Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG65EX > Reviews (1)

Well, I picked up this Jack-Of-All-Trades wannabe camcorder from Jessops just before closing time on a Saturday eve a few weeks ago. I needed a camera to take photographs at a friends 21st birthday, and yet there was little time to decide since only half an hour until the shops close. Upon trying jessops as my final shop, I saw this camera reduced from 499 to 249 in their Xtravaganza sale! I was skeptical, but thought well if i can bag a decent stills camera and some sort of camcorder in one then I wont complain!
I bought on the assumption assured by the manager that I could return it provided i wasnt happy after giving it a try, since they wasn't able to give me an instore demo.

First impressions upon opening the box - well packed, camera is provided with all required accesories including a docking station, a/v cables, cloth to clean camera, camera pouch, software cds and utilities, and a 780mah li-on sanyo battery which is supposedly good for around 60 minutes use. There is no viewfinder, so this is quoted with teh LCD screen on for framing shots.
be aware there is only 18mb internal memory, but the camera supports SDHC memory cards currently up to 8gb in size, i stuck a 2gb transfllash into mine using an adaptor.

The battery comes with its own external charger, or you can charge the camera throguh the dock. So I charged it, and then proceeded to my party.
I wont bore you all with the goings on at the party, but upon returning I was eager to hook the sanyo up and test out what i'd snapped.

To be honest - photographs were very good with adequate lighting, they were detailed and with relatively little digital noise in the image. Iso is also automatically adjusted well, and images shot in darker areas still came out well. The only catch is at the far end of the 5x optical zoom, the camera can struggle to focus, resulting in a blurry shot if you persist to take it. If I have any complaint it is that the flash isn't the strongest - and certainly wont be lighting up much further than around a meter away Id say tops. You may wish to keep this in mind if purchasing for nightclub use etc.
Overall photos, good, could be better but for such an easy to use, hybrid device for the cash, perfectly acceptable 5 megapixel prints - and would probably be better should I have lowered the resolution.
Speaking of settings, on the photo side you can adjust stuff like exposure compensation, scene modes, flash strength, red eye etc, and image size / compression quality. There are certainly a wealth of settings to play with and is sure to please someone who isnt expecting that of a DSLR or Dedicated digicam, but still wishes to tweak their shots every now and again.

Now, the core of the device - video recording. I was absolutely appalled by the video quality of this device. I set it to maximum quality, and could not believe how poorly the device handled video. Video was smooth, however at maxium the camera records into H264 Mpeg4 AVC at 3MBPS variable bitrate, approximately 20mb a minute.

Most of this goes into the crisp stereo audio, at AAC 128kb/s it sounds excellent, the dual microphones don't easily distort and even playback on the camera sounds great. As I said though, video playback on the lcd looks jsut fine, but pump them up on a 17" monitor and you'll see, fairly clean video outdoors - but indoors, errant pixels and compression artifacts populate the image. The camera also attempts to compensate for low light by bumping up and down the ISO i assume or shutter speed / exposure ... but it does this very sporadically, so much so, sudddenly, and sharply - that it makes videos look artificial and these sudden changes in the colour of the video look ridiculous, causing image tearing to some extent dependant on the sudden change of the lighting.
The optical zoom can be used while recording, but since the lens is already recessed and so small, increasing the zoom reduces the light that can enter even moreso, creating more noise!
That said, the CG65 does deserve some praise for where it copes fairly well - and that is outdoors in good natural lighting. While there is evidence of smearing caused by the lowly bitrate, it is fairly impossible to see Pixellation, unless you pan around frantically. The optical zoom also has a better time coping outdoors as well.

To conclude, this camera has many shortcomings - however not many can say that they have a Digital camera and camcorder that fits into almost any pocket and is as robust, lightweight and easy to use as this one. It also wont break the bank keeping it running with SDHC cards even being available now for around £35 at 4gb.

I would recommend anyone to buy this camera if they are looking for purely outdoor shots, its great for taking along to an outing at a theme park and videoing and taking photos - they're certainly printable if the lighting is right, and detail is rich - colours are also very strong.
Its only in poor lighting this camera falls down, and since this is unpredictable even outdoors, due to weather changing, this camcorder should not be relied upon for capturing those irreplacable, life - bending moments such as babys first steps, daughters first words etc, since the video quality just isn't up there.

Good fun, the voice that speaks with this camcorder is also gimmicky yet fun (yes. she can be turned off thank goodness), and the whole package is fairly attractive provided you can score it for under £200 or so.
If you're looking to go more futureproof, I've heard the Sanyo HD1 or HD2 models (which record into High Definition) have much better tolerance for low light situations all round.

Its your call, i've given my honest opinion, but I'll have you know i took it back the day after and had a full refund from jessops, since for £250 i still felt fairly cheated for a jack of all trades device which is a master of certainly none. Good for fun, the odd shot, video outdoors, but otherwise there are certainly better MiniDV , DVD camcorders, or even the low end JVC EverioHard Disk camcorders, around at the 250 mark to blow this kind of money on, with much better results to boot!