JVC Everio GZ-MG730 (30GB, black)

Pros: A nice Dolby stereo sound recording, good video quality

Cons: Short battery life with default battery, around 80 minutes.

Summary: A good video quality, around 600-700px wide video, can be wide screen or normal ratio.

A very good stereo Dolby digital sound quality.

With the 30GB version you can record between 7 hours and 30 hours, which should be enough for most users, I personally don't need the 60GB version.

Default sized battery runs for around 80 minutes so it will be hard to fill 30 or 60 GB of video.
You can get a battery that is 3 times the size and will cost around 60-70$m which should give you a 3-4 hours of recording time.

If you ignore the software on CD you will see the camera as a memory stick and be able to copy/paste the videos and photos to your computer freely which is very nice.

Video files are saved as .MOD extension and (from what I heard and did...) can be safely renamed to .MPG files so your PC players will recognise the format.

My 30GB version was around 540$ including tax and shipping so I consider it a very good value.

I am not impressed with the photo quality but I was expecting this because it's made for video and not for photo.

The light on its right side is a flash for photo only and it doesn't seem to have a permanent light source for video recording, but it records very well in low light conditions, it has some feature for light boosting.