Panasonic PV-DV203 Camcorder Review

by Robin Liss
Published on Jun 23, 2004 12:00 AM



The $600 Panasonic PV-DV203 (Review, Specs, $199.99) is a very solid camcorder. The video performance is good, not great, but the low light performance is certainly where it should be for a camcorder in this price range. The PV-DV203 also brings good still performance to the table, and to top it off, the camcorder offers some of the best manual control you can find on a sub $1,000 cacorder. I certainly would recomend the Panasonic PV-DV203, it's a great camcorder with only a few minor flaws.

Video Performance (4.0)
The PV-DV203 includes a 1/6 in. 680K pixel CCD. The picture produced is very sharp and high resolution looking. Overal, the video performance was very good with nice general color representation, there was no over or undercompensation in one color. I was a little disappointed with it's richness. I like the picture of the Canon ZR under normal lighting conditions a lot more. The colors produced by the PV-DV203 seemed a little drab and there was a little too much noise under normal lighting conditions. Overal though, it produced a nice picture.

The Front (8.5)
The lens of the PV-DV203 is located at the top, on the right side of the camcorder. Below the lens is the Panasonic logo. Below the Panasonic logo is the built in light. Below the light is the infrared sensor. Below the infrared sensor is the stereo microphone. The front of the PV-DV203 is very clutter free which I like, though Panasonic could have placed the Firewire or USB ports on the front of the camcorder.

The Right Side (9.0)
The right side of the PV-DV203 is nicely void of buttons other than the eject button. Yeah! The right side of the PV-DV203 has a ribbed texture to help you in griping it. My only complaint is that the right side is not curved to make it easier to grip.

The Back (8.0)
On the left side of the back of the PV-DV203 is the color viewfinder. To the right of the viewfinder is a small metal long hook for attaching a neck strap, a nice little addition. To the right of the neck strap hook is the menu button, which is very integral in the operation of the PV-DV203, so the placement in the back is very good. Below the menu button, about half way down is the power dial. To the left of the power dial is the large battery compartment. Interestingly, the S-Video in / out port as well as the AC in port is located inside the battery compartment, so you can't use either port while the battery is in. This doesn't matter with the AC port because the camcorder charges the battery using an external battery charger instead of by charging it through the camcorder as many other models do. As for the S-Video port, I doubt that you are going to want to use it while you are using the battery.

The Left Side (7.5)
The left side of the PV-DV203 is covered in a shiny plastic silver. Along the top, towards the back of the camcorder is the button which turns on the light, the Magic Pix button, backlight and fade button. Below all those is the 2.5 in. LCD screen. Behind the LCD screen, in grey plastic is a door which swings open. Hidden behinn the door is the USB jack, the SD camera slot, and the Firewire jack. Below those is a piece of hard plastic which reveals the AV Out / Headphone jack. When you open up the LCD, two rows of wonderfully placed VCR buttons are revealed. It's the most logical place to put them, and I don't understand why some of Panasonic's competitors don't put the LCD buttons there. On the top row is the record button, the rewind button, the play button and the fast forward button. On the bottom row is the auto manual toggle button, the electronic stabilization toggle button, the Stop button and the pause / still / picture in picture button. The reason the PV-DV203 isn't geting more points for the wonderful placement of the VCR buttons is that Panasonic supidly, and I mean stupidly placed the auto / manual focus toggle and the auto / manual shooting mode toggle inside the LCD screen. These are buttons that you are likely to have to regularly access during recording, and therefore may need to access when shooting with the viewfinder - making them slightly inaccessible because you have to swing out the LCD screen to access them. It's almost as bad as Sony's touch screen LCD.

The Top (8.0)
The left side of the top of the PV-DV203 is clearly defined by the curved lens. To the right of it is a grip pad in the front, and a few buttoms in the back. Closest to the lens is the zoom slider control. Behind that is the tape eject button with the photo button to it's right. Behind the photo butotn is the jog dial which is incredibly important because it controls pretty much everything on the PV-DV203. The jog dial has an incredibly smooth and well oilded turning action. I like the nice simple layout of the top of the PV-DV203.

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (6.5)
The PV-DV203 has perfectly suitable automatic control. You can place the PV-DV203 either in auto mode or manual mode, as you can do with the Canon ZRs. The automatic foucs is very good and has a fast response time. The problem with the PV-DV203 is that it doesn't offer any of the cool automatic foucs features like the Sony models do. The Sony touchscreen has redefined automatic control in my mind, the Spot Foucs and Spot Metering features are some of the best inventions the low end camcorder market has seen in a while, and they are placing further demands on other companies.

Overall Manual Control (6)
The Panasonic PV-DV203 offers great manual control for any consumer camcorder under $1,500, let alone one priced at $600. The combined jog dial control is easy to use, and the only downside of this camcorder's manual control is the lack of a focus ring and the hidden nautre of the auto / manual toggle button.

