Canon FS200

Handling (8.75)

The Canon FS200 is a small camcorder with a comfortable, rounded shape that should fit well in most people’s palms. The camcorder may be too small for some hands, but we found its right-side to feel comfortable and smooth. We also really liked the FS200’s hand-strap with its padded design and soft lining—a much better strap than the flimsy offering on the JVC GZ-MG670.

We feel the Canon FS200 is the most stylish of the standard definition camcorders we tested in this set. It doesn’t appear boxy or stout like the models from JVC, Panasonic, Sony, and Samsung. Plus, its rounded top and thin design make it one of the more portable SD models on the market (except for ultracompact budget cams like the Flip). We like the FS200’s grip, button placement, microphone position, and durability as well. The bottom-loading battery and memory card slot is a bit annoying, particularly if you plan on using the FS200 on a tripod, but there’s really nowhere else to put a battery pack on a camcorder as small as the FS200.

The LCD on the FS200 isn’t very remarkable, but it gets the job done. None of these small SD cams offer electronic viewfinders, and most HD camcorders don’t include this feature as well. The FS200’s navigation joystick is well made, but it can be frustrating to use for certain tasks. It makes noise when you push it and it isn’t very precise for making manual adjustments. Still, it is better than Sony’s touchscreen and JVC’s Laser Touch system. Also, the joystick and d-pad featured on the Panasonic SDR-S26 and Samsung SMX-F34 are awful compared to Canon’s.

Portability (9.48)

Most standard definition camcorders are very light and compact, although none of these traditionally-shaped models are as portable as an ultracompact cam like the Flip. The Canon FS200 can probably fit in your pocket, but it won’t be very comfortable due to its thick, round body design. Still, the camcorder is a heck of a lot smaller than your average HD model. The Panasonic SDR-S26 and Sony DCR-SX60 are roughly the same size as the Canon FS200, while the JVC GZ-MG670 and Samsung SMX-F34 are a bit bulkier. Overall, we’re impressed with the FS200’s size. It is small enough to be considered very portable, but its body is large enough to offer comfortable handling and a decent grip.

Remember, the Canon FS200 lacks any internal memory, so you have to bring SD/SDHC memory cards along with you wherever you take the camcorder. This may be only a minor nuisance for some, but it does limit the camcorder’s portability overall.

Battery Life (9.85)

The Canon FS200’s provided battery just wouldn’t quit during our battery life test. The camcorder lasted 3 hours, 17 minutes, 27 seconds in our test (197 minutes), which is a downright impressive performance. While some of the other standard definition cams we’ve tested have had very good battery life results, none of them even come close to the Canon FS200. The Samsung SMX-F34 had the next best results in this test, lasting just over two-and-a-half hours. More on how we test battery life.

Unfortunately, the Canon FS200 has an enclosed battery compartment, which means you cannot upgrade to larger battery packs. Still, the 3+ hour performance put on with the camcorder’s provided battery should be plenty of time for an average day of shooting video. The FS200 also has an interesting feature called quick charge that enables you to get more out of your battery pack. According to Canon, if you charge the battery for 20 minutes (while it is inside the camcorder), you should get 60 minutes of record time from the battery. We didn’t overtly test this feature, but we did notice the camcorder lasting for quite a while after limited charges.

LCD & Viewfinder (7.17)

There’s nothing special about the LCD featured on the Canon FS200. The screen is 2.7-inches in size (the standard for a consumer camcorder), and it offers a disappointing 123,000-pixel resolution. There is no doubt these are lackluster specs for an LCD, but you can expect to find similar screens on the competition. All the models we’ve used as comparisons throughout this review—the Panasonic SDR-S26, Samsung SMX-F34, and JVC GZ-MG670—include 2.7-inch LCDs. None of them have impressive pixel counts on the screens either.

You can set the brightness of the LCD manually with 45 increments of control. Canon even includes a little greyscale box at the bottom of the screen so you can calibrate the brightness levels to your liking. There’s also an LCD dimmer setting that lowers the backlight level on the screen to conserve battery life.

Feature	Canon FS200	JVC Everio GZ-MG670	Samsung SMX-F34	Panasonic SDR-S26
Display Size	2.7 in.	2.7 in.		2.7 in.
Display Resolution	123000 pixels	0 pixels		123000 pixels
Touch Screen	✗	✗	✗	✗
Viewfinder	✗	✗	✗	✗
Viewfinder Resolution	n/a	0 pixels	n/a	n/a

Since the trend for standard definition camcorders is to make them small and compact, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the FS200 lacking an electronic viewfinder. In fact, none of the new standard definition models released by the major manufacturers this year included a viewfinder.

Stabilization (1.30)

The Canon FS200 is equipped with a digital image stabilization system (DIS), which can result in degraded image quality when used. Unfortunately, the DIS also didn’t work very well to stabilize the camcorder’s recorded image, although it wasn’t as bad as some of the digital stabilization systems featured on other standard def cams. More on how we test stabilization.

In our low shake test, the FS200’s digital stabilization reduced the shake by only 10%. When we cranked things up in our high shake test, the camcorder reduced slightly less of the shake, just 6%. Neither of these results is very good, but at least Canon’s stabilization system was able to do something to reduce shake. The DIS featured on the Samsung SMX-F34 did nothing to improve the shakiness of its video, while the Sony DCR-SX60 managed nearly identical results to the FS200.

One thing we should point out here is the impressive stabilization performance by the Panasonic SDR-S26—the only one of these camcorders to include optical image stabilization (OIS). So, not only does the S26 offer better stabilization results, but using its OIS also shouldn’t degrade the image quality like a digital stabilization system can. As for the cams that offer DIS, the JVC GZ-MG670 appeared to do the best job reducing shake (JVC as a whole usually has good digital stabilization systems on its camcorders).