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Canon FS100 review

Our rating

3.5 stars out of 5

User rating

2.5 stars out of 5

See all 2 user reviews

What do you think?

Verdict

Convenient, well-designed camcorders that look pricier than they are, models in the Canon FS series -- FS11, FS10 and FS100 -- nevertheless deliver typical budget video in line with their price tags

Good

  • Compact, attractive design
  • Mic input

Bad

  • No optical image stabilisation
  • Ineffective wind filter
  • No headphone jack
  • Modest video quality

In this review

In the spectrum that runs from low-resolution, cheapo camcorders such as the Flip to high-quality, solid-state prosumer HD models such as Canon's own HF10, Canon's line of SD card-based camcorders -- FS11, FS10 and FS100 -- falls exactly where you'd expect. At budget prices under £350, they're small, stylish and provide a reasonably expansive feature set. Unfortunately, the real 'budget' aspect of these models is the video quality.

The individual models in the FS series differ only by memory and colour, with prices that go up in increments of £50. The top-end model, the £350 FS11, comes in dark grey and includes 16GB built-in memory; its lesser sibling, the £300 FS10, wears silver and packs 8GB. The cheapest child, the £250 FS100, has no built-in memory but comes in silver, blue and red.

These are the only functional differences, so read our full Canon FS10 review for more information.

Edited by Nick Hide

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User reviews2

Add your review

Philip Moran's avatar
1 star out of 5

Philip Moran 9 December 2010

Good: Looks the business, but its only skin deep!

Bad: Picture quality is poor, worse than my Mini DV it replaces.

Comment: The standard definition is just VGA. The .MOD format has to be changed to .MPG and the widescreen flag set before it can be edited or played with some software players. The sound is however excellent.
Low light performance is very poor. Handling is good.
Some cheap digital cameras perform better than this for half the price!

I own it
machead's avatar
4 stars out of 5

machead 15 November 2008

Good: Good value for money, light, easy to use, records to SD card

Bad: Zoom too quickly and the camcorder will lose focus

Comment: For what I'm after this is ideal; only need a camcorder for occasional holiday footage in addition to my DSLR. So for me value for money, easy to use and easy to carry around is important.

The video quality is good without being spectacular and the sound quality isn't bad either with the built in microphone. Only trouble seems to be if you try to zoom too quickly that the picture will go out of focus, but on what I would call normal zoom speeds it copes just fine.

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