Zoom (7.0)
The PV-DV203 includes a 10 X optical zoom, the same as the Sony DCR-TRV22, though much smaller than the 20 X on the Canon ZR65MC (Review, Specs, $259.99). I like the zoom control on the PV-DV203, it is much larger than the zoom control on the Sony, and it gives enough resistance to get many variable speed zooms and hold them. I gave it the same zoom control score as the Canon despite it's signifigantly smaller zoom because the zoom control is so much better. I wouldn't say that the zoom control is better than that of the large zoom control found on some Sony's (not the 22) but it still is very good.

Focus (2.5)
Short of not including manual focus, I don't think that Panasonic could have done a worse job with the foucs control. The jog dial control is okay, though a focus ring around the lens would be much better. What makes the focus control really terrible is that to toggle between manual and auto focus you have to swing open the LCD screen. On top of all this the PV-DV203 lacks the Spot Focus of the DCR-TRV22.

Exposure (Aperture) (8.0)
The PV-DV203 offers 13 steps of exposure from F2.0 to F16 to closed. The PV-DV203 nicely displays the F Stops (the professional rating for exposure and aperture) on the menu. You access the manual exposure by putting the camcorder in manual mode, then by pressing in the jog dial into you get to the F Stop manual control. Although a dedicated button would be better, I don't mind the Panasonic way of adjusting the manual picture elements. You can easily do it with one dial and with the LCD closed (if you are in manual mode).

Shutter Speed (7.0)
The PV-DV203 offers 14 steps of shutter speed from 1/60th of a second to 1/8000th of a second. The manual shutter speed is accessed using the same push-in rotation method with the jog dial. I'm pretty happy with the manual shutter speed control on the PV-DV203, there isn't a ton more that could be offered in my opinion. The shutter speed gets extra points for not being burried away in some menu.

White Balance (8.0)
The white balance control on the PV-DV203 is accessed through the same jog dial push in method as the shutter speed and the expsoure. There are four modes, automatic, indoor, outdoor and manual. The white balance gets extra points for not being hidden away in some menu. My only complaint is that the manual white balance is very picky in how long you hold down the button for.

Gain (8.0)
Panasonic gets huge points for puting manual gain control on this 'low level' camcorder. The gain control is actualy just an extension of the exposure control. Once you've brought the F Stops down to 2.0, the next step down turns on the gain. This is a logical step because you're only going to want to use gain with the lens fully open set to the smallest arperture. You can set it to Open + 0 dB, +3, +6, +9, +12, +15 and +18 dB, if I remeber correctly that's more steps that the Sony DCR-TRV950 offers. I'm very happy with the manual gain control and the added control it offers you over the picture.

Still Performance (6)
The PV-DV203 can record up to 1,280 x 960 pixel stills to SD cards. The quality of the stills is about medium for a camcorder in this price range. The stills suffer from the same problem as the video quality, and they aren't as good as I would like them. They are certainly better than those produced by the DCR-TRV22 or the Canon ZR65MC, however, I wish that the picture quality (color representation, grain) was better for a camcorder which produces stills of this resolution.

VCR Mode (7)
The VCR mode on the PV-DV203 is controlled through the buttons hidden behind the LCD screen. The VCR mode is no frills, but it works fine. It's a lot better than the touch screen VCR controlleds on the DCR-TRV22.

Low Light Performance (4.5)
The low light performance of the PV-DV203 was about average. The camcorder seemed to do a pretty good job in medium lighting conditions and okay in extremly low light conditions. I wouldn't say that it performed better than the Sony DCR-TRV19 (Review, Specs, $372) or 22, it produced much more grain than those camcorders, however it did a much better job than the Canon ZR65MC or any of the ZRs. The MagicPix low light shooting mode is neat, but I would never recomend actualy using it. The best option that the PV-DV203 offers, over the Canon and the Sony is the ability to manually control gain - a must when trying to tweak ou the picture under low light conditions.

LCD / Viewfinder (7)
The PV-DV203 includes a 2.5 in. color LCD screen. The LCD is sharp and no different than the hundreds of other of LCD screens out there. The viewfinder is color, though I wish it was black and white.

Audio (3)
The PV-DV203's weak point is it's audio options. The PV-DV203's built in microphone is no different than any others on camcorders in this price range. The PV-DV203 does have a headphone out, though it doubles as the RCA out / in port so you can't use both at the same time. Now there aren't a ton of situations where you might have to use both, but I can see them arising. The big problem the PV-DV203 runs into is that there is no microphone in. I usually don't deduct many points for a bad on camera microphone - because every on camera microphone that isn't raised away from the camcorder is bad - however when a camcorder fails to provide the user with other options, it's a big problem. The PV-DV203 doesn't give you any options because there is no microphone in.

Handling (8)
The PV-DV203 handles wonderfully. Weighing in at just 1 pound, the PV-DV203 is very well balanced giving it an even lighter feel. I'm very happy with the button placement, especially how easy it is to access the manul control (with the exception of the manual focus). This camcorder is really small, with out sacrificing ease of use.

Ports (6)
The PV-DV203 includes an S-Video out port, a USB jack, a Firewire Jack, and an RCA jack which doubles as the headphone jack. The camcorder is missing a control-L or similar control interface jack, a dedicated headphone jack and a microphone jack.

Other Features (4.0)
MagicPix Low Light Recording The MagicPix low light recording feature is similar to the Super Color Night Shot feature on Sony camcorders. The video is color, but the frame rate is so slow that the video is unwatchable. It's a neat feature but I'd never recomend using it.

Video Light This is really just a gimick. The video light can only really help you out when you are shooting in extremly small confiend spaces where you are very close to your subject.

Web Camera The PV-DV203 can function as a web camera when hooked up to your computer. The PV-DV203 hooks up to a computer and functions either as a camera for web chats or for streaming video for a web site.

Comparisons (no score provided)
The PV-DV203 is the upgraded version over the PV-DV103 (Specs, $233.32). The major upgrade of the PV-DV203 over the PV-DV103 is the addition of an SD slot for recording your digital stills to. Otherwise the two camcorders are practically identical. If you are interested in digital stills, I would go with the PV-DV203, however if you are only interested in digital video, save $100 and go with the PV-DV103. The next most expensive model offered by Panasonic is the PV-GS50, which offers a much more compact body for $100 more over the PV-DV203. The PV-GS50, doesn't have as good low light perofrmance as the PV-DV203, due to it's smaller CCD. The PV-GS50 also takes lower resolution stills. I wouldn't recomend the PV-GS50 over the PV-DV203 unless you are looking for an ultra compact camcorder, however Sony offers a much better model for $100 more in the DCR-TRV33, instead of the PV-GS50.

DCR-TRV22 The Panasonic PV-DV203 is really holding it's own, and beating the competition. It's rare that Panasonic produced a low end camcorder which I would recomend over the Sony or the Canon, but if your looking strictly in this price range - I'd go with the PV-DV203. The DCR-TRV22 does offer superior low light performance and video peroformance, however if you take all the other factors into consideration including the superior manual control and the better stills, I would give a slight edge to the PV-DV203 because of the added control that you get.

ZR65MC I like the video performance of the ZR65MC more, however the PV-DV203 beats it clearly in low light shooting conditions. The PV-DV203 does have a smaller zoom, however it offers better still performance.

Who's it For
Try to figure out which section you fit into, and the corresponding comments should help you decide whether or not this is the camcorder for you.

Point and Shooter's (5) Like the ZR65MC, the PV-DV203 will function fine for the point and shoot crowd, but it doesn't offer anything special like the Sony DCR-TRV22.

Budget Consumers (7) The PV-DV203 is a great budget camcorder, because it performs really well in all categories. It might not have the best video and low light performance, but when you factor in all the other features it's a great buy.

Still Photo / Video Camera Hybrid (7) The PV-DV203 is certainly the choice camcorder in this price range if you are interested in shooting stills.

Gadget Freaks (4) The PV-DV203 doesn't offer any special gadget features, it's a much more serious camcorder.

Manual Control Freaks (7.5) The PV-DV203 offers superior manual control, with the exception of focus control, when compared to any other camcorder in this price range. The jog dial which gives you access to gain, shutter speed, exposure and white balance is a wonderful tool.

Pro's / Serious Hobbyists (5) If you are a pro or serious hobbyist, you probably should be spending a lot more on your camcorder, however if you only cam spend this much, I would say that the PV-DV203 is a good choice, however it does suffer in that it does not have a professional appearance.

Conclusion:

The three major camcorders in this price range are the Panasonic PV-DV203, the Canon ZR65MC and the Sony DCR-TRV22. The Sony beats the other two on video performance and low light performance, however the Sony produces poor quality stills, and very few manual control options. The Canon ZR does slightly better in normal lighting conditions but fails when compared to the PV-DV203 under low light performance. I really don't like the Sony DCR-TRV22 because as the upgraded model over the DCR-TRV19, it should offer better still performance. I don't like the Canon ZR65MC because of it's terrible low light performance. The Panasonic, although not the best on video and low light, brings amazing manual control options, and good stills to the table, beating out the Sony DCR-TRV22 and the Canon ZR65MC as an overall best camcorder. Something else to note is that although the Sony may offer better video and low light performance off the bat, the control over shutter speed and gain which the PV-DV203 has will probably allow you to get a better picture in the end in more situations because you will be able to tweak the picture. The PV-DV203 is a really strong camcorder, with strong features and control which I would certainly recomend.