JVC Everio GZMG27 20GB HDD Digital Media Camcorder with 32x Optical Zoom

we received this as a gift for our sons birth.

pros: easy to use, plenty of storage(for us), decent picture quality, no media to buy (you can shoot hours and hours virtually for free)

cons: = solution
battery life = buy a second battery

low light grainy = the other suggested solutions work pretty good

media transfer = there is a program out there called JVC Everio Utility, that will transfer the files for you, correct the aspect ratio, and rename with a mpg extension, this is a great little prog, that used to be free, but lately the author has started charging a little bit for it.

I also had to install the provided software in order to get the necessary codecs for Windows Media Player to playback my videos

I also prefer to manually white balance my important shots

overall a good camera.

This camera takes good videos and is easy to handle. The biggest drawback is that the .MOD file format can only be downloaded by the software that comes with the camera. I have found no other popular video software that will recognize the .MOD format. Now I find that the software that came with the camera seems to have "RUN OUT", like most demo software that comes with hardware. Now I either buy the "upgraded" version of the download software, or buy another camera (different brand) JVC has had it with me, NEVER AGAIN!

Great camera- if you never intend to shoot a video inside. The lowlight problems mentioned in some other reviews are worse than I imagined. I applied the workaround discussed above, tried out hundreds of combinations of my own, and followed JVC customer support instructions, all to no avail. Any video shot inside, or otherwise with lowlight, is grainy, blurry, shadowy and the colors are false. I tried returning the camera to amazon/J&R Music and to JVC, but none of the above would take it back being past the 30 day return policy. I am incredibly disappointed in this camera. When put up next to a 5 year old sony vhs camcorder (a budget model at that) I realized the low light quality is even worse than my old one! This was a huge waste of money - don't buy it.

This light little camera is excellent for the money! I would strongly recommend it to anyone looking for an easy to use digital camcorder.

I recently purchsased the JVC Everio GZMG27 after much research and thought about which platform to get....hard drive vs. mini DV tapes vs. mini DVD discs. I tested the cam yesterday and it was easy to use, very user friendly (don't really need to read the manual to get it working) and took a nice video. Overall a very good purchase over the Sony which generally costs about $100 more. However, what I do not like about the camera and will be the reason why I am going to return it and purchase the DVD mini disc format is the time it takes to create a DVD. Last night I copied the test video from the Cam to my hard drive and I discovered the following. The files are some weird MOI type which cannot be opened using any standard video software. You must use the disc that comes with the camcorder. The software does allow you to convert to AVI which would then have to be converted to DVD format. This of course is in real time, so if your video is 2 hours, you must play back the video for 2 hours and then wait for the computer to first convert to AVI. After that I could rip it to disc in about 45 more minutes. Although there is an option of directly ripping to DVD, I do not like this option since I would like to have a back up (in DVD file format) on my harddrive along with a copy of the DVD.
With the mini DVD camcorders, it is so easy to make a copy and keep a copy on your computer's harddrive for future editing/copies. Much less time consuming for sure. The drawback is of course that the discs are only good for about 30 minutes of footage, but that is fine with me.
Hope this saves you some time.