Samsung SC-X300L First Impressions Reviewby James MurrayPublished on Jan 18, 2007 12:00 PM
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Conclusion
In the last few years, the Samsung sports cams have certainly gained a following. They cater to a market, and for the most part, they satisfy. The body is exceptionally rugged, and the flash memory has a distinct edge over DVD, HDD, and even tape in its ability to avoid vibration damage. The new SC-X300L will provide sports enthusiasts the SX-X210L’s offerings with an upgrade in memory, a loss of still image functionality, all at a lower price. This camcorder has an identical external design and interface with the same 1/6" 680K gross CCD, 10x optical zoom, 2" LCD, and rubber body. It also maintains the multifunction features of MP3 player and voice memo recorder.
The image quality, at least on the CES floor, appears to suffer the same noisy low light performance and difficultly in focusing. This camera really has a very specific niche market with the included external wired remote camera and the rubber body that screams it can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. It’ll be interesting to get this model into our testing rooms and find out just how much this camera shares with the SC-X210L (Review, Specs, $449) (Review, Specs, ). In the meanwhile, if dead set on one of these two camcorders, opt for the newer SC-X300L with its expanded memory.
A new option, and one that some people have been waiting for, is Panasonic' s solid state HDC-SD1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1119.99), that can record high definition in the AVCHD format. Of course, the SD1 is significantly more expensive and much larger to mount to a helmet, but it may lure some of the Samsung fanbase away.