Whatever happened to good old Bluetooth, eh? At one point,Bluetooth was the future. Everything was going to be Bluetooth-compatible. Wewere all going to live in Bluetooth houses with Bluetooth cars and Bluetooth catsand dogs. But then, presumably, someone realised Bluetooth was unreliable, insecureand painfully slow, and relegated it to the bottom of your mobile phone'ssettings menu.
JVC Everio GZ-HM550
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Okay, so perhaps that was a little uncalled for. But itwas with an undeniable twinge of nostalgia that we greeted the JVC EverioGZ-HM550, a £550 high-definition home-movie camcorder that proudly displaysthe Bluetooth logo on its lens housing. Bluetooth is back -- and this time, it'sheading for Hollywood. Or, at least, YouTube.
Bite into Bluetooth
We have to hand it to JVC. Rather than just churn outanother samey mid-range model with only a fractional difference in zoom lengthto distinguish it from the latest equivalent, the company has daredto include some features that genuinely set the GZ-HM550 apart from thecrowd. And that includes its implementation of Bluetooth technology.
It's possible to set up your Bluetooth smart phone to be used as awireless remote control handset with the camcorder, which is great, except for the fact that notall smart phones are compatible with this feature (see here.)Plus, JVC already includes a perfectly decent remote control handset in thebox.
More interesting, perhaps, is the ability to pair thecamcorder with a Bluetooth-enabled GPS device in order to geotag your videosand photos. It's also possible to use a Bluetooth headset to monitoraudio and narrate clips. Again, however, these functions only work withcompatible devices and, sadly, we weren't able to test them with the Bluetooth equipmentwe had here.
Bluetooth isn't the only unusual feature on offer, either.The GZ-HM550 also provides some clever ways to film and share your results.There's a time-lapse function, as well as an ultra-high-speed (500 frames persecond) video mode. The device even offers a way to shoot short bursts ofcontinuous high-resolution photos at up to 25fps, while 'auto rec' modeautomatically sets the camcorder to record when a person enters the frame.
Lose control
When it comes to showing off your movie masterpieces, youcan, of course, simply plug the camera into your telly via HDMI (cable notincluded). But it's also possible to upload your video directly to YouTube,export it to iTunes or burn it straight to disc, bypassing your PC altogetherusing JVC's standalone Share Station drive (around £100 online).
There's one more innovation that we ought to mention, andthat's the GZ-HM550's laser touch control system. It's intended as a sort of hybrid between traditional button-based menu navigation and fully fledgedtouch-sensitive screens. You'll find a small vertical strip running down theleft-hand side of the camcorder's 69mm (2.7-inch) fold-out screen. You can'tmiss it, since it flashes a bright blue light at you whenever you switch theunit on.
The strip is touch-sensitive and the idea is that youswipe it up or down to navigate menus, using the buttons underneath the screento make your selections. It sounds straightforward enough, but we'll admit, thesystem almost had us tearing our hair out in frustration. It's unnecessarilycomplicated. Scrolling will almost always cause you to overshoot the menu entryyou were actually after. In all honesty, we'd have been happier with anold-fashioned rocker.
Inside out
Thankfully, all this cutting-edge stuff doesn't come atthe expense of core features or performance. The small, chubby-looking GZ-HM550has a healthy 32GB of internal storage plus an SD card slot for more memory. Itrecords 1080i high-definition at bitrates of up to 24Mbps, which is about ashigh as AVCHD camcorders currently get. The Konica Minolta lens offers 10xmagnification (up to 16x in 'dynamic' mode) and image stabilisation isavailable.
In practice, picture quality is very strong -- colours are accurateand edges are sharp, though not unnaturally so. Detail is good, although wenoticed the autofocus struggling a little on occasion. Panning slightly toofast can inject a lot of artefacts into the image. The GZ-HM550 has only asingle CMOS sensor, but its 'Super LoLux' back-illuminated technology made forsome very decent results in our indoor tests. A video lamp is provided forlow-light situations.
Photo resolutions of up to 9 megapixels are available.It's possible to take widescreen snapshots while filming and standard (4:3)photos can be taken in the camera's still mode. In our tests, the GZ-HM550took some good snaps, although some of the shots we took at the full (10x) zoomlength looked a little blurry, even in good light. We also found the automaticwhite balance to be very unreliable.
Conclusion
When we researched the typical cost of the GZ-HM550,we found some wildly oscillating figures online. Amazon alone lists thesame unit at prices ranging from £480 to £670.All we can say is, even if you find it for sale at the lower end of thisscale, we'd still question the product's value for money.
The JVC Everio GZ-HM550 is a pretty good camcorderwith some highly unusual tricks up its sleeve, though some of these -- such asBluetooth connectivity -- can be complicated to set up and use. If you're notgoing to take full advantage of the Everio's innovations, you'll almostcertainly end up paying over the odds for features you rarely -- or never --use.In addition, the laser touchcontrol system may appeal to some, but it managed to drive us well and truly upthe wall during the short time we spent with our test unit. As such, you mayfind JVC's device puts too much unnecessary strain on both your finances andyour temper.
Edited by Emma Bayly