This camera is pretty solid for the price. I use it for video production and have done a music video and am currently making an internet tv show with it. Like most camcorders, the on board mic is pretty bad, so I got a Rode VideoMic, and now its great! The low-light performance is far, but more expensive cameras do a lot better. The manual controls are pretty good, but I would have liked to be able to control the aperture. My one big complaint is that it has no headphone jack. All in all, this camera is a great beginner camera to learn on.

We just bought this a few months ago to film our newborn and we are thrilled with this little camera! It fits nicely in the hand, it is not very heavy, the screen is great, and my wife even says it is really easy to use. We have watched the videos on our HD tv and it was a breeze to show them. I have transferred them to the PC via a ieee card I bought, but I have not edited them, so I can not speak about the software the camera came with. For the money, this was a great buy. Plus, it's a Canon and we know it will last us a while!

I am quite happy with this camcorder, I think the 35x optical zoom plus the tremendous digital zoom is a bit of over kill though. I set the overall zoom to 100x and even that is too much unless you use a tripod and of course the way I want to use it, a tripod just doesn't work. I love the great picture, especially the wide angle. viewing with the included composite video cable just doesn't do it justice though, plan on using a fire wire cable and transfer video's to a computer. Then you can burn your videos to a DVD to view on a TV if you wish. That way you get the best pic your TV is capable of showing.

This camcorder is excellent. It was everything that was advertised. I would highly recommed it to anyone.

If you don't want to spend much and also desire a good audio and video quality..then this would be a perfect buy. I read in the other reviews about the motor noise problem. It is true that you can hear motor noise during playback and recording of video. But, once you get used to the noise and notice the good quality of video recording, it should not be a big problem. Overall, a good camcorder for low budget.