Creative Vado Pocket Video Cam HD

Pros:

- 8GB of internal memory to store 2 hours of video on the highest quality setting
- Wide angle lens
- Decent color reproduction
- Comfortable soft rubber feel
- High quality video for the price and size
- Compact and light weight (convenient to take almost anywhere)
- Easy to copy movies to computer (built in USB connector)
- Comes with USB extension cable
- Comes with HDMI cable to play videos on your HDTV directly from the unit
- Easy to chop up the videos using Vado Central (comes free with the unit)
- Microphone picks up audio much better than expected (can here sounds from every direction)
- Extremely simple to use
- Comes with free H.264 video codec, but I prefer ffdshow-tryouts on SourceForge for better performance and customization

Cons:

- Fixed lens with 2X digital zoom only (no optical zoom)
- Does not come with a lanyard
- Optional lanyard is a bit difficult to install
- No expansion slot for an external memory card
- Microphone has a low volume feedback noise in recordings (more noticeable in quiet scenes)
- Battery life states 2 hours, but realistically it's more like 1 hour 40 minutes
- Unit will sometimes freeze when plugging into the computer (must remove battery from unit to get it working again)
- Video playback from unit to HDTV causes audio to slightly distort on high pitch sounds (does not occur when playing back from computer)
- Very bright lights such as the sun will cause skin tones to be slightly yellow
- Free H.264 codec did not work on an older laptop running Windows XP Home, but worked fine on a newer computer running Windows XP Professional
- Tripod connector on unit can easily be broken if tripod is over tightened (due to plastic tripod connector on unit)

Comments:

This camcorder is definitely worth the money. I recommend using the clear skin which comes with it to help prevent it from getting scuffed up. Also, don't forget to upgrade the firmware and install the Vado Central application update on the unit.

I recommend purchasing a small carry case with belt loop, lanyard, composite A/V cable (unit comes with HDMI cable), digtal camera tripod, and spare battery. All of these items can be picked up fairly cheap on eBay.

If you have the clear skin installed, be sure to push the composite A/V cable in all the way. Otherwise you will receive garbage on the screen.

I only had the unit freeze a few times when plugging into my computer running Linux. This hasn't occur yet when plugging into my system running Windows.

Overall, I am very impressed by this unit.