The Samsung VP-MX20 is a standard definition, flash memory camcorder. At around £150, it's an affordable option for those who don't need high definition but want something a step up from the burgeoning mini-camcorder sector.
Design
The camcorder is certainly small, nestling in the palm of the hand. Even so, you get a decent-sized 69mm (2.7-inch) flip-out screen. The design is simple, with only five buttons dotted around the body, and two buttons plus a round clickpad on the screen bezel.
The three buttons in the screen well include a status check button and an automatic mode toggle, called Easy Q. The camera doesn't need to be on for you to see the battery and memory card status at the touch of a button. Easy Q mode does everything for you, though it is a bit annoying when you press the menu button and get an error message telling you to turn Easy Q off -- we'd prefer it if pressing the menu button took you straight out of Easy Q mode.
Although it is primarily designed to be held with the arm bent and the camera in the palm of the hand, greater freedom is afforded by the swivel grip. This allows you to change your grip to a straight-arm lower position without stopping filming, as the grip swivels smoothly. You can change shooting position to get different angles.
The connections are composite out and USB, protected by a plastic cover. The battery is contained in the bottom of the camcorder, which means you can't add an extended battery. The lens is protected by a lens cover that you have to click open yourself. If you forget, the camera chides you with an on-screen message, which gets a bit wearing.
Features
The Schneider-Kreuznach lens boasts a 34x optical zoom and video is recorded at 720x576-pixel resolution. The MX20 is the first standard definition camcorder to use the H.264 codec, a video compression standard that is generally found in high definition camcorders because of the larger file sizes created when shooting in HD.
Samsung has applied this technology to a standard-def shooter in order to boost shooting times. We put in a 4GB SDHC card and were promised a whisper under two hours of shooting time, with Samsung promising up to 30 hours from a 32GB card.
Sharing video is designed to be as simple as possible. Putting the camera into Web and mobile mode automatically adjusts video to 640x480-pixel resolution. YouTube upload software is baked into the Mediashow software included with the camera.
Other features include face detection and a WindCut Plus wind filter, designed to cut down on ambient noise. You also get interval recording, capturing a frame at an interval you set, so you can shoot time-lapse videos for as long as the battery will last.
Performance
Samsung is keen to highlight the MX20's battery life, claiming an impressive three hours. According to the battery check, the fully-charged battery offers nearly three and a half hours, but we got slightly less than that as we left the camera filming, even without much use of the zoom.
The MX20 is reasonably quick, starting in two seconds, though it doesn't have an instant-on standby mode. Footage looks reasonable, with the usual slightly jagged diagonal lines, but it was generally clean and free of noise.
The long zoom is handy, with a reasonably responsive control. We did find that zooming too quickly gave the autofocus some problems, with the image going out of focus. More often than not the autofocus would fail to lock on again, and the image would stay blurry until we zoomed out again.
Conclusion
The Samsung VP-MX20 is certainly a well-priced camcorder. If Web-sharing is your main aim, the Flip Video Ultra is cheaper but lacks many of the features, or for slightly more cash you could go for the JVC Everio GZ-MG330, which boasts a 35x zoom.
Edited by Marian Smith
Android App 
RSS Feeds 
iPhone App 
Newsletters
User reviews4
Add your review
agallo 9 May 2010
Good: SD/MMC and price, video quality and battery life
Bad: wrong settings in the MP4 file on the SD/MMC, battery does not keep its charge in time
Comment: AFter the first review from last November, I have kept on searching a solution and I have found one at last: http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/320586-Samsung-VP-MX20-and-interlaced-H-264-Pinnacle-Studio?p=1985126#post1985126
I now use SUPER to convert all MP4 files from the camcorder in AVI DV format. With this, Pinnacle Studio now properly reads those streams as interlaced and I now get beautifull DVD's.
I am now very happy with the camcorder.
I still confirm that it records in widescreen but it flags it as 4:3 (actually 5:4 according to MediaInfo) and I still confirm that the audio stream associated to the video has problems with empty or missing samples at the start and the end of each recording.
These are problems with the firmware of the camcorder but I have not managed to get any feedback from Samsung.
I have also found another problem: I never remove the battery from the camcorder when I store it away. After a couple of months I took it and found the battery was totally empty. So it does NOT KEEP the charge over time.
