Ease of Use
The menus are easy to use and obvious. The settings are high-level and user friendly. The LCD even has a histogram on it. (I wish all video cameras would have an option to display a histogram while they are shooting. I use this on my still cameras and miss the feature on video cameras).
Depth of Options
Adequate for casual use. Not enough controls for filmmaking.
Performance
Adequate for casual use. The high compression codec, lack of NLE plug-ins for direct editing, and the high processing power and time required to convert the recorded MOV format to an editable MOV format is probably the biggest problem in using the GO-HD for filmmaking. The rendering times I was able to achieve were impractical for production use.
Value
The overall value of the GO-HD depends on what you want it to do. I was hoping it would be a filmmaking tool. For this purpose it’s really not a good value. If you were looking at it for something to record birthday celebrations in HD – it would fare much better.
Final Comments
Reviewing this camera was a great lesson for me. All the specs looked like it was going to be a GREAT filmmaking tool. In addition, it was only upon close examination of the details and actually trying to use it for this purpose, that I became aware of the limitations.
