Sony Webbie MHS-PM1 HD Camcorder (Orange)

I currently own a Flip Mino HD and was looking for something with a bit more features. I bought this because of its expandable memory and removable battery. I didn't want to be limited to the Flip's 60 min shooting time and 2 hour battery life. The unique swivel lens is pretty awesome! It made turning the camera on and off really easy and shooting video at all angles also easy -especially if you're taking self videos, just turn the lens on yourself! Taking 5MP photos is a plus. You don't have to bring an extra digital camera!

With that said, I ultimately returned the camera. The features over the Flip are really great, but I was pretty disappointed in the video quality compared to the Flip. Low light video is not great -indoor and night shooting was pretty dark. I know there's a video setting for low light, but that didn't really help the quality much. It picks up audio really well but if you swivel the lens you can hear it, and it also picks up wind easily. I mostly take snowboarding video, and do a lot of indoor and night shooting. Also, the digital zoom is choppy. If video quality is important, may I suggest searching for video samples/tests/comparisons. If you will mainly be using this outdoors during the day, this might be for you.

This camera is basically the original Sony Webbie HD (MHS-CM1) camera shaped into a candy-bar format to more directly compete with the Flip Mino HD. In doing so you lose the optical zoom and the LED light. If you discount comments about the optical zoom (including complaints about motor noise) and the usefulness of the LED light, the rest of the features are pretty much the same and you can use the reviews for the original Webbie HD. I knew going in that this would be mainly an outdoor-only camera, but thats exactly what I wanted a smaller second camera for. I have a Canon HV20 HDV camera for indoor and more demanding use, but wanted something similar to a Flip to keep in my pocket when doing activities outside (walking the dogs, going to a bar-b-que, etc. where I am not consciously thinking of taping the event but something comes up that is worth capturing) that has a removable battery and flash memory. I've either been at work or the weather has been grey since getting this so I can't put it through its paces where it will really shine, but have taken some indoor 720p footage and stills. Enough to verify the camera is natively supported in iLife '09 (iMovie and iPhoto) and that other's comments about it being kind of weak in low light and when panning shots around are right. It isn't totally unusable, but you can see a yellowing of footage that can be compensated somewhat through iMovie or iPhoto in dark shots and you have to pan slower than even what is needed when using a consumer full-sized HD camera. Would I sell my Canon HDV camera and use only this? no. Will I keep this for on the spot captures in settings that match up to its strengths? yes.

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This is the only mini HD video camera on the market at present with a rotating head and that's the reason I use it. If you don't need the rotating head, there are better mini cams on the market and I recommend you seek them out.

I knocked off a star because during continuous recording, you have to re-press the record button every 25 minutes that's the max clip length. Non of the other so called drawbacks concerned me: no on-board battery charging, slightly soft 1080i, the fact that you need to buy a memory card, lousy low light recording, etc etc etc. It is what it is folks a fairly inexpensive high definition recorder.

For all you hobbyists out there, I've been using this for about a month now and I've got to say, for the price it's a keeper. I've attached it to an rc helicopter and sent it up a couple of hundred feet, strapped it to the handlebars of a bike and velrco'd it to the bill of my baseball hat. In each of these situations, the rotating head allows the lense to be pointed correctly regardless of mounting constraints.

The camera has no image stabilization (not unusual for a mini) so I shoot in "sports" mode which gives a little faster shutter speed (no good for indoors, though) and then run it through the anti-shake filter (set on low) in Cyberlink Power Director 7. I shoot in 720P mode and the quality is somewhere between dvd and blue ray when played back on a decent set.

Hope that helps you make up your mind!

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I bought this camera on Amazon after my local camera store said that they sold 10 of them in one week. I didn't get to see the quality of the picture and sound. Had I been able to do that, I would not have purchased the camera. In terms of portability, the camera is great and I give it 5 stars. It's a little larger than my cell phone. In terms of the quality of the video image and sound it's a completely different story. Granted, it doesn't cost 10 times as much as you'd be paying for a good HDV camera, but it was a big disappointment to see the image and hear the awful sound. I get better quality video and sound on my Sony V3 and Nikon P5100 cameras both are not "HD size" (they're 640 x 480) but what's the point of getting an extremely poor quality HD video? I returned the Webbie for a refund.

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Initially attracted to this device for its unique, swiveling lens (great for taping secretively), I became increasingly aware that I had bought the wrong handheld-HD-camcorder. The two major faults: a 25-min video recording limit (after 25 mins, recording stops and you have to press record again), and the fact that the memory card used by this camcorder is significantly more expensive compared to SDHC cards (for 16GB card: $100 versus $30 for SDHC).

Search YouTube for sample videos of the Aiptek GVS and buy that instead if you want a cheaper alternative that has many of the same features and more, but without the two aforementioned faults.

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