JVC GR-AX230U Camcorder Review

by Robin Liss
Published on Jun 22, 2004 12:00 AM



The JVC GR-AX230U which has a MSRP of $549.95 is a Compact VHS camcorder, this means it uses VHSC, a format that it basically a shrunk down version of VHS. The Camera has a great 22x optical variable spped zoom, this is a fairly large optical zoom, and the variable speed is great. Some people may notice that there is no Digital Zoom, I really do not think that a digital zoom is nessicary with these lower and VHSC camcorders. VHSC has good and bad points, its good beacuse you can take the tape and just put it into a adapter and just put it into your VCR, this way you do not have to plug cords into the camera and vcr. There are also many problems with VHSC that may steer most users away from VHSC camcorders. VHSC tapes only let you record 30 minutes at there highest quality, and 1 hour at a lower quality. The picture quality is very bad with VHSC, it is less than 200 lines of resolution and some numbers that I have heard are 120 lines of resolution. This is terrible resoultion and the pictures that a VHSC camcorder will put out will be very bad and degraded.

I do feel that this camcorder and other VHSC camcorders do have a niche. A VHSC camcorder is great if you are just starting and do not plan to do alot of video taping. The camcorder also is very convient, the ability to put the tapes in a adapter and put them in the VCR is great for people with very little knowledge of video. The prices of VHSC camcorders are really good, and this is JVC's least expensive VHSC camcorder, I think that for this reason it is the best JVC VHSC camcorder.