CNET has a quick and dirty review of the Panasonic PV-GS39 digital camcorder online at their website. They liked its great zoom capabilities and battery life, but were disappointed in the loss of image quality and lack of ports over the PV-GS39’s predecessor, the PV-GS35. Here’s a snippet of what they wrote:
Panasonic’s PV-GS39 is an inexpensive, entry-level camcorder with a long reach. Its 30X optical zoom brings even distant subjects into close view, though you’ll want a tripod to steady the camera. The PV-GS39 offers relatively good video quality across a variety of lighting conditions, but we were disappointed by its consistent graininess, especially compared to last year’s PV-GS35.
Apparently even in bright lighting, the PV-GS39 produced a noticeably grainy image. Also, Panasonic took away the S-Video output and external microphone input jacks that made last year’s model such a worthwhile investment.
This is a bit dissapointing to since you would expect the newer generation of a camcorder model to perform better than those before, but in this case it’s just not true.
