharp and saturated with decent exposure. The outdoor white balance is excellent. Indoor light quality is reasonable and audio quality is good and quite loud. Photographs have too much contrast and saturation and don’t do justice to the 8 MP rating. But still, the photos aren’t that bad.

Nitty Gritty

JVC Picsio is good at video and photo quality but nothing else on this device is worth noticing. We would say there are better alternatives than this in the market. A good alternative to this camera is Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera.