JVC GZ-HM450 Camcorder Review

Video Sharpness

The GZ-HM450 managed a fair, but not great, performance in our sharpness test. The camcorder measured a horizontal sharpness of 625 lw/ph and a vertical sharpness of 600 lw/ph. The disappointing factor in this score is the horizontal sharpness, which comes in as a bit worse than what we saw from last year's JVC GZ-HM340 camcorder. What is the reason for this sharpness downgrade? Perhaps it has something to do with JVC's redesign of the lens on the HM450 (an increase to 40x optical zoom, up from 20x on the GZ-HM340), or it could be a result of some tinkering to the processing or image sensor system. Either way, the results from this test put the GZ-HM450 in the lower-tier compared to other entry-level HD models in terms of sharpness. More on how we test video sharpness.