Veho VCC-008 Kuzo Full 1080p High Definition Slimline Camcorder with 3inch Touch Screen (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

So, for $99 I was not expecting a pocket camera that George Lucas would envy, nor true 1080HD footage. I was looking for one that would at least function without issues and record cleanly, but unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired. On the outside, this is a very attractive looking cam. It's sleek, sexy and has decent weight to it. It's made with plastic like all cams of this price, but it also has a rubbery coating which gives it an excellent feel. However, this rubberized black coating also shows dirt and scratches very easily. Weight is evenly balanced making it feel like an extension of your own arm, which is nice. I found myself picking it up just to hold it because it felt so nice.The controls are laid out rather well, and the buttons are extremely sensitive requiring only minimal pressure to activate...something I really liked. Other cams have buttons that require more force resulting in clicking sounds in your footage...this cam does not suffer from that. The only problem I did have was with the macro switch, which is located right above the lens. It has an extremely small lever which you need to click to one side, and it's very stiff. They designed it to be operated with your index finger while holding the cam, but it's so stiff that you have to use your fingernail instead, which makes it somewhat awkward. It's not really a big deal though considering most who purchase these things are not even going to use the macro anyhow. The cam has a nice flip out resistive touch screen, which is bright and clear, and swivels around so that you can take self portrait images if desired. The touch screen is responsive and only requires minimal pressure to navigate the menu system. Others have complained that the menu system has icons with no labels, making it confusing what they all do, but one touch of your finger will tell you, so complaining about that is ridiculous IMHO.Now, aside from it's good looks and excellent feel, functionality really suffers. The cam has a small led light up front under the lens, like most do. However, the placement is directly where you want your index finger while holding it, which was not the best place to put it. Not only that, but the led is not white, it's yellow. It looks like normal white light at first glance, but after trying it in the dark, it had a distinctive yellow hue to it, making my white walls look dingy and dirty. I know these lights don't really contribute that much to low lighting anyway, but it should at least be white. They might as well have put a normal incandescent bulb it it...oops, did we miss something here?My main disappointment came when I reviewed my footage, which at first sight looked impressive for a 5MP sensor. After looking closer, I noticed that when the cam was held very still it was crisp and clear, but anytime I moved, I noticed it had trouble processing the images, resulting in a blurry line that traveled from the bottom of the screen to the top very quickly. This almost looked like a refresh line you would see on a computer monitor. I tried every shooting mode the camera had, switched to a faster memory card and even tried different media players, but this was an issue no matter what I tried. I have other small pocket cams, including those made by DXG, and they all suffer from this problem, but the Veho is worse...a real bummer. The footage is also very jumpy in 1080 mode, and I found myself shooting in 720 to eliminate it...even with the image stabilization activated. Speaking of 1080 and 720 modes, despite what some other reviews have stated, this cam IS NOT true 1080HD...it is interpolated by on board hardware. Basically, it means taking the picture and stuffing in guessed bits to make it larger. This is basically taking footage recorded in 640 and blowing it up to 1080. One look at the description and specifications here on Amazon will tell you the story. How is it possible to have 16MP resolution when Veho states they use a 5MP sensor? Sorry folks, but you are not going to get true 1080HD performance from a 5MP sensor...it's just not possible, and reviewers who think they can, have obviously never used a true 1080HD camcorder. So, don't let all the "True HD Footage" reviews on this product blind you from the truth. Think about it...are you going to get $150,000 Ferrari performance out of a Ford Focus?This cam also has a very slow reaction time to adjust light levels...sometimes taking up to 5 seconds, making some shots start out bright only to have them dim down later. Sometimes just moving the cam a hair out of frame results in light dimming, which is very frustrating. You will also experience grainy images when using this indoors, unless you are under very bright lighting. If you are shooting around your living room and only using a 60 watt blulb in your table top lamp, then forget it. The zoom on this cam was very smooth and easy to use, unfortunately, it resulted in very grainy footage after half scale. This is to be expected though for a cam with a fixed focus lens and no optical zoom. Sound was a little muffled, but worked adequately.Still pictures were also cumbersome being very blurry and undefined, and I found it inconvenient that the cam had to be idle to take a picture. It would have been nice to be able to take a digital still while recording, but I guess that's too expensive of a feature for a $99 cam. Also, after pushing the picture button, the camera takes 5 seconds to actually take the picture. This involves some guesswork because the screen freezes to show the shot you're taking, but the actual picture is taken 5 seconds later, forcing you to be completely still to avoid a ruined picture...how stupid. Even with the use of a tripod, pictures came out blurry and washed out. If you are thinking of using this for picture taking, think again!The menu system is pretty straight forward, and for me was easy to use. The cam has an impressive boot time of about 2 seconds, which was surprising. In fact, it's so quick that the splash screen which shows the manufactures logo, can't even be read completely before the system boots. I went from opening the screen to actually recording in 4 seconds...pretty good IMO. Battery run time was also impressive at just over 2 hours, and a little research online will provide you will options on buying a replacement if needed, despite what some other reviews have stated. It comes with a nice neoprene holster for hip carry, which I though was very nice for storage as well. Nice attractive box with software and instructions. The cam does not come with an HDMI cable, which I found a little insulting. Come on now, I just bought a (supposed) HD cam and didn't even get an HDMI cable..I get RCA cables instead? This is like buying a pair of eye glasses with no lenses..EPIC FAIL! The fact that no HDMI cable was provided only reinforces the fact that this cam is not true HD quality.***** PROS *****♥ Sleek & Sexy Design♥ Excellent Build Quality & Balanced Feel♥ Rubberized Coating♥ Great Control Button Layout♥ Sensitive Button Operation♥ Extremely Easy To Use♥ Bright & Responsive LCD♥ Quick Boot Time♥ Long Battery Life♥ Great Menu Feature Set♥ Tripod Mountable♥ Clear Footage For Cam Of This Price (as long as you're not moving)***** CONS *****◙ L.E.D. Light Produces Yellow Hue◙ Poor L.E.D. Light Location◙ Macro Switch Extremely Tough To Use◙ Digital Zoom Overly Grainy For Cam In This Price Range◙ Jumpy Footage In 1080 Mode◙ Blurry Footage During Quick Movements (Slow Image Processor)◙ Washed Out And Blurry Still Images◙ Extremely Slow Shutter Response Time◙ No Capability To Take Stills While Recording◙ Very Slow Auto Light Metering◙ Grainy Footage In Low Light Conditions (Typical)◙ Muffled Audio◙ No HDMI Cable Included◙ Untruthful Claims On Performance SpecificationsOverall, 3 stars...my cell phone takes better footage! Would be good for something to throw in the glove box in case you need it, or to give to your kids for YouTube, but for quality video look elsewhere. You can get much better for 20-30 bucks more. I really wanted to like this cam, and I could have lived with some of the cons, but the jumpy footage and overly grainy low light performance killed it for me. Ohh well, another return to Amazon, which was a pleasurable experience...they paid my return shipping even though the cam worked as it was supposed to! Thumbs up for Amazon's customer support, as usual!

