The PV-L424 is a pretty cool piece of gear. (With virtually no reviews)pWe just got it yesterday for $419. It can be found a little cheaper, but check store reviews...pWe almost bought the PCV-L552 for its big view finder and 27x optical zoom, but after a lot of digging on obscure web sites, we found that older camera suffers from a dew detector light that goes off too easily, shutting down the camera for hours. The PV-L424 just came out in 2004.pThe 20x PV-L424 optical zoom is amazing. Things still look good at 40x digital, can read a UPC bar code from across the room. Things look tolerable at 120x, but ridiculous at 750k. There a single digit from the bar code fills the screen and is almost unreadable due to pixilation. pIt's kind of slim, better looking than the photo. pMenus and controls seem intelligently laid out. What's used most seems to have a single button for it.pI like the way the LCD screen swivels around so that you could actually dictate into it and see yourself. It's smart enough to know to flip the image right side up when I do that.pI can't say anything yet for the durability. pWe chose this VHS-C thing because I think all playback equipment for formats other than this and DVD will be difficult to find in 50 years. And the DVDs suffer from $10 disk costs (for 30 minutes) and the resolution won't match the MiniDVs until they change the image format to MPEG2. The PV-L424 seems like a great inexpensive holdover until the DVDs mature.

I like the size and weight, but it is taking forever to get the right tapes.

This camcorder was purchased as a gift for my daughter and used about 12 times over a 6 month period before experiencing intermittent failures. The labor warranty on this unit is only 90 days and labor costs for repair approach the original cost. It is unconscionable for Panasonic to market a defective product like this. This reflects poorly on their other products and unless they address this issue with me, I will avoid their products and advise others to avoid their products as well. I might chalk this up to one defective unit if I hadn't read other accounts of the same issue. This is a manufacturing or design defect that has not been addressed by Panasonic.
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