Panasonic NV-GS80 review

Budget camcorders might not seem flashy, but they play an important part in every camcorder line. They're designed to be an affordable, no-frills product that anyone can pick up for just a couple of hundred pounds. Since price is their main selling point, they tend to lack features that are standard on higher-end models. Among Panasonic camcorders, for example, the NV-GS80, costing around £200, sits as one of the runts of the litter. Still, its 32x optical zoom lens and optical image stabilisation make it an interesting runt.

Design
Chunky and simple, the NV-GS80 is almost indistinguishable in design from the crowd of budget MiniDV camcorders. Thanks to the camcorder's incredibly simple control scheme, you can easily record and play videos without ever touching its menu system. All you have to do is set the NV-GS80 in auto mode, and you're off and running.

If you really want to fiddle with the menus, you can navigate the NV-GS80's settings with a small joystick that is set into the mode dial. The 'advanced' menu holds very little in the way of video settings, however, and it's unlikely anyone would need to delve into the menus often.

Features
Like most budget MiniDV camcorders, the NV-GS80 offers few, if any, impressive features. Its 680,000-pixel sensor effectively records 340,000 pixels at 4:3 and 460,000 pixels at 16:9 wide-screen. The camcorder scores some minor points for recording higher-resolution, wide-screen video, and not simply cropping its 4:3 video, but since both aspect ratios use such a small, low-resolution sensor, it doesn't matter much.

The NV-GS80 incorporates a 32x optical zoom lens with optical image stabilisation, but doesn't use a Leica-branded lens. Panasonic prides itself in its use of Leica lenses in the majority of its digital imaging products, so the NV-GS80's unbranded lens secures the device's place near the bottom of Panasonic's camcorder food chain.

Performance
For a budget camcorder, the NV-GS80 produces rather nice video. Colours looked neutral and accurate and footage was relatively clean and free of grain. Of course, if you plan on watching your movies on a large, high-definition television, it won't be very impressive; most budget camcorders' standard-definition video tends to look blown out and jagged when upscaled on modern HD screens.

Finally, the NV-GS80 failed at recording low-light video. Even enabling Night Mode or Panasonic's Best Pix mode yielded no significant difference when shooting in the darkness of a 50W lamp. Fortunately, the NV-GS80 has a built-in video light -- so you won't be left totally in the dark, when shooting in the dark. The NV-GS80 also has an SD card slot for recording stills. Since the sensor is so low-resolution, however, the photos are only on a par with camera phone pics.

Conclusion
The Panasonic NV-GS80 is a decent budget camcorder in its own right, at around £200, but you could get a much better camera for the same or a slightly higher price.

Additional editing by Jon Squire