JVC GZ-HM200

Ease of Use (6.50)

Just like the JVC’s other mid-range HD camcorder, the GZ-HD300, the GZ-HM200 should be quite easy for beginners to use. The camcorder is sparsely populated with only a few buttons, the menu system is simple and easy to navigate, and the auto mode is a good alternative if you don’t like setting manual controls. The HM200 does lack a dedicated ‘easy’ mode like you see on Sony and Canon camcorders, but the auto mode should suffice for most users. In auto mode you still have access to some of the HM200’s menus, but you cannot open the Manual Settings submenu.

The GZ-HM200 does have its difficulties. Primarily, we’re talking about the Laser Touch strip. The strip can be frustrating to use and difficult to get used to—especially if you aren’t used to the system. We did find it useful for scrolling through long lists of menu options and the operation sounds (a small beeping tone) help you recognize when the Laser Touch is responding. For manual controls, however, the Laser Touch can be unwieldy and frustrating. In a lot of ways, the Laser Touch is like a touchscreen: some people will love working with it, while others will detest it.

The ‘one-touch’ buttons located inside the HM200’s LCD cavity are meant to make the uploading, exporting, or DVD burning process easier, but they don’t do a very good job. The buttons must be activated before you start recording in order to take advantage of their ‘one-touch’ ability. You also have to install and work with JVC’s provided editing software to export, upload, or burn your video clips. Overall, we found the ‘one-touch’ buttons didn’t save much time because you can easily perform the same actions by using the editing software alone (without ever touching the ‘one-touch’ buttons).

The menu system on the GZ-HM200 is simple in design—one long list of menu options with a few categorized submenus. This means all the camcorder’s features are located under the same main menu system, which is a much different design than we’ve seen on some other camcorders (that use two or three separate menu interfaces). The problem with this setup, however, is that the HM200’s list of menu options is very long and you cannot see every option on one page. You must scroll through lists in order to find the specific setting you are looking for—this, at least, is something the Laser Touch strip is well-designed for.

The Main menu is accessed by pressing the Menu button on the HM200’s LCD panel. If you’re in Manual Mode, you’ll see a Manual Setting submenu right at the top of the Main menu. This submenu has most of the camcorder’s manual controls like shutter speed, focus, exposure, etc. The Manual Settings submenu does not appear when the camcorder is in Auto Mode. Near the bottom of the Main menu you have four more submenus: Display Settings, Basic Settings, Connection Settings, and Media Settings. Each of these submenus houses options that fit under those categories, although the placement of some options is a bit confusing (like putting Focus Assist color under Display Settings).

In playback, the camcorder has two separate menus for Video Mode and Still Mode. The menus aren’t completely different, but there are a few options that are unique for each. The menus in Playback Mode are accessed by pressing the Menu button—the same way you access the menu in Record Mode.

Overall, we like the menu design on the GZ-HM200, but it isn’t perfect. The list of options is long and if you don’t know where you are supposed to be looking it is quite easy to scroll past a specific option without knowing. The Laser Touch does work well for quickly navigating the menus, but it isn’t great if you want to slowly pick through the menu options. JVC does include a small bit of text at the bottom of the menu screen that tells you some information about the option you are selecting. This ‘help’ text is a great idea, but the fact that it scrolls slowly along the screen can make it difficult to read at times.

Auto Mode (8.40)

The GZ-HM200 is a fairly simple camcorder, and you can let the camcorder do most of the work by running it in auto mode. The HM200’s auto mode isn’t a ‘simple’ or ‘easy’ mode like you’ll see on other camcorders. It doesn’t lock you out of the menu system or bar you from adjusting every control—it simply puts every function on auto and blocks access to the Manual Settings submenu. You can still go into the main menu and make adjustments to things like zoom, stabilization, AGC, as well as display and media settings.

Unfortunately, not all of the camcorder’s automatic controls functioned at an ideal level. The autofocus was generally good, but we noticed it taking a bit too long when we shot in dimmer lighting conditions (in bright light it worked great). There’s also a face detection feature, which certainly didn’t hurt matters, but didn’t seem to help much either.

The auto exposure on the camcorder was also flawed. It sometimes took 3-4 seconds to adjust to a change in environment—far too long if you plan to use auto mode a lot. In manual mode, you can switch between Whole Screen and Spot evaluation to determine how the camcorder measures exposure levels (Spot measures the light at the center of the frame and adjusts exposure accordingly). If you find yourself shooting a subject with a strong light behind them, you can turn backlight compensation on to help the camcorder accommodate.

The camcorder’s auto white balance had trouble adjusting the color temperature correctly under indoor lights. Certain lights gave the image a warm, orange tint, while others gave the image a cool, blue tone. Using the HM200’s manual white balance solved this problem, but how many novice users are ever going to take the time to white balance their camcorder?

Low Light Modes – The GZ-HM200 has a built-in video light that can be set to off, on, or auto. With the auto setting, the light will turn on whenever you film in relative darkness. We found the auto setting to work a bit slowly, especially when we stopped shooting in low light (it took a while to turn off). The light also has an extremely limited illumination range of about one foot.

You can boost the HM200’s low light performance by turning on its auto slow shutter (setting AGC to auto). This will result in some funny looking motion when the slow shutter kicks in (like motion trails, blur, and choppy footage). The auto slow shutter only allows the shutter to drop to a 1/30 of a second shutter speed, however, so the choppiness of the footage isn’t as bad as using a very slow shutter like 1/8 or 1/4 of a second.

Scenes – There aren’t too many scene modes on the GZ-HM200, but most common options are included: Night, Twilight, Portrait, Sports, Snow, and Spotlight. The Night scene mode is like auto slow shutter, except it uses even lower shutter speeds than 1/30 of a second (thus resulting in more blur and motion trails).