First things first. The JVC Everio GZ-MG465 is not a High-Definition camcorder. Now we’ve got that out of the way we can concentrate on what makes this camcorder a viable standard-def option.
The mouth-watering features menu includes a 60GB hard drive and an SD card slot, a long (and fairly sharp) 32x optical zoom, a 2.7-inch widescreen monitor for you to frame up your amateur movies, and Everi veri good 1.07-megapixel CCD Konica Minolta lens.
The GZ-MG465′s footage is about as good as it gets on a standard-definition camcorder: look at your video on a big-screen telly and you can see detail you didn’t know was there before. It’s so detailed, in fact, that it picks out blemishes and imperfections on any face it’s trained upon. If you’ve got a face like a cobbler’s thumb, you might find the results a little, shall we say, “harsh”. That said, it’s still not a match for HD.
Handling is comfortable, with the JVC GZ-MG465 measuring a manbag-friendly 54x68x113mm and weighing 360g. But when it comes to focussing, it’s pretty slow. And video stabilisation is poor – especially at longer focal lengths.
The JVC GZ-MG465 is a decent standard-definition camcorder, then. But if you’re paying upward of £400 you really want to be investing in something that captures in High-Definition.