Strange!!! my old Canon miniDV used to keep it for months and even my Casio Exilim holds it for months.
Moreover, now the battery does not charge fully to the max anymore. Even if I keep it connected for a whole weekend, the orange charging LED stays on and never turns to GREEN.
Anyway, I am now satisfied with what I have bought and I do not need to buy a new camcorder anymore.
Still I am disappointed with the bugs in the firmware, with the battery not holding its charge (so maybe the camcorder has leakage and is never OFF really) and with its zoom that is TOO fast.
agallo 20 November 2009
Good: battery life, SDMMC, lightweight, PRICE
Bad: video quality, zoom speed
Comment: Used it for four months and gone also for video editing with Pinnacle Studio 12 up to burning to DVD and watching on LCD TV.
While shooting, I have loved its light weight, battery life, use of SDMMC, good quality of the display panel and small power adaptor for battery charge.
At the same time I have felt the zoom speed is too fast and not controllable, I usually start some recording from zoom-in details - e.g. a flower - and I slowly zoom out while panning - e.g. full forest scene. Here the zoom in/out is so fast that it gives headache. Not usable. No mid speed in the control, either zooming or still.
My old (and dead) Canon MiniDV was much better in this as the zoom joggle had a mid step position for fantastic smooth zoom in/out.
While doing video editing, I have found that areas of homogeneous colour do not have any digital noise. That is GREAT! Mu old Canon miniDV was quite bad on this and even on a sunny day the sky was full of ugly digital noise once on LCD TV via DVD. For years I felt it was due to the Pinnacle MPEG2 encoder but now I see that it was the sensor in my old Canon (2002!!).
Anyway, there are severe problems in this Samsung when doing video editing:
(1) each shooting is saved as one single MP4 file in widescreen format BUT the 16:9 flag is not set. In any PC player it shows as squashed and vertically stretched. In the video editing sw I have to open each MP4 file to acces the internal stream (Pinnacle has to create its SCN scene file) and then I can set each stream to 16:9 ratio
(2) the audio is late compared to video. Few ms but late. Actually by zooming IN into the beginning of each shooting, there are two "holes" in the wave. If you remove these two holes, then audio is not late anymore. So it looks like spurious silent buffers inserted by mistake... sw bug? If you start recording with high volume ambient sound, e.g. background music, this is recorded and reproduced as hicups at the beginning. Very bad when you join multiple shootings unless you remove the first 10 frames from each scene.
(3) at the end of each shooting, when you press the STOP button, few video frames are still recorded while there is no audio anymore. So last few frames are in mute. Very bad when you join multiple shootings unless you remove the last 10 frames from each scene.
(4) the electronic stabiliser may be good when you hold still your camera but is HORRIBLE in panning. If you record your favorite landscape turning left to right, the result is not smooth but full of small bumps, this is the electronic stabiliser that is trying to compensate and remove your panning... HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE - I will try and record again without it
(5) when viewed on a LCD TV, the deinterlacing effect is HORRIBLE. When there are fast moving elements, you CLEARLY see the interlacing. It is AS IF the sensor was progressive and capturing at 25p and then an internal encoder or DSP would turn it into 50i by using interpolation to generate the intermediate frames. It is HORRIBLE. My old Canon miniDV produced PERFECT interlaced streams with no bad effect at all, even after converting to DVD. I will try again by removing the electronic stabiliser and see if there is any improvement.
Overall, I love the industrial design and weight, I hate the video quality at output. I will try again removing the electronic stabiliser hoping for the best. I have contacted the local support service and they have no idea about the problems I have reported.
qenny 18 June 2009
Good: Cheap. Good battery life. Good compression.
Bad: Dodgy aspect ratio behaviour. File corruption. Synching problems.
Comment: I bought one of these to assist me in my fledging career in stand-up comedy. My first experience with it was recording a showcase gig with some chums. It was in a room with flourescent lighting. The resulting video was extremely poor quality. I tried later at a different venue (with better lighting) and the clips looked much better, but there was a problem with audio/video being out of synch. Also, all clips were recorded in widescreen format, but when extracted from the SD card, come out squashed into 3:4, and the software that came with the camera doesn't do anything to address this.
Had to send it away to have the synch problem fixed, but now find that if I try to record more than about 1 hr of footage, it starts to corrupt everything. Really not very happy. I'll be looking into getting a refund.
See all 4 user reviews