Hey! I just got one of these for Christmas!

I would recommend it for the casual shooter who doesn't require presentation quality video. Big pluses are light weight (can't get much lighter), small size (hide it in my pocket when I go to the hockey games and concerts), and robust design (takes a lickin' and keeps on flickin'). Minuses are video quality, record button availability delay on startup, and very basic set of options (my camera has more!). Would I buy it again? Yes, it does what I need it to do, but I'm not thrilled by it. It fills a niche. OK, now for more detail.

There's good and there's bad. On the good side:

Oops proof - yeah, really oops proof. I dropped it already and it survived with just a few scuffs. Nice polycarbonate case that won't crack. The lens assembly is behind a recessed glass shield, so it can't be broken by a casual drop.

Runs for 50+ minutes on a 1000 mah lithium polymer battery. Really light and easy to keep a few around for replacements. Battery capacity is about what it takes to fill a 4 GB memory card. External charger is available but doesn't come with the camcorder.

Low light performance is adequate. It can get grainy when shooting by campfire. Overall video dynamic range is about what you'd expect from an entry-level camcorder.

Built in stereo mic is remarkably clear with good imaging. No motor equals no annoying noise.

REALLY water resistant. There are two major penetrations on the body - one houses power, usb, and video/audio out jacks. The other covers the battery and SD flash card. Both use rubber gaskets to seal out the environment. You can dunk the device but I wouldn't recommend sustained underwater use. Nice in wet weather! Would like to see some kind of squeegie device to wipe the lens clean. Towels don't cut it. And water-resistant means dust-proof. To clean the camera, just wipe it down with a damp cloth. No worries. This camcorder would survive Burning Man (aka Playa Dust Bowl).

Now for some negatives:

Movie quality - it is about on par with Hi-8. If you move the camera rapidly there is some tearing - appears to be related to the interlace (edges and lines perpendicular to the plane of motion become zig-zags). I kinda expected a bit more for the price. At least it's not whole frame tearing like those Aiptek camcorders.

Gotta really watch the record indicator! When this baby powers up, it can take up to 3 seconds AFTER the viewfinder goes live before you can press the record button. This has led to more than a few precious moments lost because I THOUGHT I was recording. Then when I thought I stopped recording, I actually had started it. So there are a number of lengthy upside-down videos of whatever was behind me.

Yeah, it shoots pictures too. Why is this in the negative column? Because it shoots 640x480 pictures. That's it. Still have to bring my 6 megapixel still camera.

Kinda nit-picky, but when you have the camcorder mounted (standard 1/4" threaded insert) you can't open the door to change the battery or card.

The anti-shake is digital instead of optical. What that means is it is fairly useless at more than 3x zoom. It also leads to jerky movies because it tries to hold the picture "in place" until it can't, then it resets on the new frame and tries to hold that one.

Camera gets warm with extended (> 5 minutes) shooting. It gets warm right under where your palm rests. It can become uncomfortable.

MPEG2 recording - wish it used MPEG4 instead. 50 minutes of video fills 4 GB in high quality mode. This would be enough for 4 hours of high quality MPEG4 video. I also don't know why Panasonic chose to use a .mod extension on the files - none of my equipment will play them until I change the .mod to .mpg.

Now why don't they shrink one of the HD camcorders down to this size? Aiptek managed it, but their corner-cutting makes the device unusable (high quality picture with crappy mono audio that's recorded through the device's SPEAKER!). It's on my wish list.

- Jim