RCA EZ300HD Small Wonder High Definition Digital Camcorder (Black)

Review by Alfredo Rodriguez for RCA EZ300HD Small Wonder High Definition Digital Camcorder (Black)
Rating:
Well I just received my EZ300HD last night and I am thoroughly impressed after only having taken 2 videos, at night, in artificial light, indoors. So looking forward to see what it can do in the day and outside.

First of all, maybe this “second” batch of cameras (I had to wait a while for mine after they sold out initially) has been upgraded because some of the complaints I read in other reviews are not present in this camera at all.

I received the camera and installed the software without issue. It also already came with the DivX codec you need to run the raw .AVI files and that installed automatically as well. The software then proceeded to update itself through the internet. I run Windows Vista on a pretty new laptop.

I took 2 videos, one in my living room with only a lamp on and the other in kitchen with overhead recessed lighting. The video in the living room was definitely grainy with vertical stripes lightly visible, but not dark enough to where you couldn’t see the objects in the shot. It wasn’t great, but acceptable given the lighting conditions. Under the brighter lights in my kitchen, the clarity was superb and all the colors were very true and vibrant. No haziness or pixelation there.

I played the video on my 46″ Sony Wega through the supplied composite video cable (RCA jacks) and looked good. My next purchase will be an HDMI cable with the mini jack on one end. I also downloaded the video to my computer without issues and used the simple software that came with the camera to trim the clips and save as a combined video.

The raw footage is in .AVI format and requires the codec to view in Media Player. On my laptop LCD the HD video looked great, definitely crisp with a lot of resolution and I was happily surprised to see no frame shakes or drops at all. The video was smooth with no blurriness. Not too bad considering I was chasing my 9 month old around. The sound is mono, so nothing fancy, but sounded fine.

The saved or edited movies are recorded in Windows .WMV format, which are pretty easy to share with anyone for viewing on any computer. I think my DVD player will even play these files. The difference is that the quality is definitely less and it changes the widescreen video to normal 4:3 aspect ratio. Maybe there is a setting to change that, since it appears to just squeeze the picture in, but not a big deal as I plan on investing in some video editing software to edit the raw footage and burn higher quality video on DVDs.

The camera option is nice because it can get you out of a pinch when you need a still photograph. The picture was okay, but don’t rely on it as your primary digital camera, especially for aciton shots with lots of movement. It is possible to grab frames from your movie video too, so that may actually produce a crisper image.

The camera itself is very lightweight, even with the battery installed, so that was nice. It fits comfortably in my pant pocket and is about the size of a standard Blackberry device. The camera was a gift for my wife and she thought it was great, probably for the same reasons a lot of other people buy this type of camera:

– small size

– easy to use

– don’t want to tote around a regular camcorder

Because of these reasons I really see us using this a lot, especially with a growing baby.

I am going to a car show this weekend and will have a lot of fun filming with this new camera.

Overall, I am very pleased with this purchased, but I also knew exactly what to expect from this camera. Even then I was very pleasantly surprised.