I purchased this to be a replacement for my stalwart aging DXG 506V digital video camera which has served me well over the years. Most cameras I have worked with do pretty well outdoors. Indoors is where you seperate the proverbial men from the boys and it is here where the Vivitar HD 620 falls just short of acceptable. On HD recording mode (and lets face it thats what you buy this thing for) the recording at its best is mildly grainy in bright fluorescent light and is extremely grainy in incandescent light. You can make adjustments to ISO and Exposure but in the end the best it can do is just short of adequate for indoor recording. It records High Definition resolution, but not High Definition Quality. Yes the videos are watchable and if watchable is all youre going for then you really dont need the HD feature as there are plenty of cameras (including my beloved DXG 506V) that give great recording quality at lower resolutions for much less money. The audio recording quality is actually surprisingly clear and static free....but there is a weird thing it does when recording where the volume and sensitivity literally go haywire and will subtly but quickly get very very loud. The flip out screen is a great feature and works well but feels a little fragile. I know the 50 dollar price tage is tempting, but believe me folks, spend the extra money if you want HD and get a better camera. If not spend less money and get a putzing around camera. This fails at both.
I became interested in this camera when I saw the 880HD available at a department store for the same price. I went home, looked it up on the internet, liked the idea of this model with the swivel screen and regular AA batteries, so I bought it. The first test was indoors with incandescent lighting. As mentioned in the other review, the image was grainy, much worse than my old Flip Ultra purchased in 2007. It obviously doesn't have as good of lighting correction circuitry as the Flip. The next test was in the environment I intended it for, at an outdoor music festival. In this environment it performed well. It has a zoom that could get me a non-HD quality image when I was was sitting ridiculously far from the stage, something that my old non-HD Flip could not do. At more reasonable distances I still question whether it's really HD quality, but it was nice. Closer distances with little or no zoom were fine, and what I'd consider HD quality. When panning the image becomes a bit jerky, so maybe it could use some image stabilization circuitry too. But at $25 for the camera and $12 more for an 8G (about 2 hours of video) SD card and camera case, I really can't complain. I'm happy with the purchase, I can still use the old Flip for indoor and low-lighting use and did not have to break my budget to get better quality video for the use I intended the camera for. The attached video review is using this camera for the Martin Sexton performance at the 2012 Clearwater festival.
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