Panasonic HC-X900 Camcorder Review

Color

In all honesty, the HC-X900M's color performance was strong for a flagship camcorder. Color error was kept to a decent low of 3.63 and the saturation level was a solid 85%—not too much color depth while still producing vibrant tones. What struck us, however, was the fact that the camcorder did worse than last year's Panasonic TM900. That model had slightly lower color error and a near-perfect 99% color saturation. More on how we test color.

Color Accuracy Performance

The map above is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camera processed each particular color while capturing video.

Color Error Map
The map on the left is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camera processed each particular color while capturing video.

The Panasonic HC-X900M produced a color error of 3.63 and a saturation level of 85.00% in our bright light color testing.

Some users may actually prefer the toned down saturation levels on the HC-X900M, and since you can go into the menu system and play around with color depth, it's really not a big deal (you can make colors look very saturated if you want to). The slight drop in color accuracy compared to last year's TM900 is surprising, but the difference wasn't big enough to make a huge visual impact. Yes, the TM900 did better overall, but the differences weren't huge.

Like we said, the TM900 did a better job in this test, but the HC-X900M's color performance was still very good for a camcorder of its class. A little change in color accuracy isn't a big deal, and, frankly, we're more concerned about the X900's disappointing results in our low light test (which were also worse than last year's TM900).

Low Light Color

Color results in low light for the HC-X900M weren't as strong as the camcorder's noise results, but they were still decent. The camcorder managed a color error of 4.76, which is not far off from the Panasonic TM900's error of 4.32 last year. Where the X900M experienced a drop was in color saturation, as the camcorder put up a meager 68% saturation level in low light. This is a far cry from the vibrant, 85% color saturation we measured on the HDC-TM900 last year. More on how we test low light color.

Color Error Map
The map above is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camera processed each particular color while capturing video.

The Panasonic HC-X900M produced a color error of and a saturation level of in our bright light color testing.

Noise

Like color, the HC-X900M put up very good numbers in our bright light noise tests. The camcorder averaged 0.6% noise in our well-lit testing lab, which puts it on par with the competition from Canon and Sony. Just like we saw in our color test, the HC-X900M was outdone by its predecessor in this test, but the difference wasn't all that huge. Still, we never like to see a new model do worse in one of our tests than a previous edition... it simply doesn't bode well for progress and it makes it difficult to recommend the HC-X900M over the cheaper TM900 from 2011. More on how we test noise.