Canon Vixia HF R30 Camcorder Review

Performance

When you're looking at camcorders that cost less than $500, it's usually quite hard to find one with spectacular image quality. The Canon HF R30 isn't bad in terms of video performance, but its videos don't look great—even in bright light. The camcorder showed more artifacting, more blur, and more interference problems than Canon's higher-end Vixia models (like the HF M series or the flagship HF G10), and we saw lots of distortion in low light video as well. This isn't to say Canon's HF R30 is a terrible camcorder. Not at all. It's just a cheap camcorder with limited performance capabilities and a number of serious flaws. But the same could be said about nearly all models in the sub-$500 price range.

Of course, the Canon HF R30 does a few things quite well for a budget model. The low light sensitivity was excellent for a camcorder in this price range, and sharpness was higher than most models we compared it to. Colors were also reasonably accurate and vivid in bright light, but that's something we see from most HD camcorders these days (including the cheap ones).