Canon HV-30 - Expert Reviews

Award: Editor's Choice!

Review summary: Rugged and easy to use, the Canon Vixia HV30 is a great choice for anyone looking for a high-quality camcorder.

Pros: High-quality video in most light, Intuitive and sturdy design, Brilliant LCD, MiniDV format means compatibility with lots of editing solutions, Full-size HDMI port

Cons: Noise and focus difficulty in low light, No significant software bundle

Verdict: The Canon Vixia HV30 offers excellent video quality in a wide range of illumination, and we can't discount the proven and fully edit-suite-compatible qualities of MiniDV. The Canon is an excellent camera, and a great choice for a broad audience.

Review summary: The Canon HV30 is an upgrade to last year's top-notch HV20. This model features a sleeker-looking black body and much longer battery life, making it a well-designed prosumer camcorder with a useful feature set, great performance and excellent video ...

Pros: Generally excellent video quality ; solid feature set for its class ; well designed

Cons: Tape housing feels flimsy ; fixed eye-level viewfinder needs a better eye cup ; manual focus dial loose

Verdict: An extremely minor upgrade from the HV20, the Canon HV30 remains a quality HDV camcorder with a couple of performance issues

Review summary: So, it has a 2.96MP CMOS sensor, 1080i/25p shooting, choice of HDV and DV recording/playback, AV-input conversion, superb functionality, great handling and more..... Hang on, haven't we been here before?

Verdict: All in all, the HV30 is a very good camcorder indeed and every bit as good as the model it replaces. It is, of course, very odd that a company like Canon should seek to replace one year's model with another whose specification and even form-factor is ...

Pros: Generally excellent video quality ; solid feature set for its class ; well designed

Cons: Tape housing feels a little flimsy ; fixed eye-level viewfinder needs a better eye cup ; manual focus dial a bit loose

Verdict: An extremely minor upgrade from the HV20, the Canon Vixia HV30 remains a quality HDV camcorder with a couple of performance issues.

Review summary: Don't look for any great advances here: the Canon Vixia HV30 is a very minor upgrade from the admittedly top-notch HV20. It has a sleeker-looking black body, introduces 30p progressive mode, and supports the high-capacity BP-2L24H lithium ion battery, ...

Cons: Tape housing feels a bit flimsy ; fixed eye-level viewfinder needs a better eye cup ; manual focus dial a bit loose