HWM Gold Award - A Compact Powerhouse

A dwarf in size, but a giant when it comes to features and performance.

The petite Panasonic NV-GS150 utilizes a 1/6-inch 3CCD image sensor and now replaces its sibling, the NV-GS200, as the world's smallest 3CCD video camera. It sports a 10x optical zoom from the LEICA DICOMAR lens (which has a removable lens hood and is protected by a lens shutter) that dominates its front face. Below the lens is the white balance and remote control sensor; and on its left sits the integrated video flash/recording lamp and microphone. Towards the rear of the unit's right side, you will find a well-designed port cover that conceals the AV/headphone, remote and USB terminals. The one-touch grip belt lets you easily change it to a hand strap. The top cassette loading NV-GS150 also has a accessory shoe located at the top where can mount the optional microphone or video light. The zoom lever and Photo Shot button can be found beside this shoe and both can be easily reached by your index finger during operation.

The 2.5-inch LCD takes the bulk of the unit's left profile. Below the LCD are several controls, such as the Reset and Power LCD buttons, and the Mode select switch. The DV terminal (for digital dubbing) is there as well. And along the edge of this section behind a plastic cover lie a SD card slot. Other than the battery, the rear portion of camcorder is populated with a few more controls. The Mode dial resembles the one found on a digital camera. When adjustments are made on the Mode dial, a graphical representation appears on the LCD so that users need not take their eyes off the screen.

When placed in the Quick Start mode, recording can take place under two seconds after the camcorder is turned on. We found this to be most advantageous for taking those spur of the moment shots. The night view functions are pretty useful too. The color night view function lets you record your subject in color in dark locations while the 0 Lux night view uses a brightened LCD screen to record even under total darkness. However, due to the low shutter speeds being used, image burring is almost inevitable. We therefore recommend mounting the camcorder on a tripod under such circumstances.

Other features include a soft skin mode, telemacro, fade-in/fade out, wind noise reduction, as an image stabilizer function. Low light performance of the NV-GS150 was good and colors recorded were rich and vivid Noise was well controlled too. Still photos (2.3-megapixels) also showed good fidelity and details - just be careful of tricky lighting that may fool the camcorder's white balance sensor. Battery life performance was great at 120 minutes of recording and 165 minutes of playback.

New users will be glad to know that the camcorder's automatic settings worked very well. More experienced users would like its variety of features and pro-level recording quality. The NV-GS150 is truly small in size, but big in performance.

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