Panasonic HDC-TM41 user reviews

Pros Records 1080i like a proper camcorder of it's price range, decent zoom speed, built in memory, use right out of the box, small, decent battery life, SDXC support, Stereo microphones sound good (for their size), outstanding stabilizer.

Cons LED light breaks too easily (and isn't even really much of an LED), pain in the *** to repair, zoom lever is very fragile (pops off, needs to be taken apart and superglued on), only 16 GB built on, not for use by idiots, recording delay.

Summary Very nice for the price...crap, that rhymed. Oh well, let' dive right into this. The camera is very nice for what you pay for it (I managed to find it brand new on amazon for $189). It has a bunch of things you'd expect on a better HD camera, it's small, and the quality (though rather low for a 1080i camera) is better than I was told it would be by many many people on YouTube. I like that it can support a SDXC card, but I don't have the money (or the means of acquiring the money) to get one of these, so I am stuck with the built on memory. Something I really didn't like is how hard it is to find replacement parts. My personal HDC-TM41 has a shattered screen. I finally found a screen but it takes over a month to ship. On top of that, it is for the SD40, but the SD40 has an identical screen to the TM41, or so I have been shown. I somehow managed to break the LED light by dropping this camera a short distance. The LED really isn't much, it's a little illumination strip (much like the screen's backlight) put behind a lens to make you think it's an LED. This spreads the light released but it's nowhere near as bright as a true LED. This thing is small, I mean guys only have to worry about what it looks like when they put it in their pockets if their friends have sick minds. I don't recommend carrying it in your pocket though, that can put pressure on the zoom lever that can break it off and it will have to be superglued back on later. I have noticed quite a bit of people who will buy this and say "it's not high quality BECAUSE OF the fact that it records 1080i". NO, it's not high quality because it's upscaling 720i to 1080i (and doing a decent job). The 'i' just means interlaced and it can be turned into a 'p' easily with video converting software such as handbrake. AVCHD may seem complicated and all, but if you know how to use handbrake and FFMPEG without a GUI, you're going to be just fine when it comes to editing. This camera is good for many things, especially for use during movement. I am dead serious, I turned on the stabilizer and watching the video back, even when I zoomed in, it looked like I was using it on a steadicam mount. On the topic of outstanding, you can control the mic sensetivity, and when you do so, you get a meter that shows the audio input. This thing has no audio inputs but the microphones are pretty good, considering the fact that each is the size of an earbud speaker. Overall, it is a very nice HD camera for the low price. It won't have the world's best quality but that can be easily fixed and it has a ton of manual features. For $180 new on amazon, I'd say go for it, what the heck are you waiting for? It's cheap, it works decently, and it's just overall a nice camera.