Review: JVC Everio GZ-MS100 camcorder

Video in the palm of your hand

JVC's latest Everio camcorder is small enough to be held in the palm of the hand, but its quality is more than you might expect from such a small device.

It shoots at a resolution of 720x576 pixels, which is a little higher than VHS video, but in practice offers roughly the same quality.

It's true that the MS100 is not up to the mark of modern DV tape camcorders, but it's still pretty good, especially when you consider that it stores the video on memory cards like a digital stills camera.

It fits about 14 minutes of highest-quality video into 1GB, so an 8GB card (the highest cheaply available card, at around £20 online) can accommodate around two hours' shooting.

Picture quality is reasonable, although the colour balance was a bit off to begin with and required tweaking. Quality is likewise fair – it can be a little fuzzy around the edges of objects, but it's good enough for most shooting.

There's an excellent 35x zoom lens that allows you to get right into the action (although camera shake becomes a problem at long zooms, despite the image stabilisation of the camcorder).

Quality is markedly better than that from the cheaper handhelds such as the Flip Video Ultra and the Creative Vado.

It can upload easily to Youtube using a dedicated button and the menus are easy to navigate thanks to the touch-sensitive panel and good screen, which are nice additions to a good camera.