As the digital camcorder market inches toward being tapeless, you’ve got to wonder when image quality will catch up with the efficiency of a hard drive. According to DigitalTrends’ review, the Toshiba Gigashot GSC-R30 is yet another of these ill-fated devices.
The Gigashot GSC-R30 features a huge 30GB hard drive and an SD card slot for recording video. Footage is recorded at a maximum of 9Mbps, more or less DVD quality. Using just the hard drive, almost 7 hours of recording time is possible. According to the review, the 2MP still shots were actually useful, providing a good 4×6″ picture. The battery is supposed to last 2.5 hours, a long time for a stock battery.
Unfortunately, just like the recent JVC Everios, the Toshiba Gigashot falls far short of satisfaction when it comes to image quality. Poor performance and a ton of digital noise made the camcorder a disappointment.
Bottom line: the Toshiba gigashot GSC-R30 is clearly Version 1.0 and you should look elsewhere to satisfy your HDD jones.
