Review Of The Samsung HMX-H100 Camcorder
Camcorders — on September 3, 2009 at 1:05 pm | 1 CommentSum ‘n’ Substance:
Thumbs up:Stylish body design; convenient size and shape make it easy and comfortable to use high performance Schneider lens; manual shutter speed and aperture controls.
Thumbs down:Autofocus lags precision; average video quality; SSD adds unnecessary price.
Inside dope:
Video input type: Camcorder; Optical sensor type: CMOS; Optical zoom: 10 x; Analog Video Format NTSC; Digital Video Format H.264; Camcorder Sensor Resolution: 2.2 megapixels.
Camcorder Interpolated Still Resolution 4.7 megapixels ; LCD display – TFT active matrix – 2.7 in – Color; Schneider-Kreuznach zoom lens; Built-in lens shield; Camcorder Sensor Resolution 2.2 megapixels.
Camcorder Interpolated Still Resolution 4.7 megapixels.
Remote control – Infrared; Display Format 230,000 pixels; Connector Type 1 x Composite video/audio output , 1 x USB , 1 x Component video output , 1 x HDMI output Power adapter – External.
The Whiz-Kid speaks:I’m sure Samsung have got plenty of innovative ideas to try and stay ahead of the game but it seems like they don’t know what to do with it. Like many of their previous products they start off well, but somewhere along the way they get lost, for example, the inclusion of the SSD- solid-state drive storage instead of the usual traditional hard disks, regular old built-in flash, or simply removable flash cards. The idea behind the SSD is to have an advantage over the size of normal hard drives. But somehow, Samsung have managed release the HMX-H106, the H105, the H104, and the H100—all relatively large, and larger than a typical card-based model.
Also, the difference between the no-memory HMX-H100 and the 16GB H104 is about twice the cost of a Class 6 16GB SDHC card–and the absolute dollar gap escalates as the capacity increases, the SSD ultimately ends up as a marketing stunt.
Razzle- dazzle:The camcorders design is sleek and attractive. The user-friendly shape makes it comfortable and easy to use. The grip rotates about 150 degrees and locks into only two positions. Even though most of the HMX 100 is molded out of plastic, the construction has a solid feel. All controls i.e.—the zoom switch, photo button, power, mode and record–fall comfortably under your right thumb or forefinger. The top zoom switch is wobbly and uncooperative when trying to maintain a smooth, consistent zoom.
The hatch below contains the miniHDMI, the USB, the AV, and the power connectors. Inside the LCD cachement, there are a power switch, photo flash, display, full auto Easy Q, and image stabilization buttons. A secondary zoom switch, record button and Q(uick) Menu button are placed near the LCD. The battery and the SDHC slot sit on the bottom of the camcorder which can be quite troublesome when you’re trying to record from a tripod. The stereo microphones are placed on either side of the lens.
Inside dope:The HMX-H100 features a 2.7 inch touch-screen interface, which personally I find pointless, because it was very uncomfortable to make a decent press without destroying the device. To make matters worse the damn screen was unresponsive and requires several reattempts. The menus, however, are organized fairly well and even though the camcorder offers some manual adjustments, like shutter speed and aperture, they’re inconveniently buried in the menu system. You couldn’t even access them with the Q Menu button which is reserved for switching storage media (SD or SSD), scene modes, video and photo resolution, white balance, exposure compensation, and focus (auto, manual, or TouchPoint).
Recording takes place at 1,920×1,080/60i, as well as 720p and 480p, video using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 encoding, similar to that used by AVCHD.
Nitty –gritty:The overall performance of the HMX100 wasn’t up to the mark and when paired against its competitors like the Sony Handy cam HDR-XR100 and the Canon Vixia HG20, it could barely keep up. The auto focus was not accurate and had some considerable lag , besides the performance was slow. The optical stabilizer works pretty well out to the end of the zoom range, though. The video quality wasn’t impressive either. Picture quality was not sharp and some noise was present at the edges and this was the normal lighting conditions I was referring too. In low-light video it got worse, the video looked perceptibly noisy and over-processed.
So, it boils down to the fact that the attractive design is no excuse for the shabby performance and a price tag like that. They don’t stand out in any particular aspect as such, I wouldn’t recommend it.
Tweet This
Save to delicious1
Stumble it
Subscribe
1 Comment
When you say, high performance Schneider lens, optical zoom, LCD display ,Built-in lens shield,Format H.264,7 mp & all the most important that it’s from Samsung, it tells me that it’s kinda camcorder made for okay-performance.