Hitachi DZ-GX3300A Camcorder Review

Ease of Use (4.5)
The GX3300 (Specs, $498) is not an easy camcorder to use--we can assure you of that! Part of the problem stems from the atrocious handling – poorly placed buttons along the left side of the body, particularly those inside the LCD cavity, cripple any hopes you may have of on-the-go focus and exposure adjustments (see the Handling section below for more detail).

Even aside from handling, the camcorder is just not an intuitive device. Its menu is lengthy, with lots of little submenus that take an inordinately long time to load. The mode dial that wraps around the record button has four options: a camera icon, a video icon, OFF, and CARD. It is not clear, though, what the difference between CARD and the camera icon is. (It turns out the this determines which media you save the stills to, but we had to play around with it before we found out.)

Every other camcorder we compared this to has better ease of use, with Sony in the lead. This area has historically been Sony’s strong suit, and Hitachi doesn’t look like it’s stealing the crown any time soon.

Handling (6.0)
Handling is perhaps the weakest area on what has proven to be a rather poor camcorder all around. The main issue stems from the fact that all of the controls are located on the left side of the camcorder. Above the LCD are the menu / VCR buttons and the four-way touchpad navigation control (among the weakest possible controls in camcorderdom). The touchpad is too small for you to get a good feel for it, and its unresponsiveness means you have to push down extra hard every time you want to move through the menu. This is the same type of control found on some JVCs, and we didn’t like it any better there. Canon and Panasonic have both adopted joysticks across most of their line. Sony is sticking with touch screen LCDs; although we're not fond of them, we must admit that they're easier to use to use than this Hitachi.

The other set of the controls, located inside the LCD cavity, have all the grace and usability of a concrete sailboat. The “buttons” (if you can call them that) are little more circles painted on a flat surface. If anything, they resemble the decal stickers on toy cars, which appeared like speedometers, odometers, etc. There is almost no responsiveness, no “give” to the buttons to tell you if you pushed them correctly or not. You just have to keep an eye on the LCD screen and wait for an icon to appear. And it’s not as if these buttons don't control important functions: the exposure and focus controls are here, and the abysmal handling renders them  effectively null.

Aside from these areas, actually holding the GX3300 and shooting with it are not particularly bad. The zoom toggle is well placed, though we would have preferred a proper raised toggle over this sliding switch design. The record button is also well located. The image stabilization also works well, preventing jitters.

Portability (6.0)
The Hitachi DZ-GX-3300 measures 48 mm x 91 mm x 132 mm (1-7/8” x 3-9/16” x 5-5/16”) and weighs in at about 545 g (1.2 lb) when loaded with a disc and battery. In the realm of DVD camcorders, this unit is pretty average in terms of its dimensions: too big to fit into a pants pocket comfortably, but easily slipped into a backpack or purse. Due largely to the size of a DVD, camcorders using this media cannot be miniaturized to the same degree as MiniDV cameras or HDD camcorders. When choosing a camcorder, there are some tradeoffs between the convenience of DVD and the improved portability of  formats like MiniDV. Also, DVDs are far more prone to damage from scratches: if you drop a MiniDV cassette on the floor, it will probably be just fine.

The battery juts out pretty far. Luckily, so does the viewfinder.

LCD/Viewfinder (6.5)
The DZ-GX3300’s LCD is standard sized, with a 2.7” LCD screen at a 120k pixel resolution, and the camcorder includes a 0.2” color viewfinder. The LCD screen has an aspect ratio of 16:9 and can be rotated through 270 degrees or flipped and nested, screen side out, into the LCD cavity. Due to the unfortunate placement of many important controls inside the cavity, monitoring video with the LCD nested prevents you from using features like manual focus. The LCD also suffers from unusually severe solarization – when tipped at even a minor angle, its image degrades, and it becomes unreadable at about a 45 degree tilt.

Battery Life (10.0)
The Hitachi DZ-GX3300 ships with the DZ-BP14S battery, which the manual estimates will last for 95 minutes of continuous shooting at the highest video quality, with the LCD open. For good measure, we tested the battery on our own. We left the LCD open and the backlight on, but didn't engage zoom or manual controls. When the disc ran out of space, we plugged in the DC power to change discs, then recommenced the test. In total, the battery lasted 100 minutes and 53 seconds (1 hour, 40 minutes, 52 seconds).