Panasonic NV-GS17

After owning a previous video recorder/cam recorder for many years, i decided it was time to change in time form my holiday. I bought mine for £254.83 from qud-uk.com. Firstly, elaborating on the advantages of this product, the first thing that caught my eye was the size. As my previous one, being big and chunky as it was, the size was a huge difference. Furthermore, the zoom-in function is magnificant - detail of a picture/object can be seen over a third to half a mile a way, detail obviously fading the further you zoom in. The size of this enables it to be stored in compact spaces, where ... more

There was a time when entry level camcorders where big, bulky and usually quite poor quality compared to their more expensive counterparts. This is no longer the case. After the hugely successful GS11, panasonic have launched its replacement, the GS17. Now this is not the smallest, lightest camcorder by far, however, the quality it produces is easily comparable to camcorders further up the range. The main selling point of this camcorder is its huge optical zoom. At 24x this beats the sony HC19 (20X) which was seen as a big step forward. This size zoom gives so much more flexibility to the type ... more

I purchased this Panasonic about 4 weeks ago after my old JVC of 5 years service finally packed up. Why did I buy the Panasonic. Two reasons. Firstly it is one of the cheapest camcorders on the market. I bought mine from Dixons for just over 200 pounds. Secondly for the high optical zoom. At 24x not much on the market to match that. The Panasonic is very small and fits nicely in the palm of your hand and is very light. All the controls are easy to handle with the one hand. The joy stick is the principle interface with the menu functions and is easy to get used to. Took it out of the box ... more

The camera itself excellent. The controls are simple and the size is excellent; it doesn't take up much space in a bag. Transferring the video to a simple VHS produces brilliant and almost 'broadcast quality' results. However, transferring the video on to your PC took someone like me (without advanced knowledge) a considerable amount of time. Provided with the camera is a manual, AC mains lead and AV lead (for connecting to video/TV). There isn't any software (ie. drivers), or computer leads. If you're looking for a quick and easy option this probably isn't the camera for you. I certainly ... more

I found this product extremely disappointing. I purchased it for filming family wedddings/parties. in my experience the quality of the camera was good, but after spending £15 on cables to connect to usb and firewire and being told it worked with windows movie maker i found myself very disappointed. I tried to upload about 15 minutes of film onto my laptop (memory and cpu etc wasnt a problem as i easily uploaded fromanother video camera) after 7 hours when i came home i found it was still going. At this point i cancelled. I tried again a few weeks later with a different tape andd the same thing ... more

I bought this digital camcorder in order to be able to capture video on my PC. Imagine my surprise when I found out that no firewire, USB cables and software were included in the package! So after I bought seperately all these items and finally trasferred some videos onto my PC I had another negative surprise: the quality of the video was poor. A lot of image noise even under medium light conditions and annoying orizontal lines when the object in the video was moving even slightly or when I was moving the camera. I don't know how this camcorder compares to Sony's, Canon's etc but what I can ... more

After the hugely successful GS11, panasonic have launched its replacement, the GS17. I have not bought one but have played with my friends constantly The quality it produces is easily comparable to camcorders further up the range, however I do own the GS15 and cannot see much difference. The main selling point of this camcorder is its huge optical zoom. At 24x this beats the sony HC19 (20X) which was seen as a big step forward. This size of zoom adds so much more to the type of filming you are able to do and also means you do not have to start using the digital zoom, which decreases the ... more