Hitachi DZ-GX20A DVD camcorder Review
| Design |
| There’s a plus to ever minus if you’re willing to look hard enough. The minus on the Hitachi DX-GX20A design is that it’s not the most attractive of camcorders. The bland grey and silver plastic casing isn’t going to win any beauty pageants. But on the plus side when you’re walking around with it on your holiday no one’s going to want to nick it. The camera is however fairly light, weighing only 16 ounces, making it lighter than a sponge cake (but not as tasty) and easy to hold in one hand. The zoom, power switch and function wheel are placed in comfortable reach of your fingers and all the rest of the functions are positioned either above or below the LCD screen. To play around with the manual focus and exposure controls Hitachi has provided touch sensitive buttons and to navigate through the menus there’s a directional pad which also doubles up as a playback control key. The right hand side has the door which pops open to home a three inch disc for recording. |
| Setup/Installation |
| The lovely thing about this camcorder is it takes no time to start up - from the moment you press the on button to the time it's ready for you to start shooting is instantaneous. And because of its limited features it’s an easy camera to get a handle of without having to read any lengthy manuals. |
| Features |
| The DZ-GX20A has a quick start function which takes no time from powering on to starting to record. There aren’t many functions but what you get works well. The camera comes with a fairly high resolution 2.5 inch LCD which can be used even in low light. There's an in-built flash (but no red-eye detector), and a gimmicky screen which doubles up as an additional flash source if the light drops. The Hitachi DZ-GX20A comes with a 10x optical zoom or a 240x digital zoom and a 2.1 megapixel CCD as well as five pre-set programmed autoexposure modes, manual and automatic white balance and exposure settings. There are three file settings and using a SD or MMC card you can record around 25 JPEG stills on the 32MB card of around 1600x1200 resolution or 2,000 JPEG on a DVD. The Hitachi DZGX20A supports two formats of three-inch DVD discs: write-once DVD-R and rewriteable DVD-RAM. On a DVD-Ram you’ll be able to store between 40 to 120 minutes of video footage and use the in-house camera editing features. While on the DVD-R you’ll be able to store between 20 – to minutes of MPEG video. It also supports both 4:3 and 16:9 wide-screen formats. You can save your video straight on to the DVD or use the USB connector supplied to drag-and-drop your shots on to your computer. The camcorder provides S-Video and composite inputs and outputs, allowing you to use the DZGX20A to convert your old analog videos to DVD format. |
| Performance |
| Hitachi have taken time to improve its fifth generation camcorder including the addition of a new imaging engine, a 20 percent improvement in noise reduction and increase in battery life. But the most impressive improvement is the ultra-quick start-up time which like lightening readies itself in a couple of seconds to start taking those snaps of the family. Picture quality is pretty good and more akin to a mid-priced MiniDV camcorder than a DVD camcorder. Colours were good and fairly accurate even when recording on high compression. Picture quality suffered a bit in low lighting bu the Low Lighting program exposure mode helps towards brightening the area (although this did lower the response rate and left your footage rather jerky). We keep banging on about the limited features, but what it does have, does work well. The zoom operates smoothly, particularly when you’re using the fast zoom and also we found the autofocus kicks while the camera also adjusts to changing light. However, when you zoom out to 10x the image stabiliser didn’t work too well and you will need a tripod to stop your viewers from thinking you were on the ale the night before filming. The microphone surprised us because of its superior quality for such a small camcorder. The Hitachi camcorder picks up great sound quality from the built-in microphone although you could attach an external one if you wanted. The manual focus isn’t the best and it’s very difficult to see your subject clearly on the LCD and even more difficult on the colour viewfinder (which doesn’t tilt), but if you’re looking for more manual operations we’d suggest paying a bit more and going for the Sony DCR-DVD105 or the Canon DC100. The still photos weren’t the best but not bad for a camcorder and the built-in flash helped illuminate the area. |
| What's In The Box? |
| Hitachi DZGX20A camera body, battery, single-sided 8-cm DVD-RAM disc, PC software, S-video and composite AV cable, USB cable, AC adapter/charger, remote control with battery, shoulder strap, lens cap. |
| Overall Opinion |
| What you get with the Hitachi DZ-GX20a is a solid DVD camcorder that starts up quickly, works in even low light condition, has a decent LCD with fairly high resolution for watching footage even in the darkest of conditions. With a 10x optical zoom attached the features are basic but it produced good quality image and allows you to edit video straight on the camera. For all of this you’ll be paying less than £500. |
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Pros + In camera editing, + Long life battery + Compact + Good low-light video |
Cons - Not brilliant still photos - Controls too sensitive - Gimmicky LCD light |
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Picture Quality 7/10
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Battery Life 8/10
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Setup Simplicity 7/10
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Build Quality 6/10
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Ease of Use 7/10
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Overall Rating 
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By Babita Wakelin
22/8/2006 at 2:45:45pm
22/8/2006 at 2:45:45pm
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