Samsung HMX-H100

Pros: Good outdoor video quality. Very easy to use. Good image stabilization. Built in usable software for Windows. Good video sharpness and detail (on highest quality settings). Good color reproduction. Easy video editing (No need to convert). True HD.

Cons: Plastic, decent quality build, especially rec and zoom buttons. Low battery live. No ext. MIC connection. Noise in recorded sound. Low photo quality. Fast discharging when not used. Poor indoor/low light video quality (but not terrible).

Summary: Despite all negative opinions in the Internet about Samsung HMX-H10* series, this cameras is worth considering for home users. I have this cam (HMX-H100) for about one year, and can truly speak about it's cons and pros. For this price tag, you cant have everything, and you must understand, that if you paying only ~300$ (or less) for HD camera, you cant expect only candies in it. Many people buying things, just because items have stick on it calling "things" HD, and are very disappointed in long term because they imagine HD quality as movies shown on TV . I bought this camera, just to have portable camcorder, for some family/personal occasions. Before I bought this cam, I knew, that it will be poor on low light, and it is lack of external mic connection and etc.. I wanted just good image quality in controllable surrounding. And it was best choice on that time considering price. And I was not disappointed. This camera has some flows, but video quality is absolutely fine, it has normal dynamic range, normal details in video, not over processed colors, and good image stabilization. It is lite, small and portable camcorder. I bought version without SSD memory, because I'm used to SDHC cards, and they are cheap. So about pros: good video quality outdoors, video is not interlaced, a lot of details and good sharpness on highest quality settings. Good dynamic range. Very easy to use by novice. It has true HD quality. Good zoom range. As it is cheap camera, it has a lot of flows: noise in recorded sound (produced by electronics), built (especially buttons) quality is poor. Battery performance is disappointing. Be prepared, with stabilization on, you can expect max. 45-60 minutes of non stop recording. And of course, it would be not a problem, if you could add or replace for much more higher capacity battery. But you can't and you are doomed if you don't have a spare unit with you. Next, zooming is not pleasurable experience, lack of smoothness especially soft/slow zooming. Photo quality, is just terrible. You can do much more better photo shoots with a decent cell phone. It has build very bright touchscreen LCD (LED back light) twist-able viewfinder, decent menu and basic controls. So do I recommend it? Yes if you want HD camera for personal not very demanding purposes. But if you interested to use it for studio or editing purposes, beware of it, because it is lack of flexibility, and is not suitable for this task.