Ok here it goes,Camera looks great, it's plastic doesn't have any metal parts but still it's not made of chip plastic. It has a pretty decent resistive touch screen. Not really good for my fingers but ladys or teenagers would love it.Menu is quite simple, someone here said that icons in the menu don't have any captions and that confuses'em. Well actually the icons DO have a caption, don't know why you can't see them, maybe some firmware problem.Video looks really great, has a nice quality and frame rate. The only con about video is the exposure speed. it's a bit slow when you leave a room for example in a sunny day.Photos are also good, better than any cell phone camera for that price on the market. Camera has two focus modes, Infinite and Macro witch can be changed even when you're recording. That's cool. On the other hand the focus switch is placed right on top of the lens and is pretty hard to operate, would be great to have it somewhere under thumb to switch focus modes without shaking the cam. Same goes to the led flash, witch is under the lens and is often covered by your finger.It has motion tracking and time lapse functions witch I didn't even tried yet but I have seen a video on youtube looks pretty cool. Oh it also has face detection function(never tried don't care).Can't say much about battery, not sure how long it will last in video recording mode and there's nothing about it on the box or in the manual.By the way VEHO doesn't ship any spare batteries. I tried to find something that fit's because I'm sure they used some ready to go parts with this thingy, but didn't find anything yet. Now that's a con!!!Device supports High speed SD Cards that's really nice.Microphone sucks! + it has only one mic so forget about noise reduction and shooting on windy days )Included softwares is for windows PC-s only. No Mac OS X sorry.(I'm a Mac so...)Software is really cheap and I'm sure nobody's gonna use it for real so is't not a pro for me.Oh, almost forgot, there's a small firmware bug: battery icon doesn't display actual charge level, It just starts blinking when battery power is low and you have about 2 minutes left...Packaging includes a bunch of stuff manuals, getting started, wires, charger, cd, case etc.4 stars**Update:Battery Life: 3 hours in recording mode

Didn't arrive with all the bits, Amazons customer service was excellent in coming to a satisfactory solution. The item it's self great picture easy to work. Overall a nice bit of kit use it daily at